In 2025, political debates always seem hostile. The Trump v. Harris 2024 presidential election debate was filled with interruptions, name calling, insults and accusations of lying. Most recently, the first New York City mayoral debate between Zohran Mandami, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Silwa was a “bitter and combative affair, with the three candidates trading personal attacks,” according to the New York Times.
On Oct. 14. At 7 p.m., the Westport Youth Commission held a peaceful discussion with little disagreement between the three candidates running: Kevin Christie (D), Don O’Day (R) and David Rosenwaks (I). Most interestingly though, this successful event was completely run by Staples and Greens Farm Academy (GFA) students.
“This was a two month process. We reached out to all the candidates, got the venue, date and did all the marketing to students,” Youth Co-Chair and moderator Jake Shufro ’26 said. “In terms of moderators, we’re in charge of introducing the candidates, asking the candidates questions and making sure the event goes smoothly.”
Along with Shufro, the other moderators for this event were GFA student Jack Thompson ’27, and founder and editor of 06880 Dan Woog, who was a huge supporter of the student-led event for students.
“It is fantastic that this is youth driven,” Woog said. “A lot of times, I think the candidates get asked the same old questions, but they need to know what is on the minds of teenagers and young people.”
In terms of the actual discussion, all of the candidates shared their key beliefs about the youth’s role in Westport. David Rosenwaks believes that the government needs to “engage and set an example” for the youth in Westport, especially due to the feeling that the example failed to be set when students were unable to share their voices in the trial of former boys’ soccer coach Russell-Oost Lievense.
O’Day shared that it was necessary to focus on improving the job bank as he believes that summer jobs are important to growing up in Westport. Christie proposed more open conversations (similar to his current open coffee conversations at the library) with students as they are the future of Westport.
In attendance at the conversation was captain of the Staples Debate team, Gunnar Eklund ’26, who recognized that this was more of a conversation rather than debate, but felt like the well framed candidates’ responses gave him valuable information and positive anticipation for Westport youth’s future.
“Something that really made me excited was this overall emphasis on getting the youth more engaged. We saw discussion from all three candidates about things like library events, town hall events and brown bag lunches,” Eklund ’26 said. “I would say that these initiatives to promote youth civic engagement were particularly exciting.”
The last 20 minutes of the discussion were student questions for the candidates that were submitted on a Google form. This was very popular and had a lot of engagement as the moderators were not even able to get to every single question.
While not all students are able to vote, the ones who can were impacted by learning about all sides of the ballot at this event. For the ones who can’t vote, they still learned about the candidates’ policies and could confer with their parents about the upcoming election.
“Each candidate really grounded their points in not only just policy proposals, but also real world examples of things they have accomplished within our town’s government bodies.
Overall, the leaders of this project, Shufro and Thompson, consider this event a huge success and look to continue the Westport Youth Commission’s success in future years.
“I think it went great,” Thompson ’27 said. “It was great to see a high turnout rate from students in eighth grade all the way to seniors. I think people got a lot of good information and there was a wide range of questions from the audience. Overall, the event was very successful, and in the future, similar events like this would be very beneficial for the youth.”
