“Every vote you cast, you’re voting about what you want out of the next 61 years,” El-Sayed said. “I think the substrate of democracy is to ask two questions: who are we, and who do we want to be? Every day you all go out and have conversations, specifically with young people, asking those questions. Sometimes as young people, we don’t ask those questions.

“A lot of folks say ‘I’m not political.’ When you say you’re not political, you’re making a political statement. You’re saying, 'I don’t want my voice to be heard in politics,' and in doing that you’re amplifying everybody else’s."

Speaking at the event, which was hosted by NextGen Michigan, is just one of the ways that El-Sayed hopes to bring young people into the political fold. Earlier this week, he announced that he is launching Southpaw Michigan, a PAC that will seek to harness the energy from his gubernatorial campaign and redirect it to other downticket candidates. 

“Folks are somewhere between dejected and fired up,” El-Sayed said. “My hope is to remind them why they’re working, because it can get really hard to try and swim upstream … and hopefully to remind them of the long view, that the work of progress is generational.”

Republican nominee for governor, Bill Schuette, spent several days attacking his Democratic opponent, Gretchen Whitmer, over her handling of the Larry Nassar prosecution during her time as Ingham County Prosecutor. Asked whether he thought Whitmer went far enough, El-Sayed said that she “did what made sense, legally, at the time.” 

“What Bill Schuette has chosen to do in politicizing this awful, human tragedy, and the way he’s chosen to do it, which is ultimately playing politics with the lives and wellbeing of people — putting up ads that, frankly, retraumatize people that went through that specifically ... I just think that’s quite disgusting,” El-Sayed said. “I obviously ran against Senator Whitmer, and I understood that’s not what we play politics with. There’s a reason why we didn’t choose to go down that path.”

Last week, Whitmer called on MSU Trustee George Perles, along with the rest of the board, to resign amid allegations that he covered up a rape on Nassar’s behalf in 1992. El-Sayed, while not familiar with the specifics of the lawsuit, said the necessary “deep cultural change” was not happening fast enough at MSU.

“If what is alleged is true, it is deeply disturbing," El-Sayed said. "You think about how many people could have been prevented from the victimization of that person, and the idea that someone in a place of power would have thwarted justice I think is just devastating. 

'I’m not one who believes that the entire board needs to go, but I do believe that folks who want to protect a culture that hurt a lot of people, and I think more than we even know, that those folks need to go.”

Part of that cultural change, El-Sayed said, will be the selection of interim President John Engler’s replacement. He hopes to see a permanent president who “embodies the diversity” of the university, “understands the importance … of the academic enterprise,” and “understands how to lead cultural change.” 

Above all else, El-Sayed said, student voices should be just as important in the selection of MSU’s next president as they are to the democratic process. 

"I really hope that the students and the faculty voices are highlighted in making a decision,” El-Sayed said. “I’ve always found that the more you spend your time listening to young people and thinking about what they have to say, the closer you get to truth, because those people are going to be who are architecting the future.”