The Ones Who Live With It by Aaishi Raj

WHAT IF STUDENTS GOT TO DESIGN ONE LAW EVERY YEAR?

Imagine waking up one day, turning on the TV as you start to brew your cup of cappuccino.

The news anchor shouts at the top of her lungs, “THE GOVERNMENT HAS GIVEN EVERY

SCHOOL STUDENT A RESPONSIBILITY. ONCE A YEAR, THEY ARE THE ONES WHO

GET TO MAKE LAWS.”

They aren’t given any special benefits nor do they get the right to vote. They simply get to

suggest an idea and watch it turn into a full-fledged law. A real one. The kind that has real

consequences, the kind which advocates quote in courts.

At first, this sounds absurd even to think about, millions of school students debating day and

night, proposing laws about what matters to them. They aren’t concerned about taxes and

trade rather, they care about reduced homework, exams and school shootings. That is what

inherently affects them. That’s what they would be making laws about, right?

Then you turn the TV volume up and the volume in your mind down. The anchor states that

there is a catch to the policy. Their ideas have to survive the same questions that real laws

face. They have to think about implementation, costs, minorities and all that ‘important

boring stuff.'

Maybe someone proposes a reduction in homework, another proposes compulsory mental

health education. Another voice says to install metal detectors, someone else shouts that

mandatory sex-ed should become the ‘new normal.'

For most of them, their voice isn’t saying what their mind wants, it’s saying what their soul

requires.

The one asking to install metal detectors is the one who sits the longest at his eight-year-old

brother’s grave, forever resenting his mom for not letting him stay home that day.

The one proposing mental health education is the one who saw the hanging corpse of her

sister because she was too ashamed to talk about the bullying she faced EVERY SINGLE

DAY.

The student begging for sex education is the one who grew up knowing that her mother

became a mother far too young and never got the chance to see her child grow up.

These aren’t abstract policy debates to them.

They are not arguing because they read these problems in a book.

They are arguing because these issues have names.

Faces.

Memories.

And perhaps that is the uncomfortable part of this experiment, maybe the people most

capable of imagining a better law, a better future are not the ones who know the system

best, but the people who know its consequences most intimately.

So maybe a law is not just an essay written on paper.

It's someone’s attempt to make sure that there isn’t one more empty chair at a dining table.

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About This Piece

"I started with a pretty simple question: 'What would happen if students actually got to make one law every year?' The idea turned into a thought experiment about what students might choose to change if their ideas had real consequences. I wanted to show that the things students care about aren’t always just complaints about school—they can come from things they’ve actually experienced. I also wanted the piece to make people stop and think about who gets a say in the decisions that affect them."

Credits

© 2026 Aaishi S. All Rights Reserved.