One of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s most visible student activists will postpone his first year of college to devote time to political causes.
David Hogg has been accepted at the University of California, Irvine, “but he will not be going to college this year because he’s decided to take a year off and work on the midterm elections,” his mother, Rebecca Boldrick, told CNN Monday.
She said her son hopes to register and educate new voters and to “get people to vote.”
Hogg, 17, is a senior at the Parkland, Florida, school where 17 people were fatally shot in February. Since then, he has emerged as a high-profile advocate for gun control measures, speaking at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, being interviewed on TV and appearing on the cover of Time magazine.
Hogg’s college aspirations made national headlines last month when Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked him on Twitter over a report that he had been rejected by at least three universities to which he had applied. (He was accepted by several others.)
She later apologized after Hogg urged his 700,000-plus Twitter followers to pressure companies to stop advertising on Ingraham’s show.
Hogg has told CNN and other media outlets that he is interested in pursuing a career in journalism or filmmaking.
