No John, we're not waiting.
As the hype of Barack Obama's visit starts to die down and the campus begins to become charged with the student voice fanatics, the face of apathy rears its ugly head. I ran into this the other day in class when I found myself watching a shouting match about how one vote didn't count. "The political system is corrupt" and "the uninformed people cancel out my vote" were also popular rebuttals against voting. I do not think these people took into consideration that we are a democracy. This is why the country works the way it does. And moreover, you CAN NOT complain if you do not vote.
One more reason people don't vote according to KAET TV's polling services, is people "want to vote, but they just don't feel informed about the issues." So, let's educate them. Recently, a student organization in attempt to educate young voters held a campaign with the tagline "Do you have a minute for democracy?" Unsurprisingly, many people shrugged and said no. What was alarming however, was when a group of girls actually did stop just to say "Oh, we're Republicans." Another student responded, "What's that?" with a straight face. Hearing such responses, I laughed, and then it made me want to cry.
Maybe the people needed someone to engage them, to give them an incentive to vote. Much to the amusement of the American people, Sean "P Diddy" Combs gave incentive for young people to vote in a "Vote or Die" campaign in 2004. Although voting did increase slightly, the majority who chose not to vote are still alive. Now that we are again in the same phase, do we still need someone to threaten us? That is to say, do young voters still need to be coerced into being responsible participants in their government?
Apparently they do. Voting is becoming increasingly violent, or increasingly a joke, (as Stephen Colbert has made it by running in South Carolina as a Republican and a Democrat) and the extreme measures our public figures take to interest young people in voting is ridiculous. Maybe we do need this incentive to vote, and maybe we don't.
The fact remains, however, that in the last election season, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds voting went up 11 percent. That is what we call progress. To change our tuition, our environment, our country and our president we must vote our measly little vote because it counts just as much as anyone else's. Instead of being discouraged by that fact, we should be elated. Yes! My vote counts for something!
And instead of lounging around on election days and complaining about the condition of the White House afterward we can and will make a difference by voting. The question now remains how much difference we choose to make. As John Mayer says in his recent hit single, we are "waiting on the world to change."
But this time, there is hope that college students will rock the White House. The times are changing. And no John, we're not waiting.
Reach the reporter at: dimpledhanani@gmail.com.
