Thursday, November 20, 2008
Quick — name the student body president, the person who presides over the $768.50 that you pay each year in fees. Can you name one of your student senators, the people who decide if we continue getting cheap prescriptions at Watkins Health Center and wireless Internet on campus and decide whether we should be paying more or less for these services?
Chances are you didn’t know Adam McGonigle, the student body president, or any of your senators, because chances are that you didn’t vote in the campus elections last April.
It’s puzzling that we students came out in droves to elect a man who will rule us from more than a thousand miles away, but only about 15 percent of us vote for people whose decisions affect us more directly than the person sitting in the Oval Office.
This is not a high school StuCo election that we’re talking about, where candidates get the opportunity to pick crappy DJs for prom.
This is the real deal. Student Senate holds the strings on an $18 million purse of your money.
Senate’s decisions determine if that purse gets bigger or smaller and how that money will be allocated. Our student politicians today will be some of our nation’s politicians tomorrow. It does not bode well for the future of our democracy that these politicians debut in an arena where barely any of their constituents care enough to authorize them into office or hold them accountable for their actions.
Our apathy is not a protest against a system that some perceive as ineffective or powerless. It’s a white flag, a message to the coalitions that we don’t care whether senators are keeping our interests in mind or not.
Joe the Student not voting gives more power to the two largest interest groups that vote in strong numbers: greeks and athletes. The coalition that best appeases these groups with representation and fee money, has the best shot at victory come April.
Blame for this bleak political reality doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of non-voters. It is The University Daily Kansan’s job to inform students about senate affairs, and coverage could be beefed up and made more interesting and presented in a way students can understand. But Senate must also figure out how to work its $5,000 clickers so that voting records can be posted online.
Ultimately though, nothing will change the status quo unless students wake up and demand it through words and votes.
— —Ian Stanford for the editorial board
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Comments
Editorial: Why don’t students vote in this election?
there's a fine line between "people walking down Jayhawk Blvd. informing students about the candidates" and United Students pushing pamphlets in our faces every 10 feet we take on campus for the entire 2 weeks before the election. Seriously, 3 days of hard campaigning would have done the trick, been less work for all of you, less harassment for the student body, and I might have actually voted for some of you.
Editorial: Why don’t students vote in this election?
Ian, I agree with you in respects to getting the message out to students about the election and the candidates. While I do believe the Daily Kansan could definitely do something to help out with this issue, I also believe that the candidates themselves could do something about it. For instance, I cannot remember if there was an election this year or last year, but I remember people actually walking down Jayhawk Blvd. informing students about the candidates. That was a dramatic change in comparison to previous elections where I didn't know there was even an election coming up. Sidewalk chalk just doesn't do the trick.
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