Friday, April 3, 2009
Advance voting is open for Lawrence city commission and Lawrence school board elections. Voting early is easy and fast: Show your ID, vote, you’re outta there. For those of you thinking, “What do I care about Lawrence city commission?, I’m at KU,” I’d challenge you to learn more and rethink your approach. Local elections are often as important, if not more important, than elections for national offices, because it is the few people on our city commission who make decisions about the city bus system, the ‘rental registry’ (which will definitely affect you if you rent a house or apartment in Lawrence!) and other issues that affect us as KU students.
Continuing battles over economic development will determine whether Lawrence remains a hip university town or turns into a suburb of a suburb of KC and Topeka. I pay rent, I buy food and gas and clothes here, I spend lots of money downtown and at Lawrence stores, so it’s important to me that I have a voice in helping Lawrence stay, well, Lawrence-y.
And the school board elections concern us as well, even if we don’t have children or don’t plan to. School boards are the arbiters of school curricula and what children learn in schools is often carried through into their later belief-systems. The children of the elementary and high schools today are the students who will be sitting in the desks in KU classrooms tomorrow. The policies that the school board adopts today will be the ones our kids or nieces and nephews are subject to in a few years.
As KU students we may have an even heightened responsibility to be at least involved enough to take 20 minutes to read up on the candidates (check the local paper or grab a web address from the yard signs all over town!) and another 10 minutes to drive downtown to the courthouse at 11th and Mass. to vote. College is a time and this University is a place where we are already thinking about lots of these issues in our courses and debating them with friends. I came to the University because I liked Lawrence’s vibe; I vote because I want the vibe to carry on. I’m proud to be a Jayhawk and even though I might only be living in Lawrence for a few years, I do live here now and I do want my voice to be heard. So should you!
— — Milton W. Wendland is a graduate student from Lawrence
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Letter: Students should care about local elections
Wouldn't it be cool if some free paper that is easily accessible had some sort of article or series of articles about candidates up for election in the city, state, and county?
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