Students and University as an Election Plan
So I know I’ve promised to exclude politics from this blog, along with religion. But I thought since it is the federal election today I should at least make some sort of post.
Tuesday’s are the busiest day of the week for me. I have class pretty much all day and because of this had a chance to talk to a lot of students as to if and where they were voting. I was a little disappointed to find over half the people I asked were not voting and didn’t find it important. I noticed two main reasons.
A) It’s too much of a hassle.
Yes, we’re students. We live busy lives and are great at coming up with reasons to procrastinate and push things off. But it took me all of 2 minutes to vote. I showed up, I handed in my drivers license, I even needed to show a copy of my lease, and then I voted. 2 minutes. It was no hassle, especially considering this is the government that will be in power when I am perhaps deciding on where to live and work, and starting a family. It’s worth that extra 2 minutes.
B) None of the candidates convinced me they care about students.
Many people complained that there was no solid plan to help students. Lets face it, the parties are all trying their damnedest to get into office by gathering as many votes as they can. In the 2000 election, 75% of eligible voters between 18 and 24 didn’t vote. 3 out of 4 people within the age of students didn’t vote. Do you really wonder why they didn’t develop a strategy to gain our vote? If we build they will come. We can’t rely on them to come for us to build. If we vote, they will notice, and our demographic will have more weight in the elections.
That’s my rant on the elections. Bottom line: Vote.