Sebastian White :: A Challenge and a Choice for College Voters

OPINION

A Challenge and a Choice for College Voters

Alfred University Fiat-Lux | October 12, 2004
By Sebastian White '03

Note: This editorial targeted students at Alfred University.

In just two weeks, voters will head to the polls to select the next president of the United States. Political spectators are predicting that young people, especially college students, could decide the fate of this year's election, and of America’s place in the world—as long as they come out and vote.

There’s a lot at stake this year, regardless of your political affiliation: issues like the war in Iraq and the balance of power in the U.S. Supreme Court, which could take a stand in the same-sex marriage debate or reverse its 1973 decision legalizing abortion.

Then there’s the question of healthcare. Will you be able to afford insurance when you start your life after college? Only one-third of entry-level jobs today provide medical coverage, so you’d better consider that prospect.

What’s your position on the skyrocketing tuition costs that saddle many Alfred students with heavy debt loads, or the sagging economy that is producing too few of the well-paying jobs that twenty-somethings want and need when they graduate?

You surely have strong opinions on these and other issues, important matters that will play out very differently depending on which candidate claims victory next month. The real problem is not so much ignorance of what resonates in America today or of what will count in the next four years. The real challenge is more significant: mobilizing young voters—this means you—and ensuring they actually head to the polls on November 2.

We have become a nation that takes its enviable voting rights for granted. In the 2000 election, which will be forever remembered for its razor-thin margins and unprecedented Supreme Court decision that decreed the winner, just 42% of voters 18-24 made it to the polls; in the 2002 election, only 23% of young people voted.

Efforts like P. Diddy's "Vote or Die" and MTV's "Choose or Lose" campaigns have registered millions of new voters through celebrity endorsements and pop rock concerts, but their efforts will have been in vain if those new registrants don’t turnout to vote.

Showing up is of such importance this year that there will be enticements to lure young adults to the polls. Limousines will deliver college students to the polls in sprawling Prince George's County, Md., but in Alfred—where mere hundreds of feet separate campus from the polling place on West University Street—the only obstacle to voting will be apathy. And there is simply too much at stake for ourselves, our campus, our country, and our world to miss voting day this year.

Indeed, strategists for both parties are calling this year’s election the most important vote in history; others consider it the most significant one of our generation. Each party is courting the youth vote, convinced that this new bloc of voters with swing the election.

But will we? That depends what you do on Election Day.

I’m not going to tell you which candidate you should back. Each voter needs to evaluate the records of the candidates for himself and make an informed choice. Which party you endorse is less important than participating in the act of voting itself, a civic privilege that has sadly become devalued in American society at the same time as our nation’s military is in the Middle East fighting to protect and promote others’ right to vote.

The presidential election will have far-reaching implications for the state of our union, providing us with challenges and choices that transcend party lines and political ideologies. We can choose to endorse a culture of indifference by not voting, thereby solidifying our irrelevance in the American political process, or we can challenge ourselves to consider the issues at stake in our world today and put our views and beliefs on the table by voting.

You wouldn’t allow someone else to decide what you wear, what you eat, or where you spend your Saturday night in Alfred. So why would you let others pick your president for you?