You're killing me, BC.
Not the faculty. Not the administration. It's the students who are killing me this time. Elections for the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC) have been in full swing for a while now, with hundreds of people donning T-shirts emblazoned with their candidates' names and slogans. Banners hang in the Quad and off the Ignacio parking garage. During the primaries, I couldn't walk through the Quad without getting a flier stuffed in my face or a Jell-O (whatever happened to campaign buttons?) tossed my way.
And yet, only 32 percent of you voted. I find this number even more disturbing because I'm part of that 32 percent. And I'm a senior. I'll soon be leaving undergraduate life for the dark abyss of adulthood, but I somehow found the time to glance at a couple of Heights articles and peruse each team's Web site and platform. Sixty-eight percent of the undergraduate population was too busy, though. Or even worse: they didn't care.
So where were you, BC? Happy hour? The Mods? Checking away messages? Scanning recently updated profiles on Facebook? I mean, you must have had a perfectly good reason for not voting. As good a reason as you'll have in October, when you start clamoring for a fall concert.
Some of you probably think it doesn't matter whether you vote, or who you vote for. Nothing's really going to change, right? You're still going to feel disconnected from the undergraduate government. You still wouldn't know what the president and vice president looked like if they were standing right in front of you. So why waste 30 seconds by logging onto Agora to vote?
Why? Because it's your fault if you don't know what they look like. If you're dissatisfied, you should write your student representatives an e-mail or, better yet, talk to them in person, rather than idly complaining in the privacy of your residence hall.
The fact is that the UGBC is only as good as the students want it to be. You elect these people. By doing that, you're putting a stamp of approval on their agendas and supporting their goals. You should be urging them to fulfill those goals after they're elected, too. They get paid for this, you know.
But you're not putting a stamp of approval on anything by abstaining from the voting game. There were six teams when the primaries began a few weeks ago, each with very different visions for BC's future. One team wanted non-sweatshop apparel sold in the bookstores and fair-trade options made available in the dining halls. Another team wanted to work to decrease the language core (a pretty bad idea for a school that can barely teach a kid to say "No hablo español" with anything resembling a Spanish accent, if you ask me). Others wanted to urge BC to build a medical school, revitalize University transportation with a GPS bus system, offer fine arts and service-learning special interest housing options, and implement campaign finance reform to level the playing field in costly UGBC elections. Any of that sound good to you? Well, that's too bad. All of those teams lost.
Luckily for the apathetic among you, I think the four best candidates are still standing. And now voting is even easier for our indolent brethren, because there are just two platforms to study and two teams to choose from. Here, I'll even make it easy for you. If you want to learn more about Justin Thornton and Ryan McHaffie's campaign, visit www.justinryan2006.com. To learn more about the issues that Santiago Bunce and Justin Nunez care about, go to www.votebcunited.com. Each Web site features photos, candidate biographies, contact information, and most importantly, the teams' platforms. Reading both of them will take 10 minutes at the most. It's a small price to pay for an entire year of student life.
Inform yourself, and make up your mind wisely. Don't listen to your biased friend who's campaigning for one of the teams, and please don't vote for the candidates whose T-shirts you see most often. Decide what issues mean the most to you, and see which team falls in line with your beliefs. And vote accordingly. Then, next year, no matter who's in office, you'll have nothing to regret. You'll know you did your part.
Shawna Gallagher Vega is a Heights staff columnist. She can be reached at gallaghervegas@bcheights.com.
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