They made voting easy - now it's your turn to act

Josh White Jumping the Gun

There just aren't any good excuses left; with the simplest voting procedure imaginable, it boggles my mind that so few students will vote in Michigan Student Assembly elections this week.

And I say that few students will vote because that is just what happens on this campus. We are a lot of talk when it comes to politics and student government - it seems everyone has an opinion that they would just love to share - yet no one takes their chance to actually have a say. Abysmal turnout numbers that fell to less than 8 percent of the student body just a few years ago began to recover last year, but the University needs much more than a recovery, it needs resuscitation.

Sure, it is easy to sit back and whine that student government doesn't mean anything, that the people who are involved in MSA are politico wannabes who like to read their own quotes in the newspaper. It is easy to distance ourselves from MSA's processes, and easy to criticize our fellow students who are oft called administrators of a very large piggy bank. It is even easier to say that they don't do anything - most students don't have any idea what MSA does or even what it is.

But MSA does do quite a bit, and most of what it actually does involves an enormous coffer of our money. What student groups receive in terms of funding comes straight from the MSA's Budget Priorities Committee, and our student government has complete control over all of those decisions. In theory, we choose the people who make such decisions. We choose the students who represent our student body both to the University and to the community, as I said before, in theory.

The problem is that no one shows up at the polls. The paper ballots, it seems, are too much of a burden for more than 90 percent of the student body. The five minutes it takes to fill out a ballot of course would be better spent watching Oprah or the Cartoon Network or sitting around on the Diag, because, as we are fond of saying "I have better things to do."

Apparently everyone in Ann Arbor had better things to do earlier this month when city elections came around as well, students especially. What I begin to wonder is where this apathy builds, and why.

I can understand why students may say that their student government is ineffectual; in reality there is probably very little that MSA can really do to effect each and every student's life. If a student is not involved in an MSA-funded group or if a student doesn't care how they are represented, there may be no reason to care about MSA, either. But as the past ineffectiveness of the assembly is overwritten by current genuine attempts at making a difference, MSA's importance grows and our need for input increases.

MSA cleaned itself up this year, dedicating more funds to students and less to internal administrative costs. MSA President Michael Nagrant has been instrumental in establishing a student coursepack store that should, if implemented as it is proposed, alleviate the costs of coursepacks and give students a visible and tangible reminder of what MSA does. Perhaps MSA needs more projects like this, but to get such projects we need effective leaders and representatives.

That's where the student body comes in. If the number of voters increases, the mandate the candidates receive becomes more important. When our student government becomes responsible to all of us and not to just a small percentage, their actions mean more and they feel that they have to answer to all of us.

There are great candidates out there who are running in this week's election, and there will undoubtedly be worthwhile candidates who will run for president and vice president in the spring. Look past the parties and the bickering and find those students who want to change things for the better and who want to leave this University a better place than they found it. If we find those people and send them into office with a strong voice of student support behind them, we can start to make MSA mean something - we can help our student government to make a difference for the students.

Voting could not be simpler; last year MSA began electronic voting through a University Website, all but removing any sort of hassle or annoyance from the process. Please take the time to sit at a computer and learn about the candidates and fill out a ballot at http://www.umich.edu/~vote. It may seem meaningless now, but we can make it meaningful for the future.

- Josh White can be reached over e-mail at jswhite@umich.edu

11-18-97