What’s Your Excuse?

By: Chris Williamson

All too often we hear of people saying that students just don’t care about other people, or that we have no desire for civic engagement. Now to paint all college students with this wide of a brush really shows ignorance on their part, but being a college student, I have to say sometimes there is some truth to the picture which they are painting.

I look back to election night when the students of ISU marched through the streets chanting “Obama, Obama” and “Yes we can!” I guess my question was too many of these students, did you? How many of those students volunteered to make phone calls at the campaign office, or on weekends walked door to door, registered voters, or made trips out to Indiana or Iowa to canvass for the campaign? The more important question was how many of these students voted?

Now this may be a cynical look at election night. A great thing happened for our country and the world in my opinion. I had one of the greatest satisfactions ever in my life seeing those returns come in and watching the sweeping win. It may seem somewhat pointless to make this argument, but how much better the victory would have been if all of those students were knocking on doors giving the campaign such a visual representation of what college students are really like.

I know how active college students are and what differences they are making every day. The only thing is how visual are we? Why does this stigma still exist that students are inactive? Is it because when it comes to the most noticeable time to be active we chose not to?

To which I have to ask to ISU as a whole, what’s your excuse for not being active? To those who are active, thank you. But to others, what is your excuse? Is it that you do not have time? Do you not know how to get involved? Do you just not care? Being very active on campus with volunteering I know how readily available opportunities are for students to get involved. To which I have to ask once again, what is your excuse?

I do this as a wake-up call to our university community to be more active and visual in the community. And by more active, I mean more people need to be involved, not just the same people doing more. That same President which so many came out to show support for has asked for our help in rebuilding our country. Will you take up that call, or keep living the same life you did before November 4th? Get involved, get active, and show to the rest of this nation that we are ready to take our nation back and we will be ready when our time comes.