The SGA elections are over, everyone. This means the following: You recently received a boatload of Facebook invites to support certain peers in their campaigns for class president or senator; campus was plastered with various posters and fliers with witty slogans about the various candidates that are now droopy and wilted; you saw candidates and their close friends wearing homemade T-shirts advertising how awesome they are; and at the end of the whole shebang, you received a ballot via email by which you, hopefully, chose to vote. Good stuff.
In a little while, the people you chose to elect will hold a town hall, which you will attend to get free stuff. You will give input on what you like and don’t like about Pepperdine, how to make it better, and later on down the road cool stuff will happen like the HAWC getting updated. Awesome. And it’s as simple as that.
Except that it’s not. SGA elections mimic a fantastic process that we often take for granted. In the upcoming year, political hopefuls will spend millions of dollars in the U.S. in their efforts to become the next leader of the free world. They will trash each other in outlandish commercials, post signs along the side of the road and call you at your home late at night. This is irritating for us as citizens and consuming for us as a society. This is also a big deal. Not only will massive amounts of resources be invested in the upcoming campaign, but huge future decisions will rest on it as well.
In case you’ve been preoccupied recently with the cast of “Jersey Shore” going to Florence, I will catch you up. Our country is $14 trillion in debt. Our Social Security system is desperately struggling to keep up with the aging baby boomers. Our health care system is a huge, hot mess. Funding for education, the arts, and a dozen other public service programs are being slashed left and right. And to top it all off, Donald Trump accused Obama of not being an American, which was funny, but really a waste of time and political effort. The point is, there is a lot riding on this next election and if you don’t know about it, you can’t make an educated vote, and if you don’t vote, then you can’t whine when it all goes down the drain.
Back to the “Bu.” We are not trillions of dollars in debt, nor are we suffering from division. But there is still a lot going on here. Created as a small, faith-based university, we are faced with how Pepperdine will be defined during its next 75 years. We confront labels such as “trendiest” and “douchiest” and we are faced with the reality of being a service-oriented school located in an extremely materialistic location. And yet we also have the opportunity to further define what it means to be a Wave and a huge part of that is voting. The candidates you recently elected want to be a part of that. They want to be the voice of the students. I know because these candidates are my peers, and I personally want to vouch for how awesome they are. So get to know them. Find out what they want to accomplish this year and how they plan to do that and hold them accountable to those goals. We are entrenched in a society that is slow to action, but quick to point fingers and complain about how we’re not getting what we’re entitled to. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get us anywhere.
In light of this, I encourage you to stretch your voting experience a step further and get to know the presidential candidates for this country. Watch the news. Browse a discarded paper at Starbucks. Ask your Poli-Sci major friends. Be informed, because information is a privilege and you are blessed to have access to it. Then use it to make an informed decision because the election that will take place next year will have a huge impact on your future and if you don’t take part in it, you don’t get to complain later. Rock the vote (and take it a step further than Paris Hilton did and actually do it).
