With A.S. Elections happening this week there will no doubt
be booths of extra-energetic campus politicians out on Library Walk trying to
persuade apathetic passersby to vote. But why should you? Almost all of this
year’s slots are uncontested, and signing onto TritonLink will surely take at
least two minutes of your oh-so-valuable second-week time — at this stressful
point in the quarter you obviously need every precious second so you can walk
to class early or reorganize your volumes of chemistry notes.

Forget that this incoming council will be responsible for
things like allotting funding to your student organizations, determining the
future of the Sun God Festival and proposing an inevitable fee referendum next
year, the quick electronic voting process definitely isn’t worth your time.

I, for one, love paying hundreds of dollars to support a
handful of athletes with entitlement complexes. Yep, voting in last year’s fee
referendum was so unimportant to half the student body that now every
undergraduate has to pay for a few kids’ hobby. I sure wish I could get other
people to fund my leisurely pursuits; maybe I should lobby the A.S. Council for
that.

I’m also excited to see my fee money being spent on the
personal interests of incoming council members who, lazy from lack of
competition, have made only a cursory effort to connect with students and are
poised to work on projects that interest them, rather than their constituents.
Many of the candidates who met with the Guardian last week said they were
running to essentially gain power and resources for their existing priorities —
be it funding for their club or bringing fair-trade food to the dining commons.
And while that may provide students with some nice perks, I’m positive that the
average student has a different idea of what they’d like to see changed on
campus.

But if we don’t participate in the political process, how
are student politicians supposed to address our concerns? Asking candidates in
an uncontested race to pull a Mike Hirshman and work 16-hour days for two weeks
speaking with students about what they’d like to see in UCSD’s future just
isn’t realistic.

If we want a council that will work for us — or at least
help us avoid paying even more money for relatively little gain — we need to
take a stand in the loudest, the clearest and luckily the simplest way we can:
by casting our TritonLink votes.