For the bulk of my college career I have maintained one primary objective: scheduling out my days with the intent of remaining in bed for as long as possible. Strategically scheduling classes, showering the night before, and skipping breakfast were just a few things I did to ensure the possibility of extra sleep. But the opposite seems to be happening among my peers on this historic Election Day, as students line up outside the newly renovated Student Union Building to place their ballots. It’s only 9 a.m. as a man in a Nascar ball cap and navy-colored hoodie is settling into his post, where he will be checking voter identification for rest of the day. At this early hour, already this polling location has seen more than 200 voters come and leave. So many factors could be attributed to why students are turning out to the polls, so many in fact that it would be hard to comprise a detailed list. But one factor remains true—an abundance of student enthusiasm. There’s a large number of student volunteers who have donated their time and even skipped classes to remind students to vote and to do some last minute persuading for their party’s candidates.

One such person awake for such do-gooding was Peter Johnson who positioned himself right across from the polling station in front of Centennial Hall. With Obama stickers in hand and a blow horn attached at the waste he strikes up conversations with all passers-by, urging them to vote while dressing kids head to toe in Obama support stickers. “Handing out stickers all day… you can tell who really feels strongly for Obama, they’ll personally ask for a sticker,” said Johnson. Of the people he has talked with, he said more than 60 percent of students voters are voting for Barack Obama.

The only group missing from this election extravaganza was the college republicans. “It’s shocking not to see them,” said Johnson. “Where the hell are they?”

The only reasonable answer that one could contrive from such a question is, like me, sleeping was the priority this morning.

Pssh…someone go wake them…the line for voting is starting to curve down Franklin Street.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.