Presidential Perspectives

Hey Carnegie Mellon,

Elections for the next student body president, vice-president, and vice-president of finance are going on right now through tomorrow night at 6 p.m. You can vote and read all the platforms at stugov.andrew.cmu.edu/elections. Additionally, you can see pretty campaign pictures and cool design layouts (and, of course, the candidates’ platforms) at Jared Itkowitz and Pooja Godbole’s CMUnity website, www.jaredandpooja.com, or at Dorian Adeyemi and Alex Short’s website, www.tartanpride.com.

Now that the logistical information is over, I thought that the next most important thing for me to convey to you this week was why you should vote. I will make a “Top 10” list, although, as I don’t have 10 points, let’s just call it the “Top” list.

1. Vote or Die. Diddy and Jay-Z said it in the 2004 elections. Since they, as hip-hop moguls, can’t be wrong, and since people have a general aversion to death, the answer is obvious: Vote!

2. You may or may not have already read Adi’s endorsement to the left. For personal reasons, I have decided not to publicly endorse either candidate in this election. Either way, Adi mentions that, despite the fact that you may or may not care about voting or the offices of SBP and SBVP, the people who are elected into office by those that do care will create changes on this campus that affect all of us in one way or another. That’s an absolutely true statement, so vote!

3. Those of you who are reading this and are enrolled as students at Carnegie Mellon are at least somewhat nerdy and strong-willed. It’s simply in line with such characters to want to voice your opinion. Maintain your image — vote!

4. Clicking buttons on web pages is fun. If you vote, you get the opportunity to do this, so vote!

5. Hopefully, you have opinions about what needs to change on this campus. The easiest way to change the things that bother us is to support candidates who also want to change those things, and who will work night and day to do so. Vote!

6. As an 18-plus-year-old, you just got rights... other than that whole going to bars thing, unless you’re 21-plus. Regardless, use the ones you’ve got. Vote!

7. You want to read someone else’s (not mine) articles in this column in The Tartan. Vote!

Basically, that’s it. You should vote: It’s important and it’s tradition (or counter-tradition — whichever way you want to look at it). Your life at Carnegie Mellon depends on it!