Tuesday, February 5th. 7pm
Today at the University of Delaware, I encountered many students who were thoroughly engaged in the presidential primaries. Many Delaware students see this primary election as particularly important, not only because the Democratic primary is a race between an African-American candidate and a female candidate, but also because of the unpopularity of the Bush administration, and the general consensus that we need a drastic change in our leadership.
However, some of the other students lacked the fervor of their more politically-minded classmates. In fact, the majority of the student body is about as excited about the Delaware primaries as Ben Stein at the DMV. Most of the students I spoke to weren’t registered, and even those that were registered were dubious about their participation in the election. Many out of state students from New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York hadn’t yet gotten absentee ballots, because they thought their primaries were later. Not...ahem....today. One in-state student from Delaware confessed that she hadn’t registered to vote yet, but would get around to it sometime next week and cast her primary vote “sometime in the next month.” Well, as much as we all would like it to be, Delaware’s presidential primary is not the McDonald’s drive-thru. Voters must be registered weeks before the election, and have only one day, February 5th, to cast their votes.
Seems simple enough right? So why is the Delaware student body so apathetic? In Princeton Review’s 2007 college rating, the University of Delaware was ranked 4th out of 361 schools in the “Election? What Election?” category. For a school as competitive as the University of Delaware, it seems odd that students would be so apathetic about a presidential election of such great consequence. It’s possible that students feel like their vote doesn’t matter, as the Delaware primaries only have 23 Democratic delegates and 18 Republican delegates that go to the national convention. Perhaps students are just simply tired, as U of D students taking winter session are in the middle of final exams.
Whatever the case, there is always reason to “hope.” Among the students who plan to vote, the vast majority support Barack Obama. Students who favor Barack aren’t voting out of a sense of obligation, but inspiration. “Obamania” may even be curing some former non-believers. In the most recent Princeton Review 2008 college rating, the University of Delaware didn’t even make the Top 20. Now that’s one vote we want to lose.