For the past week, candidates have scattered fluorescent campaign slogans on sidewalks and honor referendum flyers all over Grounds. The excessive use of hot pink chalk and colored paper can only mean one thing -- Student Council elections are here again in full force.
After weeks of seeking petition signatures and endorsements, the candidates now must leave their fate in the hands of their peers. But the question remains about just how many voters will actually turn out to select the University's new leaders.
According to a Jan. 14 New York Times article, only 51 percent of eligible voters went to the polls to choose the next U.S. president in November.
On a smaller scale, the University proudly distinguishes itself with its "student self-governance," yet only a mere 27 percent of students took the time to vote in Council elections last year. And even though a great deal of the low total turnout can be attributed to the lack of participation by graduate and professional students -- about 4 percent last year -- participation in each of the undergraduate schools remains well under 50 percent.
Why do half of the American electorate and half of the University student population neglect their civic duty to vote?
"We have an abundance of explanations for low turnout in University elections as well as national elections," said Prof. Paul Freedman, who teaches "Public Opinion and Political Behavior" in the government department.
"We don't know if people are too busy, satisfied, repulsed or disinterested" to vote, he explained.
In regard to Council elections, Freedman said "the low level of turnout could mean people feel disengagement" from University politics and may think that voting "isn't their thing."
"It's sort of a paradox that we pride ourselves on student self-governance" with such low voter turnout, said Council Elections Committee Chairman Jonathan Bertsch. "Voter apathy is a student culture."
But Council President Joe Bilby said apathy is not necessarily the key problem. Instead, students are "stretched too thin" in various University activities to participate extensively in other things, he said.
For many people, voting may not seem like a good use of precious time.
"There's so much else we could be doing," Freedman said. "Fishing, watching Regis ... It takes time and effort toovercome the inertia of everyday life ... to do something different" like voting, he said.
Saving the time it takes to become politically informed and then to physically cast a ballot may outweigh the intangible benefits of fulfilling a civic duty.
But measures are in place to make life a little easier for potential voters. On the national level, motor-voter legislation enables people to register to vote while renewing their driver's licenses.
And University students have it even easier - they need go no further than their computers to cast their votes online.
"We do everything we can to make it easy," Bertsch said and explained that Council abandoned the old system of ballot boxes in 1996 for the more convenient online process.
Under the old system, Council set up monitored ballot boxes around Grounds, and students would pledge to vote only once. The main problem with this system was finding enough people to monitor the ballot boxes, which spurred the change to online voting, Bertsch said.
Despite attempts on the national and University levels to make voting a painless process, some non-students believe apathy has increased and national turnout has declined over the years.
Larry J. Sabato, government and foreign affairs professor, was a University student government leader in the 1970s when the student population was actively engaged in both the University and national political sphere.
Sabato remembers putting up posters in residence halls when he ran for Council president in 1973. But campaigning was not as extensive as the chalk campaign slogans on the sidewalks, flyers and e-mails targeting University voters today, he said.
"It was a political era," Sabato said of the University culture in the 1970s. "Civil rights, Vietnam, University issues all encouraged political involvement and it came naturally ... You didn't have to force it."
But the times have changed.
"Politics is not at the center of the action anymore," Sabato said. "Lots of students are not clued in, and they don't follow University politics."
Bilby recalled a different campaign experience - he focused on face-to-face campaigning and spent "many, many hours shaking hands in the dorms" and passing out handbills.
"The only reason people vote is if they know one of the candidates or have reason to believe one is better than the other," he said.
The absence of personal contact with candidates may contribute to a feeling of disengagement from the organizations involved in elections, such as the Honor and Judiciary committees, Bertsch pointed out.
"My personal philosophy is that the biggest way to increase voter turnout is for these organizations to be as active as possible during the entire year," not just during election time, he said.
Students should pay particular attention to this year's honor referenda when voting because of their direct impact on the entire University community, Bertsch said. In the future, "It could determine whether you leave the University or not," he said.
He added that apathy may be a result of student government having a "sort of self-perpetuated image of the politico-type person," which may tend to alienate some students.
Yet, whether or not they fit the politico stereotype, all students enjoy the benefits of self-governance each day when leaving belongings unattended or taking unsupervised exams.
"Sometimes students don't realize that in order to have the privileges of student self-governance, they have to have the responsibility of student self-governance," Bertsch said.
But what is it going to take to get more students and American citizens to take on the responsibility of voting?
"We could say that there will be free pizza or give tickets to go see Dave Matthews," Freedman said with a laugh. "I guarantee you would have 100 percent turnout. Some people would vote twice."
Aside from offering material incentives, Freedman mentioned the possibility of making voting in elections mandatory, possibly with students having to vote before accessing their e-mail accounts.
But the idea of being forced into political participation does not settle well with some students.
"People shouldn't be forced into anything," first-year College student Rachana Kothave said. "If pushed into it, people will vote randomly or for the one [candidate] that looks better."
Bertsch agreed that offering material incentives or forcing voters is not the path to take and said it would "hurt the voting culture in the long run. People should want to do it because it's important."
Sabato pointed out that voting would be important to more people if civic education were stressed to a greater extent during childhood, adding that voting is often like inertia.
"Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Those at rest tend to stay at rest," he said. "If you start young and encourage student voting as part of education, they will tend to continue"
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