It’s 7 a.m. The alarm rings. Start the coffee if you’ve not yet accepted the convenience of buying a cup. Take a shower, collect your things and get on your way. How much can you accomplish today and how much will you set aside for tomorrow? Books to be read, papers to be written, problems to be solved. By day’s end, you’ll wonder where the day has gone, but exhaustion will take precedent over confusion and you’ll close your eyes and shelve your curiosity for tomorrow.
Welcome, my son, to the machine.
You do it because you have to. You do it in pursuit of success, which in turn, brings comfort. As night’s embrace takes hold, you may ask yourself, “Does it have to be so hard?” And you may, from such a simple question, challenge yourself to simplify your pursuit. But does it ever cross your mind to challenge the institution?
Wake up. We’ve been forced into complacency and convinced the revolution has ended. It hasn’t even been 100 years since suffrage was extended to all. It has only been 60 years since blacks and whites could mingle publicly. Prisons and police systems act more as businesses than they do as safety enforcers. Our media muddles fact with fear mongering and places ratings before ethic principle.
But hope prevails here. We are a campus of roughly 30,000 students. We constitute 1 percent of 1 percent of the American population. Where we as individuals do not have the experience or knowledge to infiltrate Washington, D.C. and solve our nation’s problems, we have the vibrant intellect and youthful idealistic nature to identify its shortcomings and create something greater for ourselves here and now. In this institution of higher learning where new ideas are culminated, we might at least challenge ourselves to create a government within our small system that is better than the government at large. Yet currently, we disgrace ourselves by creating a fun house mirror image of it.
As some of you know, an election took place just before spring break. The best indication of this was the campaign signs strewn about campus with a few obscure banners and posters placed by Associated Students reminding you to vote. There was little done to promote participation. This institution spent nearly $30,000 imploring a “yes” vote from you for a multi-million dollar construction project to replace Aztec Center, but could not find its way to properly facilitate an informed election.
A.S. heavily fortifies itself against being infiltrated by someone who has identified the institutionalized control of the students and strives to bash it, break it, reduce it to rubble. A.S. claims a desire for diversity but only on the most superficial level. Diversity of thought is a threat to the institution.
But the foundation of paper kings and queens beneath their house of cards was shaken by an unexpected breeze. A breeze of 647 students voted for one candidate who called for more than aesthetically pleasing decor.
It wasn’t the appeal of garnering power or stacking a résumé that led me to run for the position of A.S. executive vice president. It was the years on this campus I spent challenging this organization to hold itself to higher standards as my protests fell on deaf ears. When I stood before A.S. Council in the spring of last year, I proclaimed adamantly, “The student body has become increasingly aware of your empty handshakes and plastic smiles. You have made for yourselves an enemy you do not want. You have found yourselves in a war you cannot win. Cherish your memories of free reign, ladies and gentlemen, for those days are truly numbered.” I was simply marginalized as a fringe individual who would eventually go away.
But I will not. I will not stop. I will ensure that those who come after me seeking to represent more than 10 percent of the student body will have the ability to do so. I will not stop until I have forced this government to create a forum and set of policies that supports a fair and open election.
And they will come forward, as they always do, to respond to such a harsh critique. They will claim the system allows anyone to participate. They will claim I am being unfair, they will fill it with fancy language that implores your sympathy and they will attempt futilely to convince you they work really hard and try their best but students just don’t get involved.
Well, I’m not buying it, and you shouldn’t either. I experienced firsthand how the election is structured to guarantee only a select group of students are highly encouraged to vote, while the rest of us are blatantly ignored. I experienced firsthand how Greek affiliation and cronyism reinforces the same bland, empty policies and ideals that only result in higher fees for us with no additional benefit. Shall we lie down? Shall we sit idly by while A.S. continues to be a puppet government tasked with generating revenue and pushing an agenda counterintuitive to the best interests of the students it serves?
Simple as it may be to accept apathy, the true challenge lies within what we do with our awareness once we have acknowledged it. Will we hold our heads high on graduation day because of our individual accomplishments, yet allow the university to remain a facet of indoctrination? Or will we pry out that final nail in the coffin? Will we refuse the grave of apathy? Was that breeze an indication of a storm on the horizon?
The power is ours. The revolution ends when we say it does.
—Joe Stewart is a journalism senior.
—The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
