In the dusk on Library Mall Wednesday, a rally convened to drive home a simple message of dire consequence in the months to come: \Get out and vote.""
Though UW-Madison students may believe they have heard and understand this message, Wednesday's rally approached some hot-button issues that will be greatly affected by student voter decisions at the local and national levels.
Madison Mayor DaveCieslewicz kicked off the rally with a rousing invitation to take part in the political process.
""Politics is not a spectator sport,"" Cieslewicz said. ""Over and over I make decisions that affect your lives, and those should be validated by your concerns, not by your silence. We pretty much get the government we deserve, and how scary is that?""
Members of the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group and the Vote Coalition then described campus-wide campaigns and the goals of each. The New Energy Future Campaign, led by WisPIRG members, is working to increase the amount of ""clean"" renewable resources utilized in Wisconsin for energy.
""Currently, only 2 percent of our energy comes from renewable resources such as wind, solar power and clean bio-mass,"" said WisPIRG member and UW-Madison junior Travis Bird. ""The goal is 10 percent by 2015. Considering the Department of Energy claims Wisconsin could get 100 percent of its energy from wind alone, I'd say that number is totally attainable.""
The Big Red Go Green Campaign suggested legislation to clean up Wisconsin lakes where recent cases of illness and animal death have been reported in conjunction with high pollution levels, according to Bird. These environmental issues will be significant in the upcoming congressional elections, according to UW-Madison junior Jordan Burghartt, who coordinated the rally.
""Every issue that wasn't political soon will be,"" she said.
At the conclusion of the rally, Dr. Peter Agre, professor at John Hopkins University and Nobel Prize laureate, addressed the need for young people to reverse what he considers a disturbing trend tied to voter apathy: anti-intellectualism.
""Anti-intellectualism has become fashionable,"" Agre said. ""The median number of books read by the average American in a year is zero. Most people fail to finish a single book.""
Wednesday's rally served to reiterate the critical role of students in politics. As Agre put it, ""The 40,000 undergraduates at this university alone could sway the presidential election. How's that for power?\
