Efforts around campus to register young voters for the upcoming elections seemed admirable and appropriate to me. That is, until my neighbor peed on his house.
Must have been sometime last week. What began as an ambitious early evening jog through the Mifflin Street area turned into a voyeuristic investigation of my peers, when I realized I had replaced my inspiring, upbeat ska with chill Wilco.
Nearly every lopsided house looked like a microwave-frying its inhabitants with a bright TV glow that diffused out the windows into the darkening sky.
All the television watching allowed me to nonchalantly spy into many houses as I strolled past. Posters of Jim Morrison, Radiohead and J. Lo hung above the heads of students basking mindlessly on their couches. Feeling slightly disappointed in the lameness of my fellow young people, I started home.
Then, something made me squeal.
Mind you, this was no Saturday night. No mid-week party raged in this Mifflin Street abode. Yet at approximately 5 p.m., a UW-Madison everyman listlessly peed on the front of his house. Suddenly, his roommate emerged, soberly asking the urinator about an upcoming midterm exam. Only steps away from me, the Mifflin resident answered his roommate intelligently, keeping the waterfall flowing throughout his response.
Then he finished, zipped up and gave me a confident head nod as if the repulsive puddle next to him didn't exist...
So now I'm sitting in this dimly lit lecture and for the 70th time this month, a well-intentioned student has overtaken the podium and is urging her peers to vote this November.
\If you guys vote, it means politicians will have to start listening to issues that matter to you!"" she exclaims.
Issues that matter to you?
I look around at the zombie-eyed youths.
I'm sorry, girl, but the problem here isn't voter apathy. It's complete apathy toward all that moves, breathes and requires any slight amount of brainpower.
While a minority of sparkly-eyed youths gobble up student organizations and activist opportunities like free pizza, I've watched more of my peers spend their newfound college freedom satisfied with irrelevant, repetitive conversation and HBO.
In a community where many are, metaphorically or literally, peeing on their own homes, it seems illogical that an enthusiastic few actually want these unmotivated others to determine the fate of their homeland.
Yes, in an ideal world, pumping kids up to vote would solve the problem of apathy.
But this isn't the ideal world. This is Wisconsin. And the UW-Madison community needs a lot more than a push toward the polls.
If these fabulously persuasive ""get out the vote"" people would only switch their focus to valuable resources for us lethargic punks to learn about issues and candidates, maybe they wouldn't even need to convince their peers to vote.
Maybe their young counterparts would already be dissecting the system, questioning authority, ending corruption, reconstructing the media and dismantling the government.
Or maybe, just maybe, they would stop peeing on houses.
Emily is a junior majoring in sociology and journalism. Her column runs every Tuesday in The Daily Cardinal. She can be reached at ewinter@wisc.edu.
