In an attempt to get more people to vote, Student Senate refused to stop blaring Hanson’s “Mmmbop” in the Michel Student Center and all over the quad until 1,500 votes were reached.
But even after polls closed and the bop stopped, not even 1,500 students cast their votes.
Senate only asked 25 percent of the student body to vote, and they didn’t even reach that goal.
Voting has been made so easy, there is no reason not to vote. Almost every student at Bradley must have walked past speakers that blared “Mmmbop” on their way to class.
And many of you still managed to ignore the fact that an election was going on.
And for those of you who say things such as “my vote doesn’t matter,” in this election, it did.
That’s because the race was close, and two positions still don’t have clear winners.
Freshman Tricia Anklan got 566 votes, and junior Jade Peters got 561. If these numbers don’t show you how important your votes are, what will?
However, there is another opportunity for students to actually make sure their voices are heard.
Because there weren’t enough votes for either president or vice president, there will be a runoff election between graduate student Jordan Ticaric and sophomore Kyle Malinowski for president and Anklan and Peters for vice president.
So, please, take three minutes on Monday or Tuesday and vote. There’s no excuse not to. Student Senate has a Web site with information on the candidates, and last week’s Scout had biographies and endorsements for all the races. So you have what you need to make an informed decision.
The election for student body officers wasn’t the only election this week.
On the ballot for the city elections were the Second District City Council, which was highly publicized because of the previous dispute between incumbent Barbara Van Auken and Sigma Nu fraternity.
Because of that incident, Van Auken hasn’t made too many friends in the student body. However, she was able to easily win the race with 57 percent of the vote.
If so many students have problems with her, then where were they when it came time to vote?
Van Auken won by almost the same amount of votes this year as she did in the last election. This means students didn’t show up to the polls, and, therefore, did not make a difference.
But that wasn’t even the only thing students could vote for. Voters also had the opportunity to elect a mayor and other city positions as well as vote for a sales tax referendum that will build a museum Downtown.
While most of us won’t reside in Peoria after our four years at Bradley, these outcomes really do have an effect on our experiences here.
And very few of you voted.
