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We’ve all heard that voting is our civic duty. We’ve heard that it’s not a right but a privilege. We’ve been reminded about the people who have suffered for the vote, protested for the vote, died for the vote.

And still, when election day comes, many of us will never make it to the polls. Many of us will never even have registered.

And why should we care about who wins this presidential election? It seems the issues important to our generation are never even addressed. It appears that our concerns are not a high priority on the candidates’ agendas.

James Riddlesperger, chairman of the political science department, said the lowest voter turnout has consistently been the 18 to 21 age bracket. The only group that votes less frequently is the 85 years or older bracket, he said.

But it doesn’t have to be.

We say we are not a priority, but if we want to be a priority we must make sure our voices are heard. If we do not vote, we are rejecting our role in deciding how we are governed. And if we reject our role in democracy, we cannot whine about health care, the environment, poverty, abortion or any other issue we deem important.

As author Louis L’Amour put it, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”

But simply voting doesn’t fulfill our duty. Blindly choosing a candidate is just about as bad as not voting at all.

Having a voice is not enough. We must make informed decisions about the issues and the candidates so that when we speak, the nation listens.

In a presidential race as close as the one between Gore and Bush, in a race where the winner will likely select three or four Supreme Court justices, it is vital that our generation opens our mouth. What we utter could make all the difference.

Self-adulation always bothers me. Plenty of people, myself included, are proud of being black and proud of being Christians, but their race and their religion is not all that defines them. People shouldn’t think that they have any reason to feel more important or prouder of themselves because they were born into a better social or economic status than someone else, because they are of a different race or because they go to TCU while others might attend Tarrant County College.

Those types of attitudes are what promote racism, discrimination, and hatred. But what is shocking is that those who hold these opinions sometimes, in their naiveté, label attempts to promote equality as reverse discrimination.

I am tired of hearing about how “The Man” is oppressing the white race, lowering standards for minorities and limiting the opportunities white students have. The idea that minorities are just receiving handouts is so naive.
Well, maybe it’s right to some extent. When I filled out the application for admission to TCU, I didn’t fill in the fact that I was a 16-year-old senior with a 3.7 GPA, and I didn’t even write the required essay. I simply put that I was black, and the next day I received my acceptance letter which informed me that I had received a Chancellor Scholarship.

Nope. Wrong. Didn’t happen!

I had to apply just like anyone else; I had to wait just like anyone else; and I filled out a FAFSA (Federal Application For Student Aid) form just like almost everyone else did.

A lot of people agree that affirmative action needs to change, but not be eliminated. It’s hard for someone to criticize something that they’ve never needed.

It’s a simple fact that people with more money usually get a better education. Even in our public high school systems, those who live in better neighborhoods usually attend better schools than those who can’t afford to move. That’s what’s unfair, not affirmative action.

And then, there are some people that want to make a big deal about Black History Month and how it’s unnecessary or unfair. As if 28 days of celebrating one-twelfth of the information that is not included in textbooks and not taught in most public schools and universities is really doing injustice to the rest of America.

If in every level of education we learned more than the fact that blacks used to pick cotton and Mexicans come from Mexico, maybe we wouldn’t have to designate months of the year like Hispanic Heritage Month and Black History Month. If more money was invested into making sure all students, no matter what race or economic status, could have the same opportunities early on in life, maybe we wouldn’t have to give an edge to the lesser qualified person applying for a job or for admission into college or graduate school.

People make it seem as if the “tables are being turned” and now blacks are getting their turn to oppress the white man. As if having Black Entertainment Television and a few shows on UPN and the WB means we’re taking over America. Come on. Get real. America is still run by the majority — upper-class, rich, white men.
I’m not saying that all whites are racist or naive. That is far from true. But it is important that whites and people of all races take a closer look into the issues before attempting to dissect them.

John Sargent is a freshman computer science major from Fort Worth. He can be reached at (j.w.sargent@student.tcu.edu)..

Well, I just got done watching the presidential “debate,” and boy is my bullcrap detector tired.

Frankly I’m more concerned now than ever that We the People are doomed. I’ll tell you right now that come Election Day I’m going to march right down to the ballot box and, doing my best to hide my hopeful desperation, cast my vote for Ralph Nader.

What? Voting against Bush in Texas? I might as well shoot myself in the head and hope I don’t die. Despite the fact every poll in the country shows Nader doing far better than the media would have us think, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the American people are too (insert derogatory adjective here) to do the smart thing and vote in the best person for the job.

So, faced with the sad fact one of the two jokers speaking at the University of Massachusetts at Boston Tuesday night is going to be the president, my interest in watching the debate was in which one of them I’d mind the least.

Like I said, I’m more concerned now than ever.

The thing started off like a bad episode of “Who’s Line is it Anyway,” with Bush, Gore and moderator Jim Lehrer spending a lot of time looking at each other, waiting for someone to say something important.

And what’s up with Lehrer, anyway? Why does he get to pick all the questions? Does hosting your own show on PBS give you the right to act like The Great and Powerful Oz, carefully guarding the questions from any inquiring minds in the weeks prior to Tuesday night’s activities? Hey, Jim, we all know what the issues are, maybe you should be a little less concerned with hiding the questions and focus more on keeping these two golden-tongues within the time limits they agreed to before the whole shebang got underway.

Which leads me to my next point. I mean, it took literally months for the two “camps” to finally agree on the “proper format” for Tuesday night’s debate, and then the participants just blatantly violated the time limits of their arguments whenever they felt like it. Hmmm … should we really believe those campaign promises, fellas?

OK, so maybe I’m a little bit too cynical, and I’ll admit the time limit thing is a little bit nit-picky, but here’s something that shouldn’t go without being touched upon: Bush, for all his attempts to appear to be a serious candidate (he’s not, by the way), just couldn’t resist cracking on Al Gore with a reference to the Veep’s claim of inventing the Internet. Uh, memo to Big Ears: I’m not sure you want to move the debate material into the awfully shaky ground of who’s got the most ridiculous sound bites. I mean, be careful. You’d hate for Al to hold you “hostile.”

And before you think I’m letting Gore off easy, let me just say the most impressive thing about his performance was his incredible skill at memorization. If you want someone who can deftly spout the party line, America, Gore is your robot.

While both men are probably not real robots, they might as well be. They’re both in the pockets of huge corporations with fat wads of the softest money imaginable. I’ll give props to Gore for at least getting permission from his owners to drop buzz words like “public financing of federal campaigns.” Bush seemed to want a prize for his ability to get money from special interests ... more likely the people pulling his strings were just a bit too busy coming up with clever phrases like “compassionate conservatism” and “Medi-Scare” to write him a usable script. And we’ve all seen the disastrous results that come about when he tries to improv.

And as far as tax cuts, let me just say both men are acting like that homeless guy no one will give money to because you know he’s just going to spend it on alcohol. Our country is $5 trillion in debt and the second we save a measly couple billion in one year, we suddenly have a “surplus” in the treasury. Add up $5 billion and subtract $5 trillion and see what kind of surplus it generates. Clearly this talk of tax cuts is just our glorious candidates playing politics trying to get elected. Both of these candidates are at best a bad joke

and at worst an insult to democracy and to the American people. I’m excited and refreshed to vote for Ralph Nader, and I encourage anyone who is tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils to check out his Web site (www.votenader.com).

Me? I’m going to be working on hiding that hopeful desperation ... and it just keeps getting tougher everyday.

Daniel Bramlette is a senior radio-TV-film major from Ogden, UT. He can be reached at (dcbramlette@yahoo.com)..

How sad it is that on the dawn of the 21st century, people still exist who can’t see the color of water. These people fail to see what’s plainly evident before them.

Why do we have Black Entertainment Television? Why do we have the Circus of Soul? Why do we have the Miss Black America Pageant? Why do we have the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Inc. in Dallas?

The answers are simple.

Ask yourself what the new fall TV lineup is. How many black women do you see in pageants? Are black women not beautiful and benefit, just as white women, from pageants? Of course we do. Our own Marshawn Evans has been participating in pageants since she was a young girl and won several scholarships from her pageant participation. Can black people not act? Of course we can. Denzel Washington won an Oscar for the movie “Glory.” Bill Cosby had one of the top-rated sitcoms in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

So why do we have all of the previously mentioned corporations and programs?

The answer is simple.

We have them because as an entire race, black people have been excluded from television, awards shows, pageants, colleges, etc. You name it and I can find a black person who’s been excluded from it.

I’m happy for people being proud of who they are. They should be proud of the person God created them to be. I’m not taking anything away from that. But by the same token, they shouldn’t get their feelings hurt when my people and I show the same pride in who we are.

Black pride could be seen just as negatively as white pride — the Black Panther group from the ‘70s was not a group who supported feline animals. But because blacks were oppressed for more than 400 years, it is justifiable for the group of oppressors, white people, and the oppressed, black people, to be proud of from whence black people have come.

I hate to bust any white people’s bubbles, but more times than not, if you’re white, your ancestors contributed to the enslavement of black people. Who captured Africans and brought them over in slave ships? Who were we running from — ourselves? Very few slaves were fortunate enough to buy their freedom and own plantations. But the majority of slave owners were white people. But I bet a lot of white people didn’t even know that. That’s why we need Black History Month. We learned about white history in every aspect of history taught in school, as if black people only showed up in the cotton fields, jail, sports and music.

Television is dominated by white people. I have yet to see the fascination in “Friends,” and “Seinfield” was not that funny to me. Yet, I still don’t know why “Living Single” and “New York Undercover” were canceled. Even MTV doesn’t show a variety of black musicians and, instead, continues to show people like Master P with more half-naked black women than a gynecologist’s office.

So why do we have black pride?

The answer is simple.

Because we have the freedom to. And we’re going to continue to exercise that freedom until we can “speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,” will see one another, not as a color, but as children of God — equally.

Yonina Robinson is a broadcast journalism major from Mobile, Ala. She can be reached at (y.l.robinson@student.tcu.edu)..