Last Thursday I was sitting in the Hughes-Trigg Student Forum waiting for the arrival of Pete Sessions and I couldn’t help but notice that no one was there. I checked my watch to see if I was early. I called a friend to find out if the event had been cancelled or moved to another date. I even opened up The Daily Campus to try to find out what was going on, but I could find no information there either.

Then to my surprise Sessions himself walked into the room with a puzzled look on his face. He had the same look as me, the look of bewilderment wondering, “Where were all of the students?” No one was there. By the time his speech began, there were less than 20 students, and only a handful of professors. Emptiness, awkwardness and embarrassment filled the room. I sat on the front row with three empty chairs next to me wondering, “What the hell is going on here?”

For the first time I can honestly say that I was embarrassed to be a Mustang. How could it be true that none of the 6,000 undergraduates on campus have any questions for Sessions? Where were the College Republicans to give their support? Where were the Young Democrats to bombard the incumbent with the hard questions? Where was anyone who cares about what’s going on in their state and country? Of course, when an entertainer with a cigar and a cowboy hat shows up, running for one of the least powerful offices in the state, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

My classes are filled with students bitching and moaning about our government, yet when the person who represents us in congress shows up at SMU, none of those people can be found. Maybe Sessions should have brought a celebrity with him to get the interest of our student body. As college students, we are always the first to protest and the last to participate.

According to the United States Election Commission, voters age 18-24 make up approximately eight percent of the overall vote in congressional and presidential elections. Last week, the students of SMU personified that very statistic.

Two weeks ago, I went with Hilltop on the Hill to Washington, D.C. During the trip, we went to the Republican National Committee and I asked their press secretary if they had any plans to reach out to the college age voters, kind of like the Democrats did with Diddy on MTV. Sadly, in a roundabout way, they said no. The RNC is just one of the many organizations that doesn’t feel it’s necessary to put energy into the 18-24 vote and what happened at SMU last week is the reason why.

Do we really want to be known as a generation of celebrity and ignorance?

So, to conclude my rant, I urge everyone to get up and get involved with what’s going on in our country because we should be deciding our future, not someone else.

Candy Crespo is a junior Corporate Communications and Public Affairs major. She can be reached at [email protected].