Urban Outfitters, a national retailer with a noted location on State Street, has commenced selling t-shirts that proclaim, “Voting is for Old People.” This message is extremely bothersome, and that it comes from a trendy, young story is all the more reason for concern.

Last Wednesday, UW’s Black Student Union launched a campaign to increase voter registration among minorities throughout higher educational institutions in Wisconsin. We applaud this campaign, as well as others designed to increase voter turnout among students. We further urge students to take advantage of these opportunities by registering to vote.

In an interview with The Badger Herald, UW political science professor Charles Franklin said the campaign is facing an uphill battle because of the historically low turnout by young people.

We can certainly sympathize with that point of view. Many students at UW come from out of state (and falsely believe they cannot vote here), some feel they do not know enough about the candidates to vote in a particular election and still others do not have the time in their busy schedules to vote or register to vote.

However, as a result of this seemingly widespread practice, we believe many statewide and national legislators have disregarded the student interest on a range of issues. Most recently, the state government cut funding for the UW system by $250 million. Clearly, students’ voices must be heard in these lean times for the state budget.

That is why we ask fellow students to take advantage of these campaigns by registering to vote — early. We will continue to strongly back campaigns designed to bring students to the polls ? especially when those efforts are designed to turn out all students through non-partisan means.

In addition to the Black Student Union’s campaign, we applaud the work of the New Voters Project, which has formed a coalition of at least 20 student groups on campus to register 17,000 new voters at UW through a non-partisan effort. The Black Student Union is part of this coalition.

According to Allie Gubin, an intern for media and public relations with the New Voters Project, “The message we want to send out is that we can make a difference. We are a substantial, important voting bloc and candidates will look to us in the upcoming elections if we turn out. We want to make sure our voices are heard. We have the ability to make or break these elections.”

Registering to vote is easy:
1)

Present a valid Wisconsin ID or two pieces of mail to your Wisconsin address that are at least 10 days old.
2)

You must be at least 18 years old at the time of the election.
3)

The groups will provide you with registration cards to complete, which they will authorize and send to the city clerk’s office. You will then be registered to vote locally.

Registration tables will be available at Memorial Union throughout the week. We encourage students to take advantage of this great opportunity to register to vote.