The dawn has set on another campaign for Undergraduate Student Goverment and Association of Residence Hall Students' political positions. The crazy fliers, handbills and pesky campaign volunteers that have made us laugh, wince or roll our eyes since spring break have become water under the bridge. And the dreams of several have become shattered fragments of reality.

My experience as a campaign volunteer for the USG president and vice president candidates Josh Bokee and Kerith Strano has left me sullen as well.

I am sad for all the losing candidates who poured their hearts and wallets into a platform they believed in. And I can sympathize with their campaign workers who hung fliers, planned strategy and worked the polling places Wednesday handing out palm cards and freezing their butts off.

But I am also sad for the winning ticket, Corey O'Brien and Kara Annechini, who have to face administrators with the fact that only 4,599 of some 30,000 undergraduates voted for or against them. I wish these two and their executives all the luck in the world.

My dearest sympathies go out to all those students who may have been annoyed on Wednesday by all those people who were handing out palm cards. God forbid if you were asked to take something as you walked to class! But really, it's a simple process, you take a couple and refuse the rest. It's impossible for all these volunteers to know if you had already been bombarded. Yeah, it's annoying, but so are long lines at the bars and unavailable books at Pattee when you've waited until the last minute to do that paper. Hey, life goes on.

For those who said, "Who cares about a *&#! student government election," my question is this -- when are you going to care?

Yes, I'm tired of being called the slacker generation, or Generation X, but hey maybe we've earned it. So nobody votes in the "real" world either, you say. Great observation, I guess you didn't get here on good looks alone. This country alone has people living in the streets, a huge deficit between the wealthy and the poor and continued discrimination based on race, sex and sexual orientation. Hey, that's what I want to emulate!

The USG president gets his tuition paid for, the vice president receives 75 percent whether they do the job or not, whether they are the most qualified or not, or whether they want to represent most student concerns or not. O'Brien and Annechini will probably earn that money; unfortunately they'll be working for a population that doesn't care.

Call me angry. Call me an idealist. But for those of you who felt yourselves "above" student government elections that you couldn't take five minutes to vote, don't call me a political maturbator, because you are the one who has screwed yourself.