Yes, you’re correct-UGBC election season is one of the most trying times to be a Boston College student. Maybe it’s the seasonal depression or the loud, hung-over walks through the Quad, or maybe it’s just the fact the campus smells a little worse for a week. Do they wash those campaign shirts?
The UGBC candidates aren’t necessarily the best among us, and a competitive election season doesn’t necessarily bring out the best in our campus. But the people in UGBC, the people who actually care about those annual “talking points,” are some of the best people on this campus. True, you don’t have to be in UGBC to care or to be involved or to do good work. Nor does membership prove proper motives or real passion. But I believe it shows one thing: a lack of apathy.
Apathy is the noose around our generation’s neck, and it lives on at BC. The fault for this can be put on UGBC, sure, as a derivative and boring club that regurgitates snappy slogans and produces more profile pictures than it does changes to student life. Staplers, coffee, iClicker rental-who the hell cares?
Well, we’re supposed to. UGBC is supposed to come to us, the students, but if it doesn’t, let’s go to it. If you think that we’re better off by ignoring UGBC or isolating it as an unrepresentative voice of the students, you’re wrong.
I’ve been uniquely able to see so much of what UGBC works for silently, whether it’s creating discussions about race and identity or registering hundreds of students to vote in an election that does matter (that would be the U.S. presidential one). UGBC members deserve troves more appreciation than they receive because they’re the most passionate, most caring people here, and they’re willing to buck the apathy and naysaying to get involved. They’re the ones who recognize the problems on our campus and actually care to fix them. And they do it happily.
We don’t need an introduction to politics. We’re too smart for that. What we need is an introduction to engagement, a fresh perspective on what’s right with UGBC, and what’s wrong with our perspective.
Connor Bourff
A&S ’15
