‘Tis the season for politics. It’s getting to be that happy time of year when all who are eligible will cast their vote on who the next president of the United States will, be along with many other offices in within the government. But let’s be honest, how many people actually see this time as one to be happy about? Especially college students, most of whom have negative reactions to politics all together.

I recently saw this reaction play out from a couple of my friends. We were all sitting in the television room when a political advertisement came on. The first reaction was to change the channel, the second reaction was something along the lines of “I’m so tired of these stupid political ads,” and the last reaction was one of the girls saying they were tired of hearing about the presidential race altogether. I turned to one of my friends and asked her if she knew when the deadline to register to vote was. She replied, “No clue. Honestly, I don’t even know who is running against Obama.”

I sat there for a second and thought about it. Are we really uninformed or do we just not care? If you watch any 6 p.m. news, you can figure out who is running for president, but then how many college students regularly sit down and actually watch the news?

The truth is, people in our generation, college students specifically, really need to inform themselves on the issues of our government and the views that politicians have on these issues. We may think the problems now will not affect us later, but really, we are the ones who will truly be affected. The decisions that are made now by politicians have the capability to shape our future. Why wouldn’t we, or better yet, why haven’t we informed ourselves?

Unfortunately, politics are impossible to ignore as we grow up and take on the responsibility of being involved in activities such as paying taxes. No matter what party you belong to, what your belief systems are or how you feel about our government, we need to get involved in the process.

Students can register to vote at websites like www.rockthevote.com, and finding good information on today’s issues that we are facing can be as easy as a Google search. We may be tired of politics and everything that goes with it, but we all want improvement and progress for our nation.