Today, we vote for the president of the United States. This campus is ridden with intense-and sometimes emotional-opinions on the election, and all eyes will be watching intently tonight as we wait and see whose hands the electorate decided its fate will be in for the next four years.Yet ask the average student about the elections of the Union government-the elected body nearest to them-and they may not even know that one just occurred.

The indifference much of the student body shows toward choosing those who directly represent them in the Union Senate, for executive seats and other elected positions within the student government, is extremely disappointing. Why do we care so much about our vote among millions in this nation, but yet fail to spend the five minutes it takes to vote at our computers for people and policies that actively affect our daily lives?

Student apathy toward the Union has always been a problem here. But it seems that those students who cared to know about issues regarding this campus are now actively being turned off to them.

Bureaucracy and dramatics persist during and after each and every election in recent memory. Elections are ridden with trivial cases brought against candidates in the Union Judiciary, uproars about proper campaigning or voting measures and mistakes with online voting procedures. Students often are told they need to re-vote in an election because of mishaps, and there is no shock value left when one hears about the latest voting calamity.

Additionally, ballots are sometimes left with no official candidate running for a position, and write-in candidates vie for the paltry number of votes cast. It is distressing to think that no student would want to fill a position as important as, for example, a quad Senator. Students seem to want to be involved much less with their student goverment because of the pervasive atmosphere of squabbling rather than of productivity.

The Student Union has the ability to make some very concrete and very effective positive changes to our community. All the time small changes are made which may go unnoticed to most of the student body, yet are important and necessary to a thriving university. Yet, election scandals and mishaps create and atmosphere of annoyance and distrust. Students roll their eyes at the madness that inevitably follows every election and simply click delete when the all-too-predictable explanatory election e-mail appears in their inboxes.

To make matters worse, the UJ complicates the issues further with its own internal arguing about procedures.

Rather than bickering over trifling constitutional issues and continuing to compete in power struggles, we urge the Elections Commission to look at the bigger picture. Of course, student apathy is a very real issue. But this apathy has become increasingly the result of the same ridiculous elections mistakes and ludicrous internal struggle, and it will only get worse if not halted immediately.