Well-informed students make best voters

As any typical student does, I tend to cruise through Facebook from time to time when I should really be doing my homework. The other day as I was doing my usual rounds, I noticed a group that is political in nature. I won't say which side it supported, but either way the group was extreme in its views.

The creation of the group is not what disturbed me. Rather, I was disturbed by how wrong they had gotten the facts. It was not even close. So I began to think of all the misleading that goes on, not just on Facebook, but on the internet and in our daily lives. It's all around us, and more and more of this information is being forced into our lives.

The scariest part of it all is that most of this misinformation is geared toward the college crowd. We are young and impressionable with a new right to vote. Each side sees this as an opportunity to make us commit to their side, so that they can garner votes for the next few elections. All parties know that the college campus is sometimes the battlefront in elections. Plus, they feel if you sway one, then maybe their friends will follow suit and their popularity will grow exponentially.

So as intelligent twenty-somethings, we need to know that sometimes everything we read and everything we hear is not for our own benefit but rather for the benefit of a particular party.

I believe the right to vote is one of the most significant ways the common man can contribute to his government. Everyone has something at stake when it comes to picking his or her government, and every vote counts, as the 2000 election showed.

This year is not an election year, but many candidates are already jockeying for position in the upcoming presidential race. So prepare yourself for a plethora of information and misinformation that is about to flood your consciousness. Each side will praise one while condemning the other and the young voter will have to decide "Who is the best choice for me?"

And if your principles swing toward one party more than the other, it is perfectly acceptable. Just be informed as much as possible and don't go blindly into the voting booth. The worst-case scenario is supporting a candidate and their platform just because he or she has an R or a D beside the name, not because you agree with his or her ideals.

The best way to ensure you're voting for who you want is to educate yourself. Research the candidates and check out their voting records. Watch C-SPAN if you can manage to stay awake. Watch multiple news affiliates. Listen to both sides, not just one lambasting the other. If your most reliable source is Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh, then you probably need to investigate why. It's dangerous to listen to one argument while not presenting yourself with a counter argument.

The greatest trick any politician ever pulled was convincing anyone that not agreeing with him or her made you a bad person who was uneducated. No issue is that simple, and supporting one over the other doesn't make you a bad person. Life is all about shades of gray, not black and white, and politics is no different. It's all about picking the shade of gray that best suits your needs.

So when listening to politically-driven speeches and platforms, don't believe it just because it came from someone who looks trustworthy. Examine the topics for yourself and let you be the one who decides rather than someone else telling you how to decide.

Buddha once said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." This advice can be used when thinking of which candidate or even which party you decide to support.

All our lives we have heard about the next generation deciding how the world is shaped. Now we are that generation. We decide how this world is shaped. So it is up to us to individually examine what party and what platform we support.

It may not seem like it now, but making a clear, conscious decision in the polls weighs just as heavily as anything we will ever do.