Combat Zone

Students’ political activism reduced to skimming lawn signs

By Lee L. Benbow

Last year the general election captured the attention of the American Public. Everyone had an opinion and wanted to share it; fake news ran rampant, and Facebook rants were at an all time high. As of November 8th, it will have been a year since the last election. But politics don’t simply stop at a standstill between presidential elections. This year many in-state students have become deeply involved in the elections for local positions. “As the University is so close to our surrounding residential neighborhood and deeply intertwined community, it just makes sense that we are involved in the politics,” a woke senior standing near a lawn sign said.

A majority of students say they are registered, registering or working on figuring out how to get registered. Everyone wants to seem politically active, most students attend the right marches, and tweet the right hashtags, but the Flail wanted to know how students really stay active in the political process year round.

For most students, skimming an average of four New York Times articles on Facebook is enough. “I’m already taking four classes and working on perfecting my social media presence, I really don’t have time to research every issue. #sorrynotsorry,” junior Jenna Johnson said. Others go above and beyond and actually read the articles, but that is still not enough for the likes of senior Josh Hurley. “I’m registered to vote in Washington, read roughly five words a day and decide who I am going to vote for based on lawn signs,” Hurley said.

When asked about how he decides who is worthy of office based on colors and fonts, Hurley defended himself with perfect logic. “If [the politicians] didn’t want me to cast my vote based on what fonts and colors they use, why would they have so many signs? Also the policy is easy to tell based on the colors and fonts used; red and blue obviously have their own connotations. But serif fonts are a tell-tale conservative look, whereas Helvetica and Arial have been extremely popular with liberal and third party candidates in the past couple elections,” said Hurley.

The Flail decided to test this theory and went to a busy intersection to look at the signs. After looking for a couple minutes the field reporters decided to take Josh’s word for it, as it seemed perfectly logical.