I’m sure everyone remembers the hullabaloo that the Ludacris concert caused at last semester’s Homecoming. Lots of students felt that the city commissioner and the fire marshal were taking away their rights by trying to cancel a concert for which “they” had voted.
If Ludacris had won the vote of the student body, then I would have been indignant, too, even though I don’t particularly care for Ludacris’s music.
As it was, all I could do was laugh at how absurd the situation was, because Ludacris did not win the vote of the student body – he won the vote of the SGA.
A lot of these people who were so upset about having their rights trampled on had not bothered to exercise those rights and vote.
And why did these people not vote? Because the vote was conducted via e-mail during a time of the year when few people checked their e-mail.
However, there were a couple of things that were different about the vote for this semester’s band.
For one thing, in the list of bands that we had to choose from, I didn’t notice any bands that were likely to cause an uproar if they got chosen. Also, I noticed that the SGA was a little more accommodating this semester. They still conducted the vote via e-mail, but this time they sent the message early in the semester, during a time when more people would be likely to receive it.
Personally I think that anyone who has a computer in their home – as most people do – has no excuse not to check it on a regular basis. Even people without computers should check it once a week.
It seems that the SGA learned a lesson from the fiasco last semester, though – most people aren’t willing to go very far out of their way to exercise the rights that they hold so dear.
A question that remains to be answered: has the student body learned a lesson as well? Will the band that we chose this semester be based on the student body’s vote, or are we still content to be represented by the SGA?
A lot of students felt like they were being treated like children last semester when people who didn’t even go to ETSU tried to decide what was best for them.
That was understandable, but other people are inevitably going to make decisions for you if you aren’t willing to accept the responsibilities that go along with your rights.I hope that all of us exercised our right to vote while we had the chance.
We should all get in the habit of voting against things that we don’t want, whether that be a band that we don’t want to play at our school or something our president is doing or anything else.
Then we won’t have to protest against it later and things will run a lot more smoothly.

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