Fifteen days later...

(Algonquin Times editorial. Published, October 25.)

The 2007 provincial election came and went and students couldn't care less.

It's business as usual and nobody batted an eye because few students identify with the politicians seeking their vote. It seems this is how people felt on Oct. 10.

It sounds preposterous but the apathetic mass broke a record this month, a record set 84 years ago in 1923. That's the previous date of Ontario's lowest-ever voter turnout which has now dropped by almost another two per cent to 52.8 per cent.

Generally, students stay away from voting booths. It's understood what elections mean: getting overlooked or used as bargaining chips. Students end up with higher tuition rates and more debt either way, so why bother?

Even if half of Algonquin's population voted, that leaves 7,000 other students who didn't bother to vote and it didn't change a thing. Dalton McGuinty is still in office and so is Jim Watson.

Does either one really represent the best interest of students?

But keep in mind that representing Algonquin and representing its students aren't always the same thing.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, of which Algonquin's full-time teachers are members, strongly endorsed a Liberal vote instead of the traditional vote for the NDP this election. OPSEU only changed its endorsement because school funding was the biggest ticket on the agenda this year.

Jim Watson boasted that the Liberals' 10 per cent tuition increase was much lower than the NDP's 50 per cent or the Conservatives 60 per cent tuition hikes in previous years. This means the Liberals robbed students of the least amount of money.

Algonquin will never get genuine political representation if teachers get more government money while students pay more.

From a riding perspective, being part of Ottawa West-Nepean also means sharing a representative with Centrepointe's seniors. It's impossible to get one person to represent the largest population of senior citizens and the largest college in Eastern Ontario simultaneously.

Add together teachers, seniors and workers, and students get lost in the mix.

Students have made the only reasonable choice available to them: nobody. Along with the four million other Ontarians who didn't vote, "Nobody" beat out the Liberal majority government by over 200 per cent.