Get out and vote in your school's riding

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: LAM LE
Opinion: Consider voting in your school's riding, especially if you’ll be living there for the next few years.

So, you are a student in an area that you haven’t lived in before and an election is rolling around. You’re wondering what you should do.

Well firstly you should make the effort to get out and vote and second vote in the riding you attend school in. It might be easy to just head home and vote in the riding your parents’ family home is in, but look at it this way: You are going to spend the majority of your next four, potentially more years living in a riding that will be represented by someone who is supposed to speak on your behalf. Personally if someone is representing me, I want them to probably have similar views to me.

Beyond just being able to agree on personal views, it’s also important to consider how this representative can make decisions supposedly on your behalf, as they will impact your daily life.

For example, London went through a major turning point in the last election and the city chose to drastically alter its path after a new councillor took the reins of municipal governance. BRT (the Bus Rapid Transit plan) was a massive transit project that was set to transform the way that riders got around the city. The proposed changes would have had impacts on areas that are geared towards this city’s student population.

This project was mostly axed in favor of being more conservative with the city’s tax dollars. Anti-BRT councillors were elected in areas where liberal-leaning millennial students could have greatly influenced the vote for those wards.

The point here isn’t that the vote was unfair or that a different decision should have been made, because that isn’t my argument. During that vote I personally encountered an interesting feeling amongst students about voting in a riding they were going to school in. Some students didn’t feel it was their place to vote because they were only going to school here and from their perspective didn’t actually ‘live here’.

Well fair enough, you’re from somewhere else. However, there are a few things to consider. You have a stake in this game and you’d be better off if you did participate in it. The BRT project is one example at how you, the student was disadvantaged by decisions made by others who live in your riding or ward, but when you look at the numbers of voters who elected that councillor they don’t make up anywhere near the majority of residents of that area. It only took 4,000 votes (according to the City of London Official Elections Results) to put Ward 6 councillor in office. That’s compared to the number of students who live on campus at Western University, which at a single student residence can number at about a thousand. Discrepancies start to appear almost immediately.

There’s approximately 31,000 Western University students who live in dense numbers throughout Ward 6 and spilling into other districts that surround Western. So why does it have a councillor who could be constantly quoted as criticizing the BRT plan?

If students voted in their ridings or wards they go to school in then things might work a little more in their favour. Hopefully this is just a lesson in why you should vote, and I encourage you to do so in the riding you attend school in. The youth vote is more important than ever in Canadian politics and it’s time to get involved. Find out where and how to vote in your riding through Elections Canada’s website elections. ca and make sure the MPs in your area have you in mind when they get to Parliament this fall.

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.