The College Voter

Jordan Zakarin is a prolific, self-congratulating writer and a recent graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. His hard-hitting, hard-nosed and hard-on journalism is putting the entire news biz on its ear. Visit his no frills journalism site at http://www.reallyseriousnews.com

President Bush, speaking in his weekly radio address on Sunday in the wake of disastrous floods in the Midwest over the last three weeks, requested that Congress pass an emergency spending bill that would provide ample funds for photo opportunities in Iowa as well as potential other natural disasters that strike this summer.

“The good people of the Midwest have been devastated these past few weeks, with whole towns and farm communities destroyed,” Bush said. “Billions of dollars worth of damage has taken place, and they need to have the peace of mind that comes with thinking their President actually gives a damn. This money will provide them that, as well as fund other photo sessions in devastated areas still to be determined. It’s the least I can, and will, do.”

As heavy rains caused rushing rivers to crash down on the region, 24 levees, long considered to be in disrepair, ruptured, flooding small towns and valuable farm land. Factories, town squares and homes were destroyed, and experts say that as much as five million acres of valuable corn and soybeans cropland was destroyed. For the 40,000 people who were displaced from their homes, in addition to the tens of thousands more who saw their livelihoods disrupted or even washed away, Bush said he believed the best cure was “a brief stop-by, a stirring little speech and some photos of me huggin’ sad ladies on the cover of USA Today.”

Noting the juxtaposition between what many felt were his finest and his lowest hours in office, Bush insisted that this was the right course of action.

“Look what we were able to do with that rubble pile on September the 11th,” he said. “For so many, me grabbing that megaphone, swearing revenge, putting my arm around that old guy, it made them think, for at least a little while, that things would really be okay, that we’d get the guy responsible. Then with that hurricane or whatever a few years back, we were late on getting on the scene with that speech and the photos, and we still haven’t stopped hearing about it.”

The President defended preemptively in his address against those who might say his funding request was too pricey, noting the expenses that went along with both travel and a professional-level photo shoot were no small sum of money.

“There’s just so much involved, so much that goes into a staged photo-op like this,” Bush said. “First, they’ve got to drain the local airport and town square enough for me to even step down there. That’s a lot of cleanup, I hear. Then you’ve got to worry about things like lighting, and sometimes that requires rearranging buildings and temporary trailers so that the sun hits me just right. I like a soft lighting, gives me a bit of an angelic feel, and that’s tough to maintain when you’ve got 100 different photographers snapping at me.

“These things cost money, you know,” he continued, “especially if you want to do them real last minute, as so many of these events have to be, unfortunately. We’re working on that, too.”

Some of the funds would be allocated to a photo session next week in California, once firefighters were done putting out the hundreds of forest fires that have broken out across the state. The rest would be put aside, ready to dispense for headline grabbing photos as natural disaster season rolled through the summer.

“We’ll probably have a bunch more fires, and definitely a bunch of tornadoes in the Midwest,” Bush noted. “And with hurricane season coming up, it’s supposed to be a doozy this year, so we need to be prepared this time to be anywhere on the eastern seaboard, especially Florida. Luckily I have some friends down there, so that can keep costs down, but still, if I’ve learned one thing over the past seven years, you’ve gotta be prepared.”

Read more at ReallySeriousNews.com

In the year 2000, I did not recognize the consequences of things. I thought about getting my learners permit, about turning sixteen the next year. I thought about what I wanted to do with my hair color; about different ways to not fit in at school. Despite the fact that I still scribbled anarchy signs on my notebook covers, I was not really politically involved. I said nasty things about the government that I didn’t fully understand and I read about conspiracy theories. I thought to myself “You will stay like this forever,” and I thought that this could be a good thing, that I would remain some bohemian child in Florida, always saying stuff about the fucked up system. The year 2000 sounded like the future, so I never grasped that it was really happening. I just treated it like the preamble of something else, some other life I would soon get to live.

Respectively, I lost my virginity in a backyard, learning how to fold my body so it would fit through my bedroom window.

Of course I knew that it was an election year, that it was the new millenium. I also knew that my computer did not crash after Y2K and that the boys you sleep with in backyards would not always call you the next day. My father was for George W. Bush and my mother was not. My father said things about property taxes as his reasoning, later on he would say he considered himself a conservative. I got the boy who slept with me to become my boyfriend, and because of this, I thought I could do anything. I had some feeling that I wanted to change the world, but I also had the feeling that I would be sixteen forever, that not man or law could stop me.

My boyfriend’s mother, like my own, was a supporter of Al Gore. These were the years of mothers, we all adored our mothers and feared our fathers. My boyfriend’s grandmother hung a picture of George Bush and his wife Barbara on the kitchen fridge. She took me aside pulling my arm, and told me the greatness of that man’s qualities, and how they all would have rubbed off on his son. I remembered George Bush being president vaguely, I had a memory of watching Barbra Bush reading children’s novels to a kindergarten class, and because I was also in kindergarten, I ended up liking her very much. I did not understand that anything had real consequences, all of my feelings were about the next ten minutes, the next ten hours. I had no concept of the next two years - let alone four, or eight.

The day to vote came and suddenly the spotlight was on Florida. Everyone was upset for one reason or another, and everyone was paying attention. I was paying attention, but I also was thinking of getting my drivers license in a month and a half; about the girl my boyfriend sat next to in Algebra. When the results came in I was at a birthday dinner with my boyfriends family, a bunch of us left the table at The Macaroni Grill to stand next to a wide screen television. My boyfriend’s mother was near tears and a woman next to her said “He is just one man. How bad could it be?” And I had no idea, really about anything, I had no idea what any of this would mean.

And after that night, things changed. I started listening. I felt scared after September 11th, I wanted to donate blood like everyone else, but I was not eighteen yet. New York seemed far away, this place that only existed in books and on television, a place where I could never live. I felt sick and sad, like everyone else. I don’t know if I opposed the war because of something someone told me, or because of books that I had read, but I knew that I was against it. On March 20th of 2003, I watched the war begin on the television screen. All I remember is a black screen with green lights going off in the corners. I guess they were bombs, I guess I was watching CNN in my childhood bedroom. IMing friends online, I typed “is this really happening?”

In 2003, I left Florida. I blamed Florida for so much, I really blamed Florida for my whole life. Many of us did. I spent my freshman year at Kent State University, learning how to get drunk and cry in front of the May 4th Memorial. Instead of attending classes, I read in bed. I believed I was in a place that was polarized in 1970, that I cold still do whatever I wanted. When I was sent back to Florida in 2004, I campaigned hard. I heard so many people say “Anyone but Bush” and about how we had to pick the lesser of two evils, but I did not want to think like that. I just wanted something - anything really - to be different. And when my friends would tell me that they were going to vote for Bush, I would become irate, flinging my arms in the air in angst. “This is the first election that we can vote in!” I would yell, “What the hell is wrong with you?” I’d pick fights with any of them, no matter how long I knew them, or if they were making excuses about voting like their parents vote. When George Bush was re-elected, I was working in the Clearwater Public Library, I could see the ocean through the large glass windows. I fell to the ground, and in my most dramatic fashion, I wept. I cried on the floor next to stacks of books in a back room. The books were all damaged, they were going to be thrown out. They couldn’t even be donated, the library had no use for them. At the time, neither did I.

And I became defeated. My mother drank wine at night - my mother drank red wine every night. I could not blame Florida. I could not even really blame my peers. Instead, I blamed myself. I started connecting point A to point B and back again. I tried to make straight lines. I tried to limit how often I watched the news, I wanted a break. There I was 19, and ready to give up. Hurricane Katrina had happened, Bush had been elected, and then came the waves. I did not know if I should calmly wait for some apocalypse. I knew I had the right to vote, I had my drivers license, I had my theories about the government. I started planning for some life where I could make a difference, where I could help to change the world. I could not lose my virginity in a backyard again, nor could I recount any votes in Florida. I had no time machines, and I had nearly no answers. I hadn’t scribbled an anarchy sign in quite sometime and I stopped talking shit the way I used to. And then it was just like it kind of hit me one day, that things did not always have to be like this, that things did have consequences - that I could not only recognize them, but determine them also.

Daniela Scrima is a senior at NYU. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Read more of her writing on her personal blog, “Oh-Snap!”

We will always respect you for tastefully making the lexicon a little more foul, giving us the limits to test how many “shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits” bombs we can drop in polite social company. Ballsy enough to boldly test the limits of the FCC, Carlin was a legendary comedian that always was able to make us laugh in a way so many stand-ups fall short. Plus, how can we ever forget Carlin’s role as the smiling conductor of Shining Time Station? He certainly was one fucking brilliant mother fucker…

I want to offer an apology for my neglecting The College Voter with an absence of fresh new voices and material. After a tumultuous spring of finals, celebrating the graduation of friends, and moving to New York to take up an internship, this college student has been swamped with other priorities and many, many distractions. Don’t worry… in the coming few days, weeks, and months The College Voter will be back in full swing, ready to stand out and yelp our opinions about the Obama/McCain. I will be adding fresh voices to the masthead, as well as reconceptualizing our editorial intent. Hopefully, if it all works out, we’ll even have a brand new logo, as the old one has failed to keep my attention span. If you’re spending your summer waiting tables, experiencing corporate slave labor (READ: unpaid internship), bumming on the beach, pounding your head against the wall because of summer classes, or just sitting in the A/C watching Showtime reruns…. All I can say is, cheers! Hitting the quad, autumn, football tailgates, Natty-Light Friday nights and a full class schedule aren’t that far away.

In the meantime, back to the State of the Union… Earlier this evening I wandered through Manhattan’s Union Square, sitting in on a free speech rally. There was little focus to the rally, as the entire purpose was to voice out about governmental and societal affairs. The man with the microphone was shirtless, practically naked, and raving passionately about WTO injustices. As I stood watching the spectacle, a passerby mentioned, “God Bless the Freaks.” As if on cue, her friend replied with an “Amen.” It was as if we were attending the First Church of American Freakdom, as the man continued to rant about apathy and lack of engagement.

But I was struck by the audience’s lack of response.

From what I could tell, he was right. No one else had the conviction to stand up and make their voice heard. If a person daring to tear off his shirt on a hot summer night in a very public Manhattan park has the gumption to condemn us of negligence, more power to him. It made me wonder who exactly is the voice of our generation. Where is the leadership from other twenty-somethings? Or, is everyone too busy worrying about job security or the latest Amy Winehouse drug-binge story to grace the entertainment glossies? Where is the leadership for our generation in media, literature, art, music, politics, science? I highly doubt college students lack conviction, a generalization of which many have pointed fingers. Yet, where is the iconoclastic voice we so desperately need to give our generation then substance for prolonged sustainability. When I reflect about this, people like the shirtless man raving in Union Square on a Sunday night are why I love the city and - more importantly - why I love this country.

It takes a bold type of individualism to truly inspire and reassess a generation’s position. Speaking out, lending a voice, and standing for something brazenly embodies the rugged framework of the American Dream than any Ford truck or real-estate fantasy.

There is bravery in voice.

God Bless the Freaks.

Colin Kalmbacher is a correspondent and contributor for The College Voter from The University of Texas at Austin.

I’d like to apologize.

I haven’t been around these parts of the Internets for quite some time.

I have, however, in order of importance:

Paid an excessive amount of attention to the NBA Finals. (Giving myself an enormous amount of heartbreak and grief due to my unfaltering allegiance to the currently faltering San Antonio Spurs. I even bought these shoes.)

Over-zealously gone after a tall, blond, freshman who was destined to leave my life and was just never programmed to appreciate a sensitive artist like myself. C’est la vie.

Graduated from clown college the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and a concentration on History and English. Which means I get to capitalize things like Journalism, History and English.

Well, I kind-of-graduated. Pretended–like a balloon sword.

I faked it like Samantha or Matthew Broderick’s wife’s character on that kind-of-funny HBO show that really should not have been produced into or even optioned toward feature film status. Spilled milk, I guess.

I walked across the stage wearing the requisite regalia including my one-size-messes-up-anyone’s-hair cap and an out-sized gown borrowed from a friend’s boyfriend that somehow didn’t swallow me up like Nautica Thorn’s vajayjay would do to…well…anything. (Trust me, I’ve seen video.) I even looked good in pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Ahem.

But, let’s call it trick photography.

Because, as of now, I am not officially graduated. Yeah, everybody got handed a fake diploma with a year’s membership to the Jelly of the Month Club.

But, I’m actually signed up for two ancillary (re: unnecessary) classes this summer that I’ve opted to put myself through. Oh, I don’t need them. They’re both completely irrelevant to my degree (Music for Television and Film) or the world at large (Marketing), of course. There won’t be much of an impact on my GPA no matter what happens. I’ve more than surpassed the total number of hours to graduate. I can’t even pin down a minor due to hare-brained decision making in the College of Communication.

So, what gives?

Why in the world have I decided to subject myself to six more (not so) rigorous hours of needless education? (Hint: It’s not pure intellectual curiosity.)

Try a broken education system from top to bottom.

The same education system that produces a country wherein about 54 million Americans believe that the sun revolves around the Earth is the same one that doesn’t take seriously the need for public-financed, or even government-sponsored higher education.

Hell, they had to pull teeth for years and years to even get the Webb-Hagel GI Bill for our oh-so-vaunted veterans. And for that Congress deserves a genuine and hearty round of applause.

But it also ought to be understood as the sobering news that it truly is.

If it’s taken this long for an as of yet uncertain piece of legislation (facing presidential veto) that finally makes heroes instead of props of our military servicemen and servicewomen then substantial help on higher education costs for the rest of us are truly a dream.

The truth is I am taking these extra classes for two purely economic reasons:

1. To keep predatory lenders off my back for a few extra months by staying in school and forestalling payments on my student loans.
2. To reap the benefits of one last dose of (limited and piddling) federal financial aid so that I can afford rent, utilities and food for the next few months.

It’s a sad state of affairs and I’ve been forced to kind of game the system, in a sense. But when it’s broken, you do what you can to make it work for you. A dollar. Out of fifteen cents.

And I certainly don’t apologize for that.

Colin Kalmbacher is a twenty-something white male, born and bred in Fort Worth, Texas — though he currently resides in Austin. Not one much for consistency, he enjoys politics, love and misanthropy when not singing or baking vegan cookies. He’s also a huge fan of Talladega Nights.