I refuse to vote in the Government of the Student Body elections. Why should I care what GSB does? It’s just the same words coming out of different, yet strikingly similar, heads.

Student government can’t get anything worthwhile done, and they sure as hell don’t do anything for me. Whenever I pick up my free student paper, everything I read is just the same old bull.

For instance, I was riding on the Orange Route last week, and I was really bored, so I pulled out this super-old paper that was in my backpack from last semester. There was an article in there about tuition going up again. Tuition increases tork me off so much, and GSB just lets it happen every year. Now I’ll probably have to start working to pay for school or something equally drastic.

I was talking with this buddy of mine who’s in the Scuba Club with me, and we both decided not to vote in the election, because it’s pointless. Plus, why should I worry — I’m too busy planning for the club’s spring break trip.

Where was GSB when Jischke took away my beer? Man, if I would have been able to talk to that punk to his face, I would have told him what’s what.

But how are students supposed to be able to have any contact with the Beardshear types?

Instead, I’m stuck with really crappy bands and a parade that is too early in the morning for me to even get up for. I mean, couldn’t somebody give Veishea enough money to bring in somebody I actually want to watch?

Look at how many people voted in the last GSB election. Only 6 percent of students voted, so it’s not like anybody even cares. It’s not like one vote will matter, either, with so few students voting and all. And this year’s GSB sucked, so why should I vote for next year’s GSB representatives?

What I really hate, though, is the fact that nobody at GSB even knows what it’s like to be a student, and they sure don’t understand how things work at Iowa State. Does anybody at GSB know what’s it like to have to study hard in classes and still be involved in other stuff? I’m in the quarterfinals of my floor’s NCAA 2000 tournament. Do you realize how much time that takes? We play the games every Wednesday night at 7 p.m., and sometimes the games get really serious and last for hours on end.

People are always telling me that GSB has got lots of money that they dole out, but if they’ve got so much moola why can’t they help the parking situation on campus?

Every day my older sister has to drive to campus from Huxley (she got knocked up so she has to live with her boyfriend, Chet, and my nephew, Alex), and she’s always complaining about how much she hates waiting for the bus in the commuter lot because it gets really cold in Iowa during the winter. How come the big shots with their big stupid meetings can’t do anything about that, huh?

GSB doesn’t care about me. Where was GSB when I got screwed over on my summer sublease? Nowhere. I had to spend $500 on some assembly-line lawyer. If all these dorks who want to be “my” president and “my” senator cared so much about me, how come they didn’t provide me with free legal services?

If you ask me, NOBODY cares about students at this university. I’m taking this huge lecture course in Curtiss Hall, and the teacher is so terrible. All she ever does is bitch about how much she’s not getting paid, and how she’s going to leave Iowa State after this semester. Is GSB going to do anything about that? Is anything they do going to make the professors here better teachers?

So that settles it. There’s no reason for me to vote at all. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t know how. There’s probably some elaborate form to fill out, and I bet I have to be registered beforehand in one of the two parties, weenie or dork. Lord knows GSB wouldn’t have the courtesy to make it as simple as dropping by one of several on-campus locations with nothing but my fee card and my ISU card. Heaven forbid they have a night polling place in the library because that would be just too damn much to ask, wouldn’t it?

It’s not like I’m uninterested in my school. I just wish there was some type of organization that represented all the different factions of people at this crazy place and actually tried to listen to students. I wish that organization had some type of real control over something that really affected students, a group that got to make their own decisions separate from administrators, faculty and especially those GSB bastards. If only such a group existed, a government of the student body. Pipe dreams my friends, pipe dreams …

David Roepke is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Aurora. He is a news editor at the Daily. Yes, it’s sarcasm. Go vote for Chrissakes!