I want to be proven wrong. Desperately. I’ll tell you why.

On Friday, the Public Broadcasting Station program “Washington Week in Review” came to Iowa State to film. They did their show live from Stephens Auditorium in front of about 1,200 people.

The taping of the show was a great coup for the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, which was the primary sponsor. The school received national recognition, with its name mentioned repeatedly during the program, and the taping went off so smoothly and the crowd was so big that the people at “Washington Week in Review” will probably think of ISU the next time the caucuses come around.

And why wouldn’t a national television program want to come to Ames right before the Iowa caucuses?

This is the bastion of Iowa politics, where Republicans come for the straw poll and candidates from both parties stump endlessly for votes.

This is a prestigious college on a beautiful campus, with a great facility for such a taping.

We have an intelligent student body who makes it a priority to be an informed electorate, with students leading the way in voting —

Uhh, wait a second.

Oh yeah, this is the campus where only 6 percent of the students voted in the last student body president elections. This is the campus where no students showed up for a town meeting with student government leaders and where candidates for GSB president put planks in their platforms about trying to reduce student apathy.

People our age don’t fare too well politically anywhere in the state. Only 16 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the last Iowa gubernatorial elections, even though the race was heated and had a more consequential impact than any of its kind in the last 16 years.

But students still didn’t care.

Don’t get me wrong. Not everyone is apathetic. There are many students on this campus who are very politically active, both for student government positions and for national campaigns.

There are more than 60 students involved in the three branches of GSB and more than 40 involved with IRHA and the individual residence associations, not to mention the countless number of students involved on dorm floor cabinets. These people do their best every week to represent students and to keep student government accessible to everyone.

There are also students heading up ISU campaigns for many of the major candidates. They’ve sacrificed a lot of time and energy to ensure that you will have enough information today to make your voice heard during the caucuses.

But unfortunately, many of these active students, for both campus and national groups, are working in vain, because students still won’t care.

Of course, students aren’t the only ones who aren’t getting involved politically. Only about a tenth of Iowa’s electorate will take part in the caucuses. People of all ages statewide have lost interest in politics.

And actually, ISU students aren’t doing much worse than “adults” at Iowa State. In last fall’s city council and state representative election, only five of the top 20 administrators at Iowa State voted.

When the Daily reported on the administrators’ voting that day, we weren’t trying to embarrass them. We just wanted to know whether students were alone in their apathy.

They’re not.

Today, however, students, faculty and administrators alike have the opportunity to prove me wrong. Each person on the ISU campus has the chance to get involved in the political process and prove that I’m just a pessimist who underestimates everyone’s interest in politics.

In case you’ve missed it, today is the day of the Iowa caucuses. The caucuses are the primary-like town meetings that are used to determine the Republican and Democratic nominees for president.

Some people say that voting in elections like this doesn’t matter. But it does. As a political science professor of mine said last semester, primaries are the most important elections, because this is where the decisions are really made.

Candidates from both parties have visited Iowa State repeatedly during the last few months, specifically to coerce students to the caucuses. They know that your vote might make a difference.

Iowa State is a terrific place for a show like “Washington Week in Review” to tape. But I don’t believe we’ve quite earned our status as an important political place.

Go to the caucuses tonight at 7 p.m. Prove me wrong.

---

Sara Ziegler is a senior in journalism and mass communication and political science from Sioux Falls, S.D. She’ll be caucusing. Will you?