I can always tell when it’s campaign time in my sleepy suburban hometown of Eagan, Minn. Turning the corner at Walnut Hill Park or zipping by Lake Holland, I’ll catch a glimpse of a colorful, corrugated cardboard sign on a stake in a ditch. Before too long, every corner is cluttered with a mess of political crap that compromises the aesthetic value of Eagan’s share of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes.

This morning, as I was moseying around the physics building, I discovered point zero of the outbreak. A flier for an aspiring GSB duo was hanging on the wall above a water fountain. This didn’t bother me at all. However, the two on the fire doors, three on bulletin boards on each side of the hall and two more farther down the hall did.

It seems to me that so many identical fliers in such a small place is overdoing it. I guess the plague is amongst us. I’ll be honest. I’m not the biggest advocate for the environment. If I was that caught up in wasted paper, I’d be lobbying for bidets in the residence halls However, fliers seem to be rather pointless.

I know who the mayor of Eagan is (his name is Tom Eagan), but I couldn’t name any city council members or school board members, even after driving by all of their signs. In fact, I can’t even remember whose fliers I’m complaining about, and that was only six hours ago.

People who take an active interest in politics read up on the candidates and make semi-educated decisions about them. The remainder of the people don’t care, and the only pieces of paper that will make them go out of their way for political causes are green and come from a federal reserve bank.

If it’s a contest of how many inanimate objects you can stick your name on, you’re obsessive-compulsive, and there are many psychologists at Lagomarcino who can help you.

So how do you spread the word to the apathetic masses, without the infectious plague of paper? That seems to be on par with the riddle of the Sphinx. It takes a special kind of person to fool a mythological monster. I would guess it takes the same kind of person to keep GSB out of trouble. Then again, the last person to solve the Sphinx’s riddle killed his father and married his mother.

Erik Hoversten

Sophomore

Mathematics