Showing My Opinionated Side

Tonight I helped out with a voting discussion for the students in Maple. Justin, the MSUSA campus relations guy, came up to help. We had about 20 people there, a variety of perspectives both liberal and conservative. In addition to telling people how/where they can go in order to vote, we had some great discussion of issues, how people planned to vote and why.

I have a general rule I've set for myself that I stay pretty neutral in political discussions when I'm at a Senate sponsored event. We're a non partisan group, and we don't advocate for any candidate in particular. So, I usually keep my opinions pretty quiet.

Well, I broke my own rule. I knew it was going to happen when Justin told me on the walk over to Maple that he'd be asking for my opinion...political that is. When I realized that most people in the room knew me from Hall Council, I thought..."What the hell, they probably have figured out my leanings by now anyway" I said I was for Kerry, and told them why...mostly because I'm sick of Bush and the people around him, don't see a long term strategy for the war, don't like his education policy (NCLB=ALL children left behind), and am so sick of his push for a marraige amendment I could puke. I'm not necessarily for gay marriage, but it does not need to be part of the freaking constitution...when there are so many other things (like a war) going on, why is it such a big deal?

Afterwords, I said to Kelli and Pete (the PAAs who organized the thing) that I wasn't usually so politically open...it was a new side of me for them to see. Kelli said she figured I was more liberal, so I don't think anybody was too shocked.

And that's how a handful of Mapleites got to see Berne on Politics: Real, Uncensored, and Uncut.