Please do vote

I was unpleasantly surprised by John Schneider's Oct. 22 column, "Please don't vote," encouraging members of the Duke community to purposely pass up their opportunity to vote in the upcoming election. I'm not contesting that the American democracy isn't a flawed system at times, but when people who can make an imperfect system better choose to disengage with it instead, the only logical result is that the system gets worse because the people who are left have no intention of improving it. And for this presidential election, the prospect of the system getting worse is something I simply cannot passively allow to happen.

I'm about to have an ulcer following the presidential race; the stakes are very real and they're very high. Who becomes the next president determines, in a concrete way, how long it'll take me to pay off my student loans (because of tax plans), what kind of job I can get in research when I graduate next May and how much it'll pay (because of federal funding for grants), what kind of residence I'll eventually be able to afford (because of the mortgage crisis), whether my children will be able to get a good education if I can't afford to send them to private school (because of public school funding), how much money my parents will have to retire on (because of the stock market and economic downturn), whether my gay friends will have equal rights as citizens, whether I and the people I care about will have comprehensive health care, whether people of color will get justice in the criminal system, whether women like myself will get equal pay for equal work... the list goes on and on and on.

I envy Schneider for being able to be so unconcerned about this election; I can only assume these concerns do not weigh as heavily on him as they do on me. It would be a luxury if I could relax for just a while without worrying about whether my rights and future and the rights and futures of my loved ones and the rights of futures of millions of Americans will take a turn for the better or the worse depending on who is elected Nov. 4. But I can't, and I suspect I'm not the only one. And so I urge all of you reading this, if there are any issues that affect you and that you care and worry about, go vote! Vote, vote, vote! This is your only shot, however flawed, to make a difference.

Soyee Li

Trinity '09