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(Cross-posted at DailyKos)

  When I started my undergraduate career, I was enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, and boy, nothing works harder than a Democrat in Texas – we had lobbying committees set up for different issue areas, and we were in legislators’ offices every week presenting our case.  We were fired up and we were effecting change.

But then I decided I needed a change, because while the University Democrats were a beacon for reason and hope, a lot of the rest of the student body was not, and the school didn’t seem to be suiting my academic needs.  So I thought, “where can I get the education I want and be in an amazing political environment?”  My answer: The University of Vermont!

So I arrived in the Green Mountain State, thoroughly excited to join a thriving, motivated, spectacular political group – the College Democrats.  Upon attending my first meeting, I found less than ten people in attendance, and it only got worse from there.

Read on below!

Only ten people at a College Democrats meeting with a student body of over 8,000!  What happened to the Vermont I had heard about from so many people?  It seems that at my University, the student body has been sticken with a serious case of political apathy. 

And it’s not even for lack of competitive races – Peter Welch is running for Congress against a highly decorated military official who comes across as more honest and moderate than any Republican I’ve ever heard speak in person; Bernie Sanders is against Rich “Monopoly Man” Tarrant, doling out thousands of dollars and free laptops to summer interns, and spending ridiculous money on his campaign; Scudder Parker is running a grassroots initiative against Jim Douglas in a state that has a disturbing tendency to re-elect incumbents just because.  So what’s the problem?

My second semester at UVM (why not UVT?  It’s from the latin for University of the Green Mountains,) I became the co-President of College Dems, and we managed to put together a stellar executive board, all ready and willing to whip our campus into shape.  We went on an advertising blitz, brought free food, and set up a table three days a week.  We got a grand total of, again, less than ten people at our first meeting, and it only went down from there.

Then Barrack Obama came.  Students streamed into the Ira Allen Chapel where he was to speak, filling its 900-person capacity in mere minutes, with more pressing their faces up against the window to try to hear him speak.  Barrack Obama will surely fire these students up!  Grand total of new members as a result of Obama’s speech: one.  And she only came to one meeting.

So at the end of my second semester at the University of Vermont, I’m the President of the College Democrats, and I have no one to lead.  I have no one excited about the local races, or even taking back Congress in November.  The most popular student groups on this campus are the outing club, and the ski and snowboard club.  Why are so many students politically apathetic?

I must have talked to dozens of people a day running the College Dems table, and almost none of them knew who Roberts or Alito were, people blinked at me when I said Bill Frist, and some didn’t even know that Howard Dean was running the DNC – Howard Dean, Vermont’s native son!

We need a candidate who’s willing to talk to young people in this country, because even back in Texas, UDems was maybe 40 or 50 students from a student body upwards of 50,000.  We need a candidate who speaks to America’s youth, and not just when he or she is addressing a crowd of college students.  I don’t want to hear “I’m going to ignore the advice my political consultants give me and pay attention to young people” every time someone is addressing me and others my age, but at no other time.

I want a candidate who speaks to the future leaders of this country, and communicates why issues like domestic spying and our nuclear stand-off with Iran matter to them.  I want a candidate to court the youth vote like they court the senior vote.  I want to see students reading the newspaper before class instead of listening to whatever their iPod Shuffle tells them to.

I’m not really sure what the punchline of this diary is, but this is a big problem, and I’m genuinely terrified that the well-being of my children will be in the hands of my generation, because as much as I see activism and interest and amazing things happening, I see ten times as much apathy, and it’s scary.