Ladies and Gentlemen,

Please hand in your ballots, the show is about to begin. The long awaited for day is just around the corner, and most Americans are eager to see what the results of this year's Presidential Election will be.

Barack Obama, America's first African American President, is on the tail end of his second term, which is something that many people in this country at one point thought to never be possible. Now, the possibility of the first female president is in the air making this election all that much more monumental. Society is progressing as is the rapidly evolving and ever changing state of world politics. May the best candidate win... and that is all that I have to say on the subject. This article is not about the intricacies of the 2016 election, but on the importance of actually casting a vote.

Living on a college campus, I hear the conjecture of young students all the time. Recently, I have heard a lot of election talk and believe it or not, many college students are not even registered to vote! First of all, how. There were a myriad of resources I know about that existed at Tulane all leading up to election day to help students cast their vote, so why not use one? At first I thought it was sheer laziness that students did not actively take the step to vote, but I soon realized that that was not the case. With all the hustle and bustle that makes up the daily lives of us college students, it does not cross everyone's mind how big of a deal voting is. In the midst of midterms, homework, clubs, meetings, even laundry, it sometimes is hard to just pause and think about the disservice it would be to not vote. The fact is that the right to vote is in the constitution, meaning someone had to fight for the right.

In the most general sense, the right to vote was not always a given. People died so that you and I could vote, never forget that. Among the first to gain the right to vote were men, and from there women and minority were eventually given the same liberties. As a woman myself, I pay special attention to the fact that women fought for the simple freedoms that we sometimes take advantage of today; as a woman, the least we can all do is exercise that right and honor the sacrifice that so many made for us. Even in this day and age, women who live in Vatican City are not able to vote, while Saudia Arabian women were just granted the right last year! The moral here is do not take advantage of the simple liberty that you have, not everyone is as fortunate. No matter your race, no matter your gender, background, my opinion is that everyone should at least vote.