October 12, 2012
opinion
The Brandeis Hoot 13
Learn to take relationship hints By Aliya Nealy
Special to the Hoot
I recently decided to watch a romantic comedy that would preach to the logical side of my romantic self. I chose “He’s Just Not That Into You.” I figured it would bring me back to reality by showing me that sometimes things don’t work out. This movie, however, only reinforced the unrealistic ideas that most romantic comedies present. “He’s Just Not That Into You” is adorable. Naturally my heart was singing at the end because (spoiler alert) each woman ends up with the guy she wants, or free from the guy she doesn’t need. But life isn’t always like that, especially in college. Sometimes you don’t end up with the person you want and sometimes we can’t let go of the person that is emotionally toxic for us. Though this movie didn’t help me achieve the emotional nirvana my soul was searching for, it left me with much to think about. The most important being that if a guy is really into you, he’ll do pretty much whatever it takes to show you. Truth is, we should all determine our expectations regarding what we consider to be a genuine and sincere expression of interest. While at Brandeis I’ve noticed several different situations in which people pursuing relationships get stuck in one of two ways: In one, when it comes to pursuing a relationship, people have
Weekly Kos
graphic by linjie xu/the hoot
unrealistic expectations of what is means to do “whatever it takes.” Or in another situation, a girl or guy finds someone he or she is interested in, who expresses only slight interest in him or her. This allows them to meet a lower set of expectations. As a self-proclaimed sap, I know that sometimes I allow the romantic movies that I repeatedly watch in-
form me of how the guys in my life should act. But despite my occasional desire to have someone kiss me passionately in the rain, or read me a deep love poem in a smoky nightclub, I usually have pretty reasonable ideas of what I expect someone to do when they express a genuine interest. Everyone has different ideas of what it means to do “whatever it
takes” to show a sincere interest in someone. If you have someone showing genuine interest in you and you feel that what they’re doing is lacking slightly, maybe you need to put in work to bridge the gap between what you’re getting and what you want. Sometimes, if you want to be asked on a date, you have to be willing to ask. Or you have to be willing to have
Vote early in your life
By Nathan Koskella Editor
The exact title of Samuel L. Jackson’s now widely-seen viral video in support of Barack Obama’s reelection, is not to be printed in this family-friendly community newspaper. But “Wake the F*ck Up,” which presents the actor’s endorsement of Obama’s Democrats largely by virtue of a furious slamming of Romney and the Republican Party, provides an example for which candidate one should cast their vote. What Jackson (and the Democratic super PAC that underwrote the spot) wants is to reach the particular voting bloc of America’s youth. Always the most underperforming age group in terms of turnout, the real message of ads like this one is that young people can not only swing our national elections, but that they should. No voters will on average have more of their lives affected by the policies yet to be enacted than young voters: We can reasonably expect to remain alive the longest. But voter participation in my age bracket, what the Census Bureau categorizes at 1824, does not even consist of half of us. It was pretty close in 2008, when young people around the nation flocked in record-breaking numbers to support Obama. But that 48.5 percent is higher than the average, and considerably higher than the election that preceded it, featuring two non-incumbent presidents: In the extremely controversial 2000 election, youth turnout was below 40 percent. If young people voted at the rate of citizens aged 30 and older, which is consistently—even before 2008—about two in every three, any discrepancy between the popular and electoral vote count would have been
an uncomfortable, but important, conversation with your person of interest. If you have these conversations or work to bridge the gap between your expectations, and they still put in little effort, it might be a situation with which you need to forget. This is because they might not be ready to accept what you’re willing to give or give what you want to receive.
graphic by steven wong/the hoot
obliterated, and the national fiasco avoided. Now, that stat is true if a lot of things happened: if the 30-plus voted at the seven-tenths that it holds; if more voters did not vote for spurious third-parties, et cetera. But elections are about more than producing a fully credible winner. Meaningful decisiveness requires a candidate who can honestly claim to represent at least a majority of the electorate. No candidate has ever achieved this among young people. And it is young people who ought to voice the biggest say in our nation’s future, not the least. The national issues of this 2012
election, from taxation to health care to military policy, concern all Americans, but especially the youth. Obama’s stimulus program was financed almost exclusively through deficit spending, and it is the upcoming generations who will have to decide how much or even whether to pay down the debt. Mitt Romney’s proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare, while preserving the status quo for current and soon-to-be retirees, drastically alters the social contract for laborers who are about to enter the workforce. And it is not the middle-aged titans of industry and diplomacy that fight battles,
rather it is a far-too-large number of young Americans whose lives are cut short waging “our” wars. And young people have even more to offer the discourse, with entire issue planks that are not even being talked about by baby-boomer candidates, senators and bureaucrats, or even the aging, armchair pundits of legacy media. Climate change has played a virtually nonexistent role in the current campaign, and the boldest measures to support the planet are completely off the table. Young people support gay rights by commanding margins: In today’s youthdriven institutions like some profes-
sional sports and nearly all college campuses it’s virtually a non-issue. And the present immigration and deportation policies largely affect new citizens who are the youngest, having been here in America and on Earth the least amount of time. Those are just three prominent examples. Absolutely no national politician entertains scores of others: What are we to do with emerging technologies? Soon human genes will be almost entirely mapped out, robotic machines will be able to outwork all of our laboring output and new gadgets will throw all of our expectations of privacy high into the air. And these technology laws, from patents to virtual policing, are being written by great-grandfathers. Obama and Romney may know how to make deft use of email and Twitter, but do Supreme Court justices and decades-longserving House committee chairmen? Astute readers between the lines may have picked up that this 21-yearold supports the reelection of the president. But if America’s youth would like to return to the America that Mitt Romney likes to discuss with our older, more powerful fellow citizens, they should make that known as well. But you don’t have to be a liberal to be a democrat, and yes, I intentionally wrote lowercase d, in order to want a place where voters actually decide the direction of their society, for good or ill. And my peers and I vote too little to be worthy of the benefits that democracy provides; it has to change. We matter and have more potential interest than any other group. Last-minute confession: I didn’t have enough time to vote two years ago, and I never cast my vote for Martha Coakley in her doomed race against Scott Brown. I’m not going to make the same mistake ever again.