Based on a campus-wide survey, only 33 percent of the Loyola student body voted in the November elections.

In 2008, national surveys conducted by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement found that 36 percent of youth without college experience voted. In that same election, 62 percent of youth with college experience voted. This means Loyola fell roughly 3 percent below the non-college students who voted in 2008 and 29 percent below college students. As the statistics indicate, Loyola’s intrinsic nature as a university should have almost doubled its voter turnout.

While Loyola students do represent 33 different countries, only 26 people in the freshman class are from foreign countries. Out a class size of 801, it is safe to speculate that foreign nationals only account for about a 3 percent error.

This is only enough of an error to bring Loyola up to the percentages seen among non-college students in 2008.

More than half the student body is from out of state; however, absentee voting is very possible and students can also use their Loyola address and register to vote here in New Orleans.

There doesn’t seem to be a viable excuse for why Loyola didn’t vote in mass. Perhaps this was because there wasn’t a large enough push from the university. In the past, there have been tables in the Danna Student Center helping people register to vote. This year, there were no tables to be seen. More likely, the problem was that elections fell right after midterms or that the president was not up for election.

This seems to be the most likely case. Numbers have not yet been posted regarding how college students voted across the nation, but if Loyola is any indication, the turnout was less than in 2008.

As the vote was “just” for senators and other assorted politicians, it may have not seemed worth it to the majority of Loyola students (and possibly college students across the nation) to vote.

This, however, could not be further from the truth. The legislative branch changed hands in this year’s November election and thanks to our system of checks and balances just as much of the government changed in the 2010 election as did in the 2008 election.

These editorials are the majority opinion of the editorial board.