"Future Events, Such as These"

Welcome to the end, folks. We hope you have enjoyed the show that is the University at Buffalo.
The past year has been a wild ride for us, and we wish it were the same for you. Yet, we've seen the reaction this year. A couple stories riled you up, and the rest were widely ignored, even the hard-hitting journalism.
To begin the year, we watched as the university royally screwed us. With a grand flourish, UB blessed us with a massive debacle with our student aid. After basically telling us to cry about it, our aid was disbursed after many of us had bills to pay.
You took some action. A protest was staged over inflammatory comments that showed just how little the administration really knows about our challenges. Attitudes were changed, even though policy may not have.
But that uproar wasn't as loud as it seemed. Most of the rage was vented on Facebook and Twitter; only a few vocal students put the team on their backs and did the majority of the demonstrating. The rest of us agreed, but watched from afar.
Fall Fest was the same way, many were pissed that SA booked The Fray instead of [insert whatever band you like]. Around that same time, however, we uncovered some disturbing information.
UB had, for some reason still unknown to us, made a campaign donation to the Chris Collins' campaign for Erie County Executive. The administration simply brushed it away, hid in its ivory tower, and now we have no information at all.
And who can blame the administration? It saw the writing on the wall. Nobody cared but us; it didn't affect any student's life directly so there wasn't a loud blast of rage from students. Apparently, we don't mind when an institution that is supposed to be public blatantly donates to a political campaign with our money.
None of this is intended to demean the students of this school. We know you're here to mainly get your education, and that many of you are commuters and don't have as much time to get involved on campus and interested in what's going on.
What we do want is for the future of UB to be better. We've seen what can happen even when a small percentage of us rise up. This year we've seen how just talking about a story and voicing your opinion can instigate change. Being informed has a significant impact on the world.
If you don't, we get what happened with the Collins contribution. It's really easy for the school to ignore the problem when it knows that the people they answer to are ignoring it as well.
So get involved. It doesn't have to be a massive rally, or part of a gigantic group. Being informed and voting in the SA election puts you heads and tails in front of everyone else, and if you don't you have no right to complain about how bad any fest is, or when the e-board does stupid things.
In short, we're both proud and disappointed this year. We had hoped for more action to be stirred out of you. Maybe we were being optimistic. We're proud, however, that you cared about some big issues this year, and showed the world that we might not be apathetic forever.
We'll work until the end to make sure that you get the information that matters to you.