Kudus, young people of America.

The vaunted “youthquake” seems real; we’re voting in record numbers in caucus after caucus, primary after primary. Voting is cool, apparently.

So cool, in fact, that politicians are paying attention to us. In a sense, we’re growing up — the legendarily fickle youth vote is becoming a reality in this election year. Candidates like Texas Rep. Paul and Ill. Sen. Barack Obama have spent a significant amount of time and money to reach out to us.

Obama packed ‘em in at Key Arena Friday, with a capacity crowd of about 21,000 showing up to see him in person. Ron Paul made a quick visit to our campus two weeks ago to rally his zealous supporters — a group that includes many of our peers.

But this newfound and somewhat grown-up power brings with it a proportional amount of responsibility.

Yes, the “r” word.

In the past, conventional wisdom said that we’d start caring about politics only after we got married, had kids, a mortgage, a car, and a dog (or cat, or perhaps both). And that’s held true since the passage of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution in 1971. We had to have a “stake in society” to really care about what happened with our government.

That’s stupid, of course. But it’s been true for far too long. Finally, however, things may be changing for the better.

But we must be savvy consumers of politics. We can’t just eat up whatever is thrown our way. We should advocate the issues that we care about, whatever our political persuasions, by voting and caucusing. And we should also be careful about who we support.

Let’s not get so excited that we forget to think, read and talk about what we actually believe, and why we believe it. Ideas have consequences and words have meaning.

So be brave, be bold, and vote. But make sure to do your homework. You shouldn’t buy a car just because it looks good (though that helps). We shouldn’t choose the next leader of the free world on a whim. Let’s make our presidential wannabes earn our vote. They have to do more than say they care; they have to show it.

In the meantime, let’s pay attention.