With every birthday comes new privileges and opportunities. When we’re counting down the last few days to our birthday, we’re usually looking forward to something exciting. It could be just a small gathering of friends, a newly legal pub crawl, or, at the age of 18, the ability to buy lottery tickets and porn and register to vote.

With the flood of excitement stemming from last year’s election, we saw a rapid influx of rosy-cheeked and eager young voters. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the 2008 presidential election was the first since 1992 where more than 50 percent of Americans from age 18 to 29 voted.

In last year’s election, the youth vote played an extremely dynamic role throughout the course of the campaign, but what about in years to come? After the exciting finish to 2008, the drive to actively contribute to federal decision-making may play less of a role in students’ lives.

Every year, the first Tuesday of November, the last day to drop off ballots, creeps up on us like a sock-wearing black cat in the night.

Ideally, we could all admit truthfully to being upstanding young citizens of the glorious United States and the beautiful state of Washington and never miss a vote. However, in the midst of studying for midterms, extracurricular activities, jobs, and trying not to forget our stellar social lives, it becomes easy to neglect to bubble in our ballots and send it in the mail on time. In elections where voter issues don’t evoke such strong emotional responses as national presidential campaigns, or even state issues like Referendum 71 and Initiative 1033, will young people, students especially, shirk their roles as a voter?

Statistically, according to the Institute for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement, voters are typically going to be older, wealthier, more educated and of a higher socioeconomic status. This already leaves students like us in the minority. However, college students as a whole consist of upwardly mobile, middle- and upper-middle-class citizens, who are given every opportunity to play active roles in state government. Especially on a campus like the UW, where student activist groups run rampant, we should not expect students to be considered lazy when it comes to social and political involvement.

Before the ratification of the 26th amendment in 1971, most state law commonly prohibited people under the age of 21 from voting in national and state elections. With this relatively new privilege granted to us, we should be taking full advantage to contribute to our state’s decision-making process.

So, in the words of Ben Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and as students and informed citizens of Washington and the United States, we owe it to ourselves to participate in these annual elections.

Reach columnist Emily McFadden at opinion@dailyuw.com.