My name is Noah Cohrs. You may recognize me from the lake. My friend Alan Hu and I recently ran a joke campaign for ASG co-presidents, which we hope brought you some joy. In a brilliant demonstration of the beauty of ranked choice voting, we lost. Barely.

That’s probably a good thing, because we would have resigned anyways, but I regret being unable to give a resignation speech and speak publicly to the Northwestern community about why we ran this campaign.

The student government here has a problem. A vast majority of students do not know about it, care about it or engage with it in any meaningful way. Last week’s election, which had the highest turnout in recent memory, still only saw 2,039 out of over 8,000 undergraduates come out to vote. During our campaign, I lost count of how many times I heard people say things like “I hadn’t heard of ASG before this,” “I’ve been here for two years, and I still have no idea what ASG does,” or “I think ASG is the most useless organization.”

I can’t blame them, because two weeks ago, I was in the same boat. But I’ve started to realize that this attitude is dangerous. I believe this disengagement with our student government is a major problem — that ASG matters — for two reasons.

The first is about practice. As university students, we’re learning how to participate in society. If we learn to ignore the government and our responsibility to elect representatives, we will bring that apathy into the world. If, instead, we choose to build our democratic muscles — practice following local elections, learning about issues and voting — we are preparing ourselves to be more engaged, powerful citizens in the real world for the rest of our lives. This is a key part of your education. And it’s important enough to be worth a few minutes of your time.

The second reason is even more important. I believe that, with the students united behind it, ASG could become a powerful political force on campus. We are over 8,000 hard-working, passionate young people, and we are critically important to this University. Uniting behind ASG will greatly strengthen our bargaining position with the administration, improve our ability to implement policies and strengthen our campus-wide community.

And it doesn’t have to stop with campus. This many people, when well organized, have the potential to create great change — in our city, county, state, country and world. Through ASG, students could engage directly with real issues, instead of being represented by a University  administration that frequently shies away from taking a stand on issues that are critically important to us. But that cannot happen until we get organized.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that ASG doesn’t matter because it’s ineffective. That may be true, but the blame for that doesn’t just fall on them. Maybe you don’t engage with ASG because it’s ineffective, but ASG can’t be effective if you don’t engage with it. Something has to change, and I’m starting by choosing to care.

That was the first purpose of this project: to combat student disengagement by running a “government awareness campaign.” Even though we were a joke campaign — hey, now a lot more people know about ASG. Now a lot more people know they have presidents. More people watched the debate. More people voted. That’s a win in my book.

The other purpose of this campaign was to demonstrate, by means of allegory, the consequences of this disengagement.

When a government and its people are this disconnected from each other, candidates are held to much lower standards. They don’t need to propose sound policies or demonstrate their competence. All they need is attention. Controversy. Drama. Anything to turn disengaged voters into passionate supporters — and when people are apathetic towards their government, that doesn’t take much.

We used these tactics to run a harmless joke campaign. Most campaigns that use them don’t.

This is populism. This is what happens when you don’t care. You can ignore it, but it won’t ignore you. This is the defining political force of our time, and it is critically important that we understand it.

In this election, good triumphed: John and Gauri, your new presidents, are incredible, dedicated people. They seem willing to put in the work to bridge the divide between ASG and the students. With their help, this can be a turning point toward better campus governance.

Either way, I will be doing my best, at every level, to become a more engaged and responsible citizen, and to help others do the same. Because our story here has a happy ending. But not every story does.

Noah Cohrs is a SESP junior. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.