First, a few simple truths.

There will never be enough parking spots. Thus, the early student gets the proverbial worm. Bus rider? Well, the worm comes to you instead.

Truly, late is better than never. There are some circles where one tardy is two-thirds short of one absence, but even that is still a courtesy. If we disagree, think of one-third to none – in pizza terms. Exactly. Pizza knows no absentee ballot.

Generally, it’s not too hard to get a hold of the little things you want on a day-to-day basis. Need coffee? Buy it by the cup. Need to make a phone call? Just don’t make it in class. Can’t find bite to eat? Yeah, “there’s an app for that,” a la Apple spokesperson.

One more thing – the 18-24 year old demographic (the majority of Fresno City College students fall into this group) is terribly underrepresented within the workings of our day’s democracy. In 2008, 55.7 percent of the 18-24 year old voters, according to the United States Census Bureau, were out playing hooky, absent, not represented.

This is a disturbing trend, and in startling contrast to other end of the age-group spectrum. Statistically, your grandparents vote more often than your friends do. The same census reported 65.8 percent of people over the age of 75 drop the ballot.

Now, I understand that we (I just tip-toed to 24 years old myself) are busy people. If there isn’t a list of things we need to do, there is still the growing list of things we want to do.

To college youth, performing a civic duty – jury duty, for example – is like washing that pair of socks that spent too much time on your feet, were puddle-moistened, and then dried over a dusty heater. It is just too easy to not care and throw them away, to replace them – mostly because there is no great shortage of socks in the country.

Our voice, our place in a functioning democracy, however, is not disposable. It cannot be justly replaced. As to our civic duties, there exists no reasonable substitution. We are blessed with our own vote, as cold feet are blessed with dryer-fresh socks.

Now, I understand that we are a diverse group. There is variety to our circumstances like there is variety to our faces. But what dire circumstances exist that we would opt to silence ourselves and slip so quietly into obscurity?

I understand that there are some that refuse to vote for principled reasons: government is a bureaucratic slog, politicians are bought-and-paid-for, promises are empty, feet drag to the beat of the greenback drum. But apathy and absence are hardly solutions, and disillusionment is only ammunition. It is the brightest light any one person can shine on the ideological hide-and-seek that so often drives policy.

For example: In 1975, the Supreme Court upheld the idea that money is no different than free speech, a perverse addition to the empowerment of corporate personhood. Money is speech, and there is hardly enough change in the couch to buy better policy.

I understand that student protests are on the rise. UC San Diego has been inundated with student outcry over racism. Not so far away, Fresno State held a walk-out protesting furloughs, cuts in class availability, and rising tuition costs.

But what are so many voices worth if they are not counted and never clearly, completely heard? How can the student body save its education when it is still and silent within the whirlpools of the political runaround?

Insofar, the mainstay of our democracy is subjected to the whims of faceless entities with the ideological tendency to dominate, to dry away democracy with focus groups, advertisement, distraction, and consumption.

And it’s working.

Thus, they are The Guard, the gate-keepers, and we might only catch a glimpse of what they hold from us, from some relatively safe distance.

So, if you believe it is corrupt, shamelessly speak of the inequities the status quo has laid upon the disenfranchised. If you believe government officials are generally self-interested, you are right. So let them feel the fear of losing the power that is bequeathed upon them by our consent to be governed. Air the dirty laundry. There is no app for democracy, and no one voice will ever stir like the hum of millions, not even our current president.

Silence changes nothing – in a quiet world, 10 years in a future where we stay silent will be no different than 10 minutes. The future can promise nothing to that which was never there to begin with.

If you want something now, if you need something now, then there is no better time than now – to prepare ourselves, to stand and to stir our rumbling gift, our voice, to call for the changing of the guard.