Are Stanford students lazy? The idea might seem counterintuitive. Come on, a typical response would argue, we didn’t get into Stanford because we’re lazy. It was too competitive; we worked hard in high school, did lots of activities and so on and so forth. Ask an average person on campus about their average day. If anything, students try to do too much.

But remember that among these same over-committed, high-achieving students are the ones who don’t bother to separate recycling or even throw away their own trash, leave trays of food in the hall for weeks and choose to block a sidewalk rather than put a bike in an actual rack. And most of them don’t vote.

One could protest that these are unfair comparisons. I may not vote, but I definitely recycle, and I would never make someone else clean up my mess.

Guess again, because that is exactly what happens. Although it may sound elitist, the country would be better off if more college students, especially those from Stanford, participated in their own government. When some of the best informed and most highly educated don’t bother to be involved, ignorance dominates and others are left to clean up. A leading polling company, Harris Interactive, conducted a poll this June in which 25 percent of the participants believed that weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) had actually been found in Iraq. This has not been an under the radar news issue.

The excuse most often heard is that voting is too much trouble. “I meant to do it” is a common chorus after the election. The same busy schedules we’re so proud of make civic participation difficult. But when it comes down to it, the time it takes to register, consider the issues and vote is much less than most students spend surfing Facebook or watching TV in a single week. It really isn’t that hard.

Stanford is a vibrant place when it comes to politics, so it isn’t hard to pay attention. We have student activists and visiting high-profile speakers, not to mention professors who consistently make the news. It would be unfair not to point out that many students do vote, and though there is no official tally, we probably have a higher participation rate than other colleges. But it’s still not enough.

Confronted with this logic, apathy is usually the next defense. Phrases like “I’m a techie,” or “I’m just not into politics,” are used to rationalize why voting is not important to some people. This is still laziness. Techies pay taxes too, and not being “into politics” doesn’t mean you are no longer included in the democracy. It just means you let other people decide things for you which as shown by the WMD example is a very dicey prospect.

Even worse is the belief that voting itself doesn’t matter because of the small impact of one person. Caitlin Smith, a sophomore active in Stanford in Government (SIG) and the Student Democrats, worked to register voters last year. She says a typical response of students she approached was that voting doesn’t matter because one vote never decided an election. This justification is prevalent even among those who are politically active. “There are people who read the articles and would work on a campaign but don’t vote themselves,” Smith said.

Debate and discussion are great, but political discourse cannot be anything but a means of hearing your own voice unless you are willing to take the next step and actually vote.

Regardless of one’s interest level, leaving it up to other people is the equivalent of expecting someone else to clean up your mess.

You also owe it to yourself. Though you might not think about taxes because most college students don’t have much of a taxable income, you still pay them. California collects 8.25 percent of every dollar you spend here and you only get it back through government services.

A friend of mine is visiting the U.S. for a year and despite a keen interest in American politics, he can’t vote. But he’s carefully saving all of his receipts and plans to collect a tax refund when he departs that could be near $5,000. The rest of us are unable to do that; these taxes are literally the cost of citizenship. You may have little interest in politics. You may be a techie. Or you may think all politicians are dirt bags, that one vote doesn’t count or that filling out a registration form and going to a voting station is just too strenuous. But whatever your excuse, do it for the money. Do it because you aren’t getting that $5,000 back, and it’s worth trying to protect your investment.

Oh, and please take care of your own stupid trays.

Michael Wilkerson wants you to vote. If you still aren’t convinced, e-mail him at wilkerson@stanford.edu.