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Code of Ethics

Angie Gangi
Sports Editor

The team lines were drawn. Each side prepared for this day for months and it was finally here.

Tuesday was the Super Bowl of politics, and I took my season pass (my ballot stub), pulled up a seat in front of my TV and watched to see if my team won.

But this year was different. I changed my team this year after feeling trapped in a partisan power struggle. I removed my name from the list of registered Democrats and put it back as, simply, an American.

When did we go from the United States to red and blue states anyway?

Ever since the color-by-number maps of the 2000 election, it seems like our country has taken a step in the wrong direction.

The childlike primary color designations we seem to live by today are a joke. Americans are much more complex than that.

We may have similar values and desires, but each of us has a power that is the core of what makes our country the best in the world: freedom.

We have the freedom to choose what is right for us and our communities. We have the freedom to disagree.

Americans are lucky to have that freedom and we should feel free to choose a candidate for what they believe in, not just for the party box they check on their voter registration sheet.

Instead we seem to have a new form of segregation. Instead of labeling ourselves as black or white, we are now blue or red, left or right, conservative or liberal.

It has never been our nation’s proudest moment when we have divided our country like this in the past.

All of this separation leads us to a debilitating “us vs them” mentality. We don’t even hear the issues anymore. We just see if it’s a Republican or a Democrat talking and conform our thoughts to those of the party we chose.

As young adults, many of us just followed our parents’ lead into their party. So basically we are blindly following the generation before us, who if we haven’t noticed, isn’t always in agreement with our beliefs.

We can all do better than conforming to the strict party lines that are tearing our nation apart. We should be working together to protect our safety, not making a game out of blaming each other for every little thing.

Even though I unregistered, I still have the same values and priorities that led me to be a Democrat in the first place.

But I think being a good citizen is more important than dividing ourselves into teams.

We teach our kids to play nice and not be sore losers or boastful winners, and yet we turn around and act childish on the political playground.

Remember that feeling we shared after Sept. 11? In our sadness, we all came together.

We flew our flags proudly and renewed our patriotism. We were not divided into political parties but brought together as a unified nation.

Even without a party in this election, I know we won as Americans. Voter turn-out was up from last year and people seemed to really care about the results.

Americans were discussing the issues again and not just defending their team.

Now if we could just get as many voters to contribute in our national elections as they do for the contestants on American Idol.

Angie Gangi, a senior broadcast journalism major, is sports editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at agangi@ulv.edu.