With less than a month to go until Election Day, students across the nation are gearing up to participate in an election that decides many important issues. Not only will the outcomes of this election strongly influence future generations, but they also might directly impact our bank accounts — something UC Davis students are taking very seriously.

What’s impressive to us is the amount of participation and passion for politics on our campus. UC Davis boasts multiple influential and powerful student groups — many of whom have created programs and spent hours organizing events in order to get the rest of campus to care enough to vote.

First of all, let us commend the Davis College Democrats. Not only do they provide opportunities for those who wish to get involved in the election through campaign work, community service and lobbying on behalf of student issues, but they pulled off one of the coolest events to happen on our campus in a while: hosting Bill Clinton at a rally on the Quad to endorse some Democratic congressional candidates.

With most of the Quad filled with thousands of students and community members, it’s safe to say that the event served as an inspiring and monumental event for those in attendance. Not many other schools can say that they’ve hosted President Clinton twice in the past four years.

ASUCD brought John Garamendi, and will be bringing Kim Vann, to speak with students, giving students direct access to the congressional election.

Two other huge groups on campus got together to create Aggies Vote, a nonpartisan coalition of ASUCD and California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), whose main purpose was registering UC Davis students to vote. ASUCD also has the New Voters Project, a continuous effort to register undergraduate students to vote.

By hosting presidential debate screenings and tabling, these groups had a strong presence on campus and have fostered a sense of political awareness in students.

We’re impressed and proud of these groups for getting out there and encouraging our campus to exercise our right to vote. There are six days left to register; what are you waiting for?

If there’s one thing I learned from Mufasa as he was teaching Simba about the Pride Lands, it’s that life continues in a never-ending circle.

Within the college Circle of Life, we have delicately orchestrated trees of lineage that date back to the beginning of UC Davis itself. Most sororities, fraternities, religious groups, sports teams and ethnic-interest organizations have a family line that connects students from decades ago to the students who are here now.

Large organizations often have Big Sibling, Little Sibling programs in which returning members take newbies under their wing. “Bigs” teach “Littles” what’s what within the organization, bestowing as much knowledge as possible so that when the young ones have their own “Littles,” they can continue the tradition.

I have one such Little in Mga Kapatid (MK), an on-campus organization revolving around Filipino-American social and academic interests.

When I first started at Davis and joined MK, I looked up to my Big as an example of what a model student should be like. When he graduated, I had my own Little to show the ropes to. Even after I stopped being involved in MK and eventually lost touch with him, we reconnected over the weekend as if no time had passed.

Dale, my Little, has grown into a leader within the Filipino-American community at UC Davis. This past weekend I attended the Pilipino Empowerment Conference (PEC), a retreat out in Bodega Bay that my Little led and coordinated. It was nothing short of amazing. I even found out that I have some grand-Littles and great-grand-Littles!

Now after three years, my Little was the one who was teaching me. But he didn’t teach me about where the best places to eat in the Silo were or show me his favorite spot to nap in Shields Library. Instead, he gave me invaluable and irreplaceable knowledge about my ethnic heritage that he himself learned from his time at Davis.

He taught me and the rest of the participants the inspiring history of the Filipino people and, in a sense, opened my mind to a larger circle of life that I never took the time to look at.

I mean, who knew that the original people of the Philippines had a thriving matriarchal society with their own written language before the Spaniards colonized them? Who knew that Filipinos were the first Asians to come to America, and further, as slaves? And who knew that a Filipino-American named Larry Itliong was a main player along with Cesar Chavez in organizing the United Farm Workers to strike for higher wages — even though there’s no holiday named after him?

These are some of the things I would’ve never learned about myself or my people if I never had Dale as my Little Sibling. The whole college system of “Bigs and Littles” turns out not only to benefit young freshmen, but also the upperclassmen who decide to take them in as their little brother or sister.

I can trace my MK family tree all the way back to 20 years ago, and if any of them came back to campus and contacted me, even though I don’t know most of them personally, I’d probably welcome them with open arms. I haven’t even met my grand-Littles and great-grand-Littles, but I already know I’d like them.

Simply being a member of an organization on campus doesn’t compare to having a Little and a Big. This system gives one a deeper feeling of “being a part of something larger than yourself.”

It creates a bond between you, all the students in your lineage who came before you and all the ones who will come after. It enhances the experience of being in college and connects you to people even after you’ve graduated and started a career.

To all my Bigs and Littles out there, thank you for helping to shape my college experience and for teaching me a little something-something about my Filipino heritage.

JHUNEHL has a student family tree that dates back to the 1960s. Tell her about your organization’s lineage at jtfortaleza@ucdavis.edu.

As you’ve likely noticed by the visit from former President Bill Clinton, the 2012 presidential general election is in full swing, and amid the barrage of advertisements and presidential debates — the question begs:

Who should we vote for?

Despite disillusion and frustration about the economy and our government’s deep fiscal dilemmas, we still must go to the ballot box this November and decide the fate of our federal government for the next four years — a presidency that will outlast every one of us who exits UC Davis without reaching the status of super-senior and follow us into the real world beyond the Memorial Union to the job market.

Not to mention the fact that on Jan. 1, 2013, this country will face an unprecedented financial event, nicknamed “Taxmaggedon,” which includes the expiration of both the large tax cuts signed into law by George W. Bush and a bipartisan payroll tax cut from last year, as well as the implementation of huge automatic spending cuts agreed upon last year because no debt deal could be reached by the congressional “super committee.”

This is a self-inflicted economic time bomb waiting to go off, and if no deal is reached, it will. Whoever is sitting in the West Wing of the White House next January has huge decisions to make and they will affect your life one way or another.

While our frustration with partisan gridlock and disappointment with the lack of “hope” and “change” may convince us to sit idly while the older generations claim their votes, this election may well determine the ideological basis for how we emerge from this economic calamity.

When we do emerge — as we inevitably will — who do we want in the reins? And in whose interests will they be working?

After four years of tepid recovery and congressional insanity — with the last two years controlled by the least productive Congress in modern history — can we trust any politician to cut through the crap and do the dirty work to save the place from burning down?

Given the still-slow recovery, can we re-elect Barack Obama and feel good about it? If you’ve heard any sound bites from the Republicans, President Obama is an anti-business, job-killing, liberal, robin-hood socialist that killed the economic recovery. Unemployment was until very recently above 8 percent nationally — and that doesn’t even include the high number of discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work.

As we hear from the Democrats, he has led the U.S. through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, successfully executed the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, rescued the American automobile industry and extended health care to an estimated 24 million new Americans (as calculated by the Congressional Budget Office).

So who’s right?

Is the Obama presidency a complete failure because our economy is not roaring out of the biggest financial disaster since it took 10 years and a World War to crawl out of the Great Depression? Well, let’s add a bit of perspective.

It’s often cited by journalists with little context that no president has ever been re-elected with unemployment above 7.2 percent since FDR did (repeatedly) during the Great Depression. Doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that our benchmarks for presidential success only date back up until the event that definitively changed the role of the federal government for the remainder of the century?

Franklin Roosevelt was reelected four times despite tragic financial conditions because people understood that the problem took more than four years to fix — even with a sympathetic Congress and substantial political capital. He took over from 12 years of an incumbent party that arguably led the country to economic disaster, unified the nation behind an unbeatable coalition of voters and eventually pulled the country out of its mess, leading to an unprecedented period of economic growth.

How impatient has our country become that it’s willing to throw out the leader of its executive branch every four years because we’re not enjoying instant gratification?

In this case, it will only lead us back to the party — and the policies — that caused the Recession to begin with. Considering that the last guy in office was able to turn a $236 billion yearly federal budget surplus to a $1.1 trillion deficit by the end of his first term — it seems reasonable to give this one a renewal.

We have a big decision to make, and whether or not Romney makes you want to jump off your couch and out into the streets, or Obama still makes your heart flutter with the expectations of 2008 — we need to be heard loud and clear.

VOTE.

If you’re not registered to vote, don’t email KEVIN PELSTRING at kpelstring@ucdavis.edu but visit register.rockthevote.com.