Collegiate Times

Consider for a moment Homecoming week at Virginia Tech; not at all very different from the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Two weeks of T-shirt making, campaigning, partying and celebrating centered on each party's "candidate" of choice. Now that the reasons behind national conventions have been widely debated, it seems to us like much to do about nothing; similar to yes, Homecoming elections.

While we realize that Homecoming is a time-honored tradition in college, it is also safe to say that there are only a select group of people on our campus who actually care about who becomes king and queen, mainly those belonging to Greek life organizations and similar student groups on campus.

Homecoming itself is supposed to mean so much more than that. Its history is rooted in traditionally welcoming back former students and alumni for a celebration centered around sports. and, in our case, events specific to Hokie culture. The Third Eye Blind Concert on Tuesday was a great way to bring students together for a night in Burruss Hall.

The part of Homecoming week annoying to most students on campus, however, is the campaigning for the young men and women on this year's Homecoming elections. For those involved in campaigning, we can handle your Facebook statuses and updated Facebook pictures with your candidates of choice plastered across the screens. We can handle your cars with hokey sayings (pun intended) scribbled across your back windshield. We can handle the banners and the signs and the equally cheesy T-shirts worn by sorority girls across campus. By the way, do these girls just do laundry every night, or do they actually own five replicas of the exact same T-shirt? Even that's OK. That's fine. We'll chalk it up to tradition and school spirit and enthusiasm for the sake of, well, enthusiasm.

But what became more than annoying during these past few days of voting were the fliers handed out to anyone who walked within a mile radius of our Drillfield. Those fliers just end up in the trash. That, or littered across the Drillfield. The majority of students walking across campus do not personally know the women and men being campaigned for, so what desire would those students have to go online and choose the name on the flier handed to them by Newman Library? It doesn't make sense. We don't know what kind of people they are and how much they give back to the Tech community.

With that said, we wish all the people on the Homecoming Court the best of luck, but leave the population of students at Tech who honestly couldn't care less out of it.

The most popular question circulating Tech's campus in these past few weeks: "Have you voted?" We have enough people asking us to do that in Obama pins and shirts. The girls in Greek letters need to leave us alone.