We’ve got a serious case of the Issues this year. But what to care about? Where do you aim your burgeoning, passionate fury? Trick question! Everywhere, of course! We’re all such furious young people. But you’d be remiss if these weren’t on your political plate:

-The New Russia
Does Russia actually have the national cojones to start a second Cold War? Honestly, it seems unlikely; as a nation, we’re not as fresh around nukes as we used to be, and I’d hope there have been enough near misses since then that’d we’d be leery of another round of brinkmanship. But it’s clear that the Motherland is tired of playing second fiddle to emerging powerhouses like China, and with all the god-knows-what they’ve been getting into recently, we’ll definitely want a Prez who can play both hardball and group hugs with the Russians. Of course, this probably won’t affect the average college student much, though you might want to bug your facilities management about getting some sturdier desks.

- Social Services
Even if you’re neither part of the LGBT community nor the unfortunate bearer of an unwanted pregnancy, issues of gay marriage and abortion rights probably won’t be far from your mind this election - especially with newly veep’d Palin’s tough pro-life position. These issues might not radically alter the course of the average college student’s life - though in some cases, they will - but they function as convenient barometers of our moral position as a country. They’re good banners to wave, and it’s been a while since some of us have been proud of our country’s moral philosophy. And if you think they’re silly, irrelevant issues, without the substance of “the economy” or “war”, there are plenty of voters who don’t: the moral majority is coming, and they have pitchforks.

- The Race and Sex Cards
Both parties are now set to rock the history textbooks: come January, when the new president is sworn in, we’ll have either a black man or a white woman holding a higher American political office than ever before. And we’re going to have to turn from our television sets and ask ourselves: are we a fundamentally different country? Have we turned a corner in the history of equality and diversity? When we look out at our campuses, do we still see all the white students and black students grouping together, and do we still see the same amount of violence against women? The molasses of change runs slowly, but it starts at the top; whoever we put in the White House will probably echo their way into social life for a while.

- Climate Change
The way we’re going now, it doesn’t really matter how the Iraq war, or any other war, turns out. It doesn’t matter how the loan crisis ends. You see, some smart science folks have a clock, and when the clock reaches midnight, we all blow up. We are all dead. Complete nuclear holocaust - or, as of the last time they moved the hand closer to the big 12, climate catastrophe. Climate change has become as scary as The Bomb. Sea levels rising, sudden increase in severe storms, mass extinctions, eruption of regional conflicts over energy sources - Hurricane Katrina was only the beginning. Sure, it’s not a definite thing; the IPCC report lists the probability of humans screwing up the weather, for example as merely “more likely than not”. But is a category 5 hurricane all up in your business something you want to leave to “likely” chance? How about total Armageddon?

Vote, people.