The Eyeopener’s candid reporter Adrian Morrow kept an eye out for over-eager students who couldn’t wait to vote. It seems as though he’s still looking…
It’s late afternoon on E-Day. Students mill around the Podium building. A steady stream of students pass along the hallway outside the Hub cafeteria, leaving the brightly lit school for the dark drizzle of a cold Monday.
A few yellow and black signs point the way to a polling station in the school.
Set up in the Student Success Centre, the station gives Ryerson’s students a chance to vote in the municipal elections. Only a handful of people drop in.
In the caf across the hall, a small group of students are killing time before a late class.
They start up a game of poker, complete with tall piles of plastic chips and frequent gripes about bad luck.
“You’ve got a fucking deck hid up your sleeve; that’s the third time you’ve beat me!” one guy says. His friend smiles and quietly pulls in a few more chips. Another boy walks up and greets everyone at the table. “You guys vote yet?”
“Naw.”
“You can vote, like, right over there,” he says, pointing in the direction of the polls.
“You can vote at your work,” someone else says. The boy hovers a few moments, then pulls up a chair to join the game.
Photos of mayoral candidates look out at the students from nearby newspapers.
David Miller shows off his trademark wavy, blond mop; Jane Pitfield sports a campaign button and smiles half-heartedly; Stephen LeDrew, buried further in the paper, wears a polka dot bowtie.
A few solitary students walk into the polling station over the next half hour. The one with large headphones carries a book bag over his shoulder and heads in to vote. It takes him about fifteen minutes to provide proof of his residence.
A tall woman wearing glasses and blue jeans goes in, only to re-emerge shortly after. She doesn’t have proof of her residence.
Down the hall, two students study over coffee, trying to make sense of complicated math.
When the conversation briefly turns to the election, one student says she voted for Pitfield.
“Her name just sounds like she should be the mayor.” Further down, three girls turn on Bollywood music, their laughter fills the hall.
Most of the people coming to votelook a bit older than the average student.
Some have bald spots, one wears jeans hiked up to their chest. A younger guy drops into the polling station, sporting bleach blonde hair and plugs.
A group of six loud students saunter down the hall. One of them veers toward the polling station and nearly steps inside.
“Is this the study space?” he says. “No,” says his friend, “that’s the voting space.”
“Let’s vote, yo!” says another friend, and everyone laughs a little.
“So, you guys wanna go to Starbucks?”
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