Reunite Gondwanaland!!!

The University of Alberta Students Union is quite possibly the most useless organization on campus. The only function that the SU has served lately seems to have been to fight the provincial government over the amount of subsidies that the university receives. Freeze the Fees is their slogan. This refers to the desire to stop current rise in tuition. Since 1990, tuition, they claim, has risen over 200 percent. The SU points out that Alberta is currently in one of the largest budget surpluses ever and that only a small fraction of that surplus would be necessary to maintain tuition costs for the next several years.
So what has the SU done to actually fight rising tuition costs? They've given out free hamburgers and soda to passing students in order to get them to sign petitions and pre-typed letters to legislature. A couple of times, the SU has organized a march on the parliament building and staged "theatrical" protests on the steps of the provincial government building.
What has this accomplished? Absolutely nothing! Not only did the SU completely fail in its attempt to fight bill 43, the bill which removes tuition caps for universities, but they continue to fail in every single attempt to make a politician (students for the most part too) care about keeping tuition the same. The SU is going about this issue in entirely the wrong way. They might as well be screaming "Reunite Gondwanaland" infront of the United Nations building. Reuniting the southern continents is both physically and politically impossible. Anybody That knows what the issue is would laugh, even if it did seem like a good idea. Politicians don't care about the rants of a few young university students, they care about the voters. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. If the student union were to put as much effort into backing candidates that support their cause and convince students to go to the poles and vote out the current administration, then some change will be seen. People will act if they're afraid of losing their jobs. Student's parents and the parents of prospective students, if they vote would probably be able to make a huge impact.
I hate people who say "fight the system." No, the system is there for a reason, it's a good system. It's changeable but it takes time and effort; so that people wont just fiddle with it every time there is a small, but upset group. Unlike a lot of situations where the squeaky weal gets the grease, the politicians will normally just say that the squeak of students isn't loud enough to be worth the grease. However, if a couple of current leaders of state are replaced, the remaining individuals would be able to clearly see that they are not immune from lay offs.
Voter turn out is absolutely appalling. Old people make up the vast majority of voters, and let me tell you, they don't care about student tuition, unless their grandkids are hitting them up for money. There are approximately 30 thousand students and professors at the U of A. Each of those students has two parents. If half of those people are even eligible to vote, and a tenth of those actually show up to the poles, then that is nearly 5000 votes agains increased tuition. Granted, that isn't very many people, but Alberta has just about the lowest average age of the population, so that some octogenarian won't be skewing the vote. Consider also the 1400 voting parents of students that will be entering university next year. With such low normal voter tern out, over 6000 people voting the same way on a particular issue will has a tremendous impact.