I'm graduating...and the French voted

Yesterday I attended our annual Political Science picnic. It was a nice day and the location, Chisholm Creek Park, was beautiful, as always. I swear, every year that I've been there, the day has always been cloudy, but it's never rained. Jon and I NEED to go biking there--it has a few offroad paths that would be perfect for biking. With helmets, of course.

Back on track. This year-end picnic honors Pi Sig initiates, scholarship recipients, and graduates. I enjoyed the opportunity to visit with professors, most of whom I haven't seen since our senior seminar in the fall. I also caught up with old classmates. It was a very pleasant event.

Today I had a meeting scheduled with Dr. Shaw to survey my experience with the PoliSci department. The meeting was cancelled, but I never checked my email and therefore trudged the three flights of stairs (I haven't gone up those stairs since last fall!) in vain, but for the 10 calories I burned. Walking out of the office, I glanced down the hall and it suddenly hit me: I'm going to miss this place! For the past two years, I've been planning my escape: my escape from an undergrad program, an escape from Wichita, an escape from my safety zone. Though I've been taking the steps towards graduation, I never really considered the fact that, in just weeks, I wouldn't be...HERE! This school has been my third home (after work, my first home; and home, my second home) for the past six years and I was getting ready to leave my professors--the people who had given me so much and worked so hard to help me maximize my undergrad experience. It's taken me a few minutes to analyze my thoughts and write it down, but in reality it was just a 1/2 second of sentimentality. So don't get too worked up. Because I didn't.

Onto business. I just finished a NY Times article on the French first vote, which leaves Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal in the run-off. For those who haven't taken Comparative Politics with Ciboski, the French system is developed so two plurality winners advance to the second vote, which gives one the majority of the vote. Since we essentially have a two-party system in the U.S., these clever little voting rules were never necessary.

It struck me as a bit funny. Not the fact that a Socialist could receive the second highest plurality. Europe is more left-leaning than we are (economically and socially). I'm actually interested in seeing how much an impact a Socialist would have in France...would it whole-heartedly embrace Socialism, or would it merely implement a few more programs designed to equalize its populace? And where do Turks and other Muslim immigrants fit into this equality? I'm a bit curious to see if Socialism...or even Communism...may survive. Just as a culture has to "evolve into democracy" (contrast Britain with its 8-century acculturation period and, say, Afghanistan), does a culture have to evolve into Socialism? or Communism? Has France evolved into Socialism enough?

These are questions I ask upon analysis of the article, but that's not what struck me as funny. Actually, it's not really funny, not even a tad amusing, but more ironic than anything else. How do you figure that Ségolène Royal, which sounds like a purely traditionally French name (complete with accents) is a Socialist while Nicolas Sarkozy, who in my mind could have just as easily composed Swan Lake or written Crime & Punishment (he's actually of Hungarian descent), is a Conservative? And trust me, I'm not making any political implications about this--because both "Comrades" and "Presidents" have been dictators--but I think I'm going to call Nicolas "Czar Sar" just because it has a nice ring. But truthfully, it appears that some French voters might call him that, not jokingly.

One more thing--voter turnout was 85 percent! Geez. My only explanation, other than the French having a higher sense of citizen duty than we, is that they didn't want Jean-Marie le Pen pulling off another 2002. Crazy madness.