There’s a lot Nepal has that America doesn’t: An overabundance of dal-bhat, load-shedding, hoards of small children who attack you asking for a chocolate, scary amounts of pollution that make the sun burn bright red in the sky in the middle of the afternoon, severed pig and goat heads sometimes still covered in fur and lying appetizingly out just waiting to be bought and fried up and, of course, Everest. But the most unexpected: Student assembly elections that people actually care about.

Talk about culture shock. For the past month, Tribhuvan University has hosted a series of rallies, parades, trucks with loudspeakers and fireworks advertising the students running for office (and competing with Amy Winehouse the Cow for the superlative of loudest neighbor). Furthermore, instead of a week long spring break, my roommate has had a month-long, Vote-for-Himalal-Surma-ANNSFU-for-TU-Student-Elections Break.

Can you imagine? Canceling class for a month to vote for Student Assembly President or Class of 2010 representative or party planner or whatever the SA’s calling it nowadays? Can you imagine watching candidates host parades up and down Ho Plaza? Or people getting into heated debates or arguments about which candidate they’re voting for, instead of dumping a crumpled quarter card on a painstakingly done chalking on their way to class? Can you image someone actually caring enough to vote, not because the candidate’s a friend or because you’ve gotten 20 Facebook messages from him or her in the past five minutes, but on the basis of their competence? What about actually voting, period?

Nepal’s secret is this: Instead of having a Student Assembly based around … whatever the SA is based around, they have representatives from each major political party running for student government. Except these representatives are the Van Wilders of party politics: 30-plus year-old men (yes, men) who purposely don’t graduate so that they can keep running for student government. But before you cough underachiever under your breath and picture the potential for a so-stupid-it’s-funny movie starring Chevy Chase and / or Will Ferrell (I already have the rights to the idea so don’t even try it), understand this: Nepali politicians have to run for and hold student office before they can even think about moving up to the big leagues. Not to mention a healthy wad of university budget to use as per their agendas, and an actual stake in the important stuff that goes on at the university.

Call me naïve or ignorant as to the goings on of the Student Assembly or rude (yes, I realize elections just happened / are still going on / whatever). Go ahead and call me boring like a friend just did: “Student Elections? Really? Booooring.” Except that Nepali students — and newspapers, and adults — don’t think so. Granted, our student politicians have nothing to do with real politics, but last I checked, those that do — the presidents of the Cornell Democrats and Republicans — still don’t generate much interest in their elections beyond their respective choirs, and don’t have much power beyond the arguably important campaigning, lobbying and bringing super-fun speakers like Dan Bakkedahl to campus. And while there is no question that if the States were more like Nepal, and the President or members of Congress stuck around campuses we’d actually vote in these things — doesn’t he and don’t they have more important things to do? Our apathy towards student elections is just as much the SA’s fault for failing to make us care as it is our fault for not forcing them to.

I won’t use my remaining 200-or-so words to capitalize on post-election pride and write the same “Yes We Did” column you could recite in your sleep. But I will say this: We’ve finally proven that we’re not the lazy, politically apathetic kids our parents and teachers complain(ed) about. In fact, our Facebook activist generation has become such a part of the current zeitgeist that at least four of the TV pilots in development focus on young attractive D.C. staffers trying to make a difference in the world. But when it comes to our own campus politics, I bet most of you respond like I do: confusion, annoyance, amusement. It’s boring, sure, it seems trivial, why not. But it doesn’t need to be, and we don’t even need full-grown adults to stick around campus and do the job for us.

Which is not to say that canceling class for a month to hold student assembly elections is a bad idea. That’s a campaign platform I’d vote for. I’d also vote for revoking the Pussycat Dolls’ invitation to Slope Day, but no one asked me.