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After lunch today I walked into a Starbucks on campus and bought a cookie and a tall coffee. As I left, I walked past a student with her back to me. Over her shoulder I saw the PowerPoint presentation she was writing. In that typical huge PowerPoint font that is readable from ten feet away I saw the title of the slide -- "Consequences of Obama winning the election". The first bullet point was "Rise of the left party". It disturbed me that this bullet point was obvious and devoid of meaning unless you have a knee-jerk view of "the left party". One of my jobs is to educate undergraduates and my goals are twofold. Professionally I am responsible for helping them learn calculus. Personally I want them to develop sufficient analytical skills to form defensible positions on the issues that affect the world we live in. In particular I want them to vote this November and to choose a candidate based on these positions rather than choose based on knee-jerk views of political parties.