It all started when I was walking to class one morning and saw a person wearing a shirt that read “Proud Democrat.”

That’s no big deal for a high percentage of GW students. But being proud to be a Democrat is like being proud to be Caucasian or proud to have brown hair: It does not take much self-confidence in one’s ideology to walk around boasting that you are in the majority.

A significant minority of the GW population leans to the right. Where are the Republican shirts?

Republicans have an award-winning student organization on campus, very good numbers and the most attractive vice presidential candidate in the history of this great nation – and yet I almost never see a single shirt.

The really sad part is that this seems to only happen on college campuses. A Google search for “Obama gear” yielded 414,000 results while a search for “McCain gear” yielded 3,380,000. That is a pretty statistically significant discrepancy. Reps, you’ve got to represent. Let the world know that you are a part of this campus, a part of this community and a part of this country.

It just seems like the Republicans should wear their elephant with pride. I realize that a college campus is not the coolest place to be a Republican. As I said, a large majority of this campus and many others are predominantly Democrat. But if a few people started wearing a shirt here and there, others may start doing it. Before you know it this campus could start to realize that the Republicans are a bigger part of their world than they previously thought.

Maybe at that point we, the collegiate youth of America, can open up a dialogue between Democrats and Republicans. We can begin to work on some of the problems that the previous generation is clearly struggling with. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It could all start with a few people wearing a silly shirt or tie or lapel pin to represent the party that has put the most presidents in the White House.

The writer is a sophomore majoring in political science.