U. Mississippi freshman Caleb Whiting was not going to vote on Nov. 2.

But then Whiting heard a speech from former president Bill Clinton on the Ole Miss campus Thursday afternoon.

“It really had a big effect on my opinion,” Whiting said. “My vote can make a difference in shaping the future of the country.”

Clinton said college students who did not vote in 2010 were committing malpractice because the Republican Party is seeking to repeal a law that changed the way student loans operated, which Congressman Travis Childers voted for.

“We dropped from first to ninth in adults with a four-year degree in the world, but we still were first in the percentage of adults going to college,” Clinton said. “This is because Pell grants and loans have not kept up.”

When a student gets heavily in debt, they reevaluate continuing to add to that debt and many end up dropping out to make money, Clinton said. Clinton said this was sending the country toward an economic disaster.

Many Ole Miss students agreed, including chemistry graduate student Jeffrey Veals.

“When he was talking about the numbers relating to the loans I thought that really hit home for me,” Veals said. “It encouraged me to make sure I vote in this election.”

With the new law, however, the interest rate on student loans is fixed, no matter how many years it takes a student to pay them off.

“His speech was informative, especially on the education side — you can see how it will effect the future,” biology sophomore Adam Stanford said.

Spanish graduate student Ashley Fly also thought education was the most important issue for young people in this upcoming election.

“Without an emphasis on education, ignorance will spread,” Fly said. “He delivered on the issues, like I knew he would, and let us know exactly why we should come out. It was a meaningful speech.”

Fly thought with Democrats in congress, education has a better chance of not being put on the back burner.

“I know people want to see more jobs, but if you fund education, there will be more jobs,” Fly said.

Stanford said he was going to vote before he came to the speech, but he was still happy to hear Clinton’s message.

“He made a really good use of statistics and pointing out the issues about what this is really about,” Stanford said. “That is a problem in Mississippi — people don’t have a grasp of what politicians stand for, they just know if they are democrat or republican.”

Clinton said he did not mean to go on a campaign trail this year.

“I came out to support Secretary of State Clinton,” Clinton said. “But the more I got out and saw what was going on, the more upset I got.”

Clinton said many voters are either mad or apathetic, and it is important to be neither.

“If you try to make an important decision while you are mad, you will make a mistake,” Clinton said.

It is a mistake to throw Democrats out of office within 20 months because they have not gotten out of the $3 trillion dollar hole that the Republicans put the country in over the last 8 years, Clinton said.

“I was the last president to run a surplus,” Clinton said. “If they had kept my budget this country would be out of debt for the first time since 1832.”

“America can come back, but you have to play like a football coach and look at the game film,” Clinton said. “If you want more jobs — vote Childers. If you care about education — vote Childers. If you don’t think any of this matters — stay home. But if you do care, vote, and vote Childers.”

After the speech, nursing sophomore Shekela Leggett pushed through the thousands of people gathered in The Grove to get a copy of the Daily Mississippian preview article and a flash card signed.

“I will print out one of the pictures I took and put it up on my clip board next to the flash card I had signed,” Leggett said. “It will inspire me.”