A year after our campus was first wrapped up in the fight of the 99 percent versus the one percent, is Burlington still occupied?

If the Occupy movement is still in full swing, they are hiding it well.

A planned event in City Hall Park by Occupy Burlington did not happen this past week, causing many to scratch their heads and wonder if the impassioned protesters had drank too much of the Kool-Aid and forgot about their own rally.

Surely a group that infiltrated campus on an almost weekly basis last fall and occupied City Hall Park for months could not suddenly vanish.

In the fall of 2011, hundreds of protesters gathered for an Occupy General Assembly in City Hall Park. The protests, at one point, got so heated that Gogol Bordellos front man, Eugene Hutz, came and performed a small show on top of the park fountain.

Yet, in reality, the global Occupy movement has been winding down. Ninety-nine percenters promised to rally and protest until the problem of economic equality was on the agenda and solved. Instead, it looks like they have settled for Obama and Romneys campaign promises and economic solutions.

We at the Cynic have noticed it is quiet around campus, and we mean really quiet. Where have all the rallying cries gone? All of the campus protests have been grayer than a Charlie Chaplin film.

The passion for this movement has lost its presence in Burlington and, nationally, the crusade that made headlines daily a year ago has quieted to a murmur.

Maybe the discrepancies about the organizing stem from the fact that the movement is penned as leaderless, or from the broad scope that is their platform. It is difficult to sustain a revolutionizing movement without a voice or direction.

No matter who wins in November, we hope that our student body will show interest in the decisions being made at the top level deciding our future.

Want to start today? Start reading the news, buy a megaphone and head out to Bailey/Howe. Draw a small crowd and keep your fellow students engaged. We will all be better for it. But let us know first so we can write about it.