Samuel Casey
Staff Writer
On Election Day, the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) provided shuttles that ran between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. so students who were registered to vote in Wayne County could get to the polling location. CDI had previously provided shuttles on three dates before the election for those wanting to participate in early voting. They also sent a utility letter to all students as proof of residency that must be presented at the polls.
Nate Addington, director of Civic and Social Responsibility, spoke to the success of CDI’s election engagement efforts. “Our faculty and staff volunteers took over 100 students to the polls,” Addington said. He added that it is hard to get an exact estimate of how many students registered because of CDI’s efforts, but he and two interns took more than 300 registrations to the Board of Elections.
Brianna Schmidt ’20 used the shuttles to vote early. “I’m very happy with the voting shuttle system,” Schmidt said. “I think the shuttle system is important because it’s an easy and convenient way to get to the Board of Elections.”
Stephanie Pokras ’21 echoed this statement. She used the shuttles to get to her precinct on Election Day and explained that she was grateful that CDI provided the shuttles since some students do not have easy access to transportation or cannot drive. “If they didn’t have the shuttles, I probably wouldn’t have voted [here],” Pokras said. “I wanted to vote in Ohio because it is a swing state.”
The College also participates in the National Survey on Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE). According to its website, the NSLVE “offers colleges and universities an opportunity to learn their student registration and voting rates … and correlations between specific student learning experiences and voting.”
While they will not get the data from this election for a few months, Addington predicts that the participation this year will be much higher. “I anticipate that our results will show a dramatic increase from the 2014 election and possibly even a higher level of engagement from the 2016 election as well,” he said.
This was the first time that CDI hired interns specifically for election engagement and made it a point to bring on both a conservative and progressive student to help plan a series of events leading up to the election. Halen Gifford ’21 was one of the interns who was hired as a part of the College Election Engagement Project. “I worked on campus with students to get people registered to vote and to help them better understand their voting options,” Gifford said. “Additionally, we hosted voter engagement events like a debate watch and a tax levy forum.”
CDI’s goal was to eliminate any obstructions that students may face when trying to vote. Gifford explained, “I think it is important that voting is made easy for students so there is nothing holding them back from [practicing] their constitutional right.” Addington added that he hopes to have a more constant stream of election programming coming to the CDI office. “We have a responsibility to make sure that we are talking about these issues more than just every two years.”