Kent State has a history of passionate student activism. However, 2020 has really highlighted such efforts, both current and past, and its impact on the importance of students sharing their voices through voting.
Senior public relations major Izzy Stewart shares the significance of this power.
“It is one thing to use your voice to advocate for things you may be passionate about, but actually putting action behind your words and participating in something that can change the narrative is truly so powerful,” she said.
Stewart was recognized last year for her individual contributions in increasing student voting participation. By speaking to her peers, advocating for them and even volunteering as a poll worker, Stewart has helped hundreds of students recognize the power they hold in voting.
“Early on, I did a lot of face-to-face communicating and tabling,” Stewart said. “Then the pandemic hit, and I had to alter how I was going to reach different demographics. I turned to social media and really focused on spreading information about how to register and why the upcoming elections were so important.”
Through her personable approach knowing that voting can be intimidating, Stewart was able to empower students while making them feel comfortable exercising their rights.
“I feel a sense of pride knowing that my voice and passion reached so many people,” Stewart said. “My hope now is that they pass the message along about the importance of voting and impact even more people.”
Stewart wasn’t the only student who dedicated their time to encourage students to vote. Senior political science major Ethan Lower took the lead on much of the voter engagement work that the Kent State Votes coalition did in the 2020 election cycle.
“As I got involved with the May 4 Task Force on campus, I really became inspired by the fight for those young students to be able to vote during that period,” Lower said.
Through this involvement, Lower began helping build the coalition for voter registration and engagement.
“At the basic level, it's about educating students on how to register to vote, what the voting laws are in Ohio and techniques for getting other people out to vote,” Lower said. “The biggest part is learning how you can get more people registered and what it looks like to do that in a nonpartisan fashion.”
Lower set the groundwork for this by holding registration tables and other events for registration, as well as putting out flyers and reminders for engagement. Lower also spent time recruiting other students through Undergraduate Student Government (USG), building partnerships with community members and holding coalition meetings of different entities on and off campus. Outside organizations included The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the League of Women Voters.
Not only was Lower pursuing these efforts, but he was doing so in the height of the pandemic.
“At the time, it was hard to see my impact,” Lower said. “But I had to keep encouraging my team because there are a lot of people involved. As students, we just have this great opportunity to learn from each other, and to learn from our faculty, and our community.”
Craig Berger, associate director of Community Engaged Learning, helped in facilitating the Kent State Votes coalition, allowing him to see first-hand the work students were doing to increase voter engagement on campus.
“When the coalition formed during the run-up to the 2018 election, we realized it needed to be student-led,” Berger said. “It only makes sense for us to do this if students can be leading this effort. So instead of staff members being in the foreground with this, it made more sense to be in the background and led by students.”
That is exactly how the coalition proceeded and how Kent State increased its voter participation among students so drastically. It was student-led efforts that made a difference.
“Speaking as a staff member, I think there are times we fall into the trap where we think that we always need to do things for students, but I think some of the most impactful things that we do are co-creating experiences and achievements with students by working alongside them,” Berger said. “This is a team approach where we're not strictly providing a service for students, but we're actually working with them as people who all are interested in civic engagement, promoting the voting process and getting more people involved in it.”
With the work of these students and the help of advisors like Berger, Kent State received the Silver Seal from the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge in the 2020 Election. This means that the university had 60-69% of nonpartisan student voter participation.
“To see us almost reach above 69% was crazy because that's the threshold for the next award,” Lower said. “We're at the top of the other silver award universities. It's a huge improvement from 2016 and a massive improvement from the off year election. I just can't overstate how impressive it is and how proud I am.”
Kent State was one out of just 185 universities to receive this award nationally, which creates great numbers for the future of voting participation on campus.
“Kent State went above and beyond to bring voter registration and the importance of voting into the conversation,” Stewart said. “This recognition that the university is receiving is very well deserved and hopefully will allow the students to see the impact they made.”
This recognition and success only further encourages students and community members to continue to build off of all the efforts put in to receive such an honorable award.
“The results speak for themselves,” Berger said. “Those numbers are able to be built upon for future years. One of the best things about this work is that as we move forward, more and more relationships are built, the culture supporting high rates of voter engagement among college students deepens and you can continue to build on that.”
The power of voting has proven to be monumental for Kent State and its future. For Stewart, Lower and Berger, voting is an empowering way to share your voice and demonstrate your rights. It is how change happens.
Kent State and its community members will continue to push for the importance of voting.
To learn more about registering to vote, visit https://libguides.library.kent.edu/voting/voting-in-kent.