Education
Ahead of Election Day, VCU is recognized as a top college for student voters
With Election Day fast approaching, Virginia Commonwealth University students are registering to vote in droves, helping Richmond community members get registered, and making plans to get to the polls on November 6th.
By Brian McNeill
With Election Day fast approaching, Virginia Commonwealth University students are registering to vote in droves, helping Richmond community members get registered, and making plans to get to the polls on November 6th.
“Students want their voices to be heard,” said Anthony Jones, a senior in the VCU Honors College who has helped lead voter outreach programming on campus and in the community. “A lot of them feel like they want a way to bring about change, and have found a powerful outlet in exercising their right to vote.”
VCU is a leading institution in student voter registration and engagement and was listed among “America’s Best Colleges for Student Voting” in the most recent issue of Washington Monthly.
Leading the effort to register, educate and mobilize VCU student voters is a coalition — VCU Votes — that includes students and faculty in the Honors College; VCU ASPiRE, a living-learning program that promotes community engagement; the VCU Division of Community Engagement; VCU faculty members in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture and the Department of Political Science in the College of Humanities and Sciences; the Division of Student Affairs and others. In 2016, 61.5 percent of VCU students voted, outpacing the national voting rate among all higher education institutions of 50.4 percent, according to data compiled by the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, an initiative of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University.
“Since President Rao first came to VCU, he’s spoken about: what is the hallmark of a VCU education? It’s an engaged, real-world experience. That happens within the classroom, but also outside the classroom. It’s what you do on campus, as well as in the off-campus community,” said Lynn Pelco, Ph.D., associate vice provost for community engagement. “And voting is a large part of that.”
Pelco added that VCU Votes’ activities are aligned with regional and urban transformation goals in the university’s next strategic plan, Quest 2025: Together We Transform.
“We’ve taken an institutional view that going to VCU is not just going to class and passing your classes,” she said. “A VCU education has academics, connecting with your community, having an international perspective and being career ready. And getting registered to vote and being an engaged citizen is part of that whole picture.”
Erin Burke Brown, Ph.D., director of ASPiRE, said she encourages her students to vote in every election, not just in presidential election years. She also emphasizes the value of the right to vote.
