Rock the Vote prepares for November

The nation-wide project, Rock the Vote, an effort to encourage young people to vote, came through GCSU last week, trying to register as many students as possible for the November elections.
“There’s an old saying that’s been around for a long time,” said Jan Hoffmann, associate professor of rhetoric and a coordinator of the study. “‘Democracy gets reinvented every generation.’ That seems like an absolute truth. So, increasing the number of this generation that engage in this great conversation we call democracy seems like a necessary thing for us to do in this education system.”
Rock the Vote is a national research project started by Dr. Elizabeth Bennion, a professor at the University of Indiana at South Bend. The goal of the study is to register 300,000 students at public universities across the United States and then determine how many of the students actually voted.
Gregg Kaufman, director of the Coverdell Institute who is also a coordinator of the study, is excited to see how the study turns out.
“The research project will be able to ascertain how many Georgia College students registered to vote this semester,” Kaufman said. “After the election, the project will ascertain how many Georgia College students who registered to vote actually voted and how many Georgia College students (that were already registered to vote) voted.”
Each university that participated in the study chose two methods of reaching students. The two methods that GCSU used were in-class student presentation and E-mail notification.
The student presentations were utilized in freshmen seminar classes by Hoffmann’s students. The presentations themselves were standardized and used by many schools. After the presentation, voter registration forms were passed out and all those who wanted to register were allowed to.
C.J. Davis, a senior rhetoric major participating in the study, said he was proud to be a part of it.
“The kids in this generation have issues that are important to them that aren’t important to the generations before us,” Davis said. “This is a way to get that voice heard and actually make a difference.”
On top of that, Hoffmann’s students also set up tables in Sodexho and at Coverdell Institute events.
According to Kaufman, E-mails were sent to 2,800 students with links to the Rock the Vote Web site which allows people to register to vote via the Web.
The Georgia voter’s registration deadline was Tuesday, Oct. 10, so the study ended at GCSU on Monday. But after registering to vote, another challenge is actually getting the registered students to vote.
Hoffmann understands those challenges.
“I think part of the challenge for young people in college is the fact that most of them are registered in another location,” Hoffman said. “They have to remember to go on that day to vote.”
Hoffmann is very zealous about democracy.
“I think it has something to do with being a child of the ’70s,” Hoffman said. “It just seemed like from the very beginning something I was passionate about.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 20 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry