Announcing the Spring DC Students Speak Voter Registration Drive

Michael Panek (American 2014)

In the past, we at DC Students Speak have complained about the lack of attention our elected officials pay to student interests.  In particular, City Councilmembers often look past student needs and opinions, as shown by last year’s passage of the new Noise Ordinance law and proposal of the Residential Parking Protection Act.

How do we currently hold our elected officials accountable?  Certainly not by voting.  Though college students make up a sixth of Washington DC’s 600,000 residents, we are an extremely small fraction of the District’s voting population (for example, less than 2% of American University’s on-campus residents voted in the fall 2010 elections).  Students overwhelmingly choose to vote by absentee in their hometown, or even not vote at all, over voting in DC’s elections.

This is wrong.  While we should demand that our politicians pay attention to student interests, we cannot expect that they will without us giving them a reason to do so.  If students registered to vote en mass, our elected officials would have great reason to consider student opinions when creating policy, rather than catering to other constituencies as they do now.  There is no better way for students to affect laws and rules in this city than by registering to vote.

This is why DC Students Speak is announcing its Spring Voter Registration Drive.  The drive, which will run from February 27^th to March 2^nd, has a goal of registering over 1,000 students to vote in the District’s primary elections in April.  By registering an extremely large group of students to vote, we can send a message to our elected officials in DC that we care about what happens in our city.

The Drive will operate at six college campuses:  George Washington University, Georgetown University, American University, Howard University, Catholic University of America, and Trinity-Washington University.  Students on each campus will be tabling and canvassing all week, seeking to engage students and remind them of the importance of voting in local elections.

If you are interested in volunteering at one of these campuses, or even registering to vote, contact the DCSS Chapter at your campus, or e-mail info@dcstudentsspeak.org.   Together, we can send our government a message that students care about how we’re represented, and we’ll show that on Election Day.

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