Free the students: why there’s a push to make election day a campus holiday
Before college campuses emptied out for the pandemic, students and faculty alike were demanding they be empty on one specific day: election day.
At Loyola Marymount University in California, for example, months-long organizing by students and faculty resulted in the campus being shut down during the midterm elections in 2018 – expanding the number of student voters. Several law professors also arranged a program for law students to volunteer at the polls and answer voters’ questions.
“It was a 16-hour day of helping people find their way at the polling location and the volunteers were definitely exhausted afterwards,” said Christopher Kissel, a third-year law student at Loyola. “We really saw how the democratic sausage is made, and it isn’t always pretty, and it definitely isn’t easy.”
While some campuses in the US do shut down during elections, most do not. Students and faculty at many schools, including Harvard and New Jersey’sRutgers University, argue that being in class or having schoolwork on the day of an election makes it much more difficult to get to the polls.
Having election day off might seem like a luxury, but students are among the most disenfranchised populations in the country. As the number of young, liberal voters continues to rise, some have raised suspicions that keeping students in class on election day is a form of voter suppression.
Republican politicians have been trying to limit student votes for years. In Texas, a 2019 law that prohibits temporary voting locations denied many college voters proper voting access. In Florida, the state legislature added a parking restriction clause to a new elections law, which in effect disqualified many college campuses from being considered valid early polling sites. A New Hampshire law requires college students to obtain in-state driver’s licenses to be able to vote, though the American Civil Liberties Union has brought a federal suit challenging this law.
The issue also intersects with other communities vulnerable to voter suppression. Students at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college in Waller county, Texas, reported a lack of early voting opportunities as compared with other residents of the county and noted that polling stations were pushed off campus in 2016. In 2018, students at the school sued the county, alleging racial discrimination, but the case was dismissed.
The groups vying to shut down classes on election day are hoping the effort chips away at some of these barriers.
In 2017, students at Rutgers pressured the administration to make election day a university holiday. According to Rutgers student Christopher Markosian, several student activists sent out a university-wide poll on the matter and found that 95% of student respondents stated that they would be more likely to vote if no classes were in session on the day of the presidential election. The university has yet to give students the day off.
Students at the University of California, Berkeley, recently wrote a proposal arguing for the need to shut down campus on election day as well. “This change would propel a spirit of civic engagement among students in greater recognition of how voting on election day is a keystone of our democracy,” the students said.
Law students at Drexel University in Philadelphia have also been organizing to close the campus on election day. According to Akhurapa Ambak, a thirdyear law student, the movement began when students successfully pressured several faculty members to cancel class. In 2018, this led to the school not only cancelling classes on election day but putting institutional weight behind a voter registration drive on campus.
“Any issue that one cares about, whether it’s the economy, human rights, climate, education, healthcare, anything, can ultimately be traced back to the issue of voting,” Ambak said. “Further, it is the youth that will, in all likelihood, be living the longest with the outcomes of elections and the ramifications of the policies enacted.”
This year, some of the initiatives have been thrown off by coronavirus since many college students have been evacuated from campus. Some election officials initially directed students to return to campus to vote, although these recommendations became fewer as the Covid-19 threat became clearer. Several states with upcoming elections such as Maryland and Ohio that normally require an excuse to vote absentee are trying to expand mail voting options. But the virus is likely to lessen turnout among young people in November.
Even so, advocates are hoping that the movement inches towards its final goal of making election day a federal holiday. The barriers to voting are much more intense for several other groups, such as black people and other racial minorities, and shutting down campuses is only the beginning.
“It may not ensure that everyone can exercise their right to vote, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Anil Kalhan, a professor of law at Drexel University who is hoping to implement a similar program to Loyola’s.