Pack the Polls, an initiative to register students to vote, held its first training session Thursday as organizer Ches McDowell said it has gained faculty support.
Sixteen student volunteers came to learn what their roles would be, and McDowell, a sophomore in political science, said that is only the beginning.
“We only tapped one listserv,” he said. According to McDowell, the group still has the potential to get up to 100 volunteers to go into University classrooms and register voters.
Harvard Ayers, an anthropology professor at Appalachian State, started a similar initiative at Appalachian State University. He told N.C. State volunteers it has been a success there, registering more than half of the students in some classes.
He said he was optimistic of the campaign’s chances at N.C. State.
“I believe in students and I believe they want to do the right thing in the world,” Ayers said.
The goal, Ayers said, is to have 10,000 University students register.
The best places to recruit voters at ASU were the recreational spots on campus, he said, where students were in less of a hurry, but student volunteers will be heading into as many as 20 classrooms next week.
According to McDowell, he and Student Body President Jay Dawkins sent an e-mail along with a faculty member to various professors, in hopes that professors would be more willing to support students making voting presentations in their class if the initiative had faculty support.
“About a quarter [of the professors] said no,” he said.
Those objecting said students are not paying to learn how to vote, he said, and it should not be included in their classes.
For objecting professors, McDowell said he is frustrated that “they can’t give 15 minutes to make their students better citizens.”
Positive respondents gave specific times for student presenters to recruit, and McDowell said volunteers will be distributed to classes with one volunteer for every 50 students.
The group is targeting classrooms with 100 students or more, then will target increasingly smaller classes, he said.
Amber Joyner said Dawkins helped recruit her for the program through Student Government, but she thought the push to get students to vote was extremely important.
She said Pack the Polls needs to target students who may be registered in other parts of the state, because if they are registered in Wake County, they could be more likely to vote.
The initiative also makes it convenient for students, engaging them in class so that they don’t have to register somewhere further from home, she said.
