With Election Day less than two months away, it’s a busy time for campus-wide efforts to promote student voting.
To help, the Center for the Study of American Democracy (CSAD) has launched Kenyon Votes Week, an initiative to encourage and facilitate student participation in the democratic process this November through voter registration and other approaches.
“My goal is that you graduate from Kenyon seeing voting as part of what you do as a responsible adult,” said Nancy Powers ’83, CSAD associate director and assistant professor of political science. “That's the notion of ‘Kenyon Votes.’ We would like to encourage a lifetime practice of voting.”
The center provides wide-ranging information about voting — including key dates for the 2024 election, ways to vote, and steps for voting in Ohio — through online resources that can be found simply by conducting a web search for “Kenyon Votes.”
And as usual, CSAD student associates will be researching and writing up information about local candidates as part of a voter guide for the general election. This year, Powers said, they hope to expand the reach of their work by partnering with local media outlet Knox Pages.
“We write up the races that nobody else covers in a year like this,” she said.
As part of Kenyon Votes Week, CSAD student associates are tabling at Peirce Hall during lunch and dinner throughout the week to register voters in Ohio and update registrations for students who have moved from one residence hall to another.
“A lot of people often forget that when they move from dorm to dorm over the summer going into the next year, they have to update their registration again,” said Cooper Bertschi ’26, who serves as a CSAD senior associate with Lily Meyers ’25.
The deadline for registering to vote in Ohio for the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.
CSAD — which organizes conferences, lectures and seminars with the goal of stimulating nonpartisan civic and political discourse —has registered well over 300 students since the beginning of the academic year, and excitement among prospective voters was running high, according to Bertschi.
“Young people at Kenyon really have a stake in elections, and it's very heartening to see that,” he said.
Other voter awareness activities CSAD is working on for this week include a collaboration to include election-related questions during trivia night at the Village Inn and a themed crossword puzzle in the Collegian, he said.
“CSAD is trying to reach out to a number of different campus partners and work through various different processes to find ways to engage Kenyon students and the Kenyon community in voting and in being prepared to vote,” said Bertschi, who will be spending Election Day volunteering closer to his home in Stark County, Ohio.
A special event related to voting will take place Sept. 18, when Ric Sheffield, professor emeritus of sociology and legal studies, gives a Constitution Day lecture on the subject of voter suppression in the 19th Century in Ohio. The talk, titled “The Constitution and Ohio’s Reconstruction: A History of Race and False Promises Regarding the Right to Vote,” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Oden Hall auditorium.