It’s election time and it seems like every four years during the home stretch of the race you hear the same things being spewed at today’s youth.
“Vote or Die”, “voting is one of the most important things you will ever do,” and “your voice will be heard.” All these statements are true and they are something everybody can understand and get behind, but do these statements actually have an effect on college students at Bloomsburg University and do these statements encourage them to vote?
Youth voting is an important thing, but the question is, are Bloomsburg University students politically active? Do students look to take advantage of their right to vote or do they just not care?
Some might say that today’s youth are a lazy generation, a generation only interested in smart phones, Facebook , and raves. That might be true for a minority of the youth of today, but a study shows that college students are indeed politically active.
“In 2008, 36% of youth who didn’t attend college voted vs. 62% of youth who did.” So obviously there is a direct correlation with college students and voting, and Bloomsburg University is no different.
Out of 20 students interviewed 16 of them were already registered voters. This could have something to do with the voting registration tables set up on campus in the Kehr Union building. When asked,
Kehr Union on campus, where students can register to vote.
“What do you think of the turnout this semester for voter registrations from students?” the student working said,
“We spent a whole weekend going through about 100 voter registrations making sure they were all filled out correctly.” She continued to say how she was impressed with the turnout and when asked, “would you say Bloomsburg University is a politically active campus?” she replied simply by exclaiming “absolutely!”
Paul Gattuso, a senior Exercise Science major at Bloomsburg had this to say, when asked if he thought voting was important and if the “get out and vote” commercials get to him.
“Yes, its one of the most important things you can do as a citizen of the United States. As for the commercials they never necessarily got me to go out and register, I did that on my own. But they definitely remind me how important voting is and that my vote does matter.”
Senior Environmental Biology major R.J. Dorosky felt a little differently and had this to say about whether the advertisements have anything to do with the Bloomsburg students being politically active.
“Students who are disinterested in politics are just not going to get out and vote no matter what. I’m interested so I will be voting this election, but no I don’t think that advertisements or even setting up registration tables entices people who aren’t going to vote, to get out and vote.”
All in all Bloomsburg University is quite a politically active campus this semester and has a lot of diverse opinions on the upcoming election.
