Suffolk University was recognized as one of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenges’ most engaged campuses for college student voting. On Nov. 19, 471 colleges and universities were recognized for achieving their civic action plans for the 2024 Presidential Election.
ALL IN is an organization that works to “empower colleges and universities to achieve excellence in nonpartisan student democratic engagement,” according to its website. The organization does this through different competitions that campuses can participate in.
Rachael Cobb, a Suffolk political science professor, founded Suffolk Votes in 2016 – a nonpartisan student-focused civic engagement group. For this year’s election, Cobb continued with her work to increase voter turnout within the Suffolk community.
“It makes me really proud to be a participant in the political and civic development of young people and to help them not be scared of the process, to help them participate,” said Cobb.
Zachary Rodrigues, a graduate student at Suffolk, is the Suffolk Votes graduate fellow this year and worked on many of the events, tabling and student engagement efforts. After working as a Suffolk Votes ambassador in years past, Rodrigues said this experience deepened his appreciation for the Suffolk community.
“To see people our age be eager and passionate about voting, especially in this year’s election, has really been just a cool and great thing to see,” said Rodrigues.
Throughout the fall semester, Suffolk Votes worked to engage students by providing information about registering to vote, civic knowledge and the election process. All of those aspects are things highlighted in Suffolk’s civic action plan.
The civic action plan is how ALL IN judges which campuses are recognized. The organization works to ensure there is an equitable way to judge the work campuses are doing to involve students regardless of where they are or what the demographic of their students is. The goal of this is to create a competition around intentional efforts to increase nonpartisan democratic engagement, which can look different depending on the school.
For Suffolk, Cobb said its voting demographics align with national trends.
“Our law school students who are older are voting more than our 18-year-olds on campus are voting. And there are lots of structural reasons for that,” said Cobb.
Regardless of national trends, the goal for Suffolk Votes is always to increase the amount of people participating in the democratic process from one year to the next.
Suffolk received a Silver Campus recognition for the 2018 midterm election and Bronze Campus recognitions for the 2020 presidential election and 2022 midterm election. It will take time for the numbers and awards to be announced for the 2024 presidential election.
During the 2024 presidential election, Cobb and Suffolk Votes worked to educate and provide resources for all students across campus.
“It takes a huge amount of time to do this,” Cobb said. “It was sort of like a bunch of people who have full-time jobs did this on top of their full-time jobs because it was a labor of love.”
Rodrigues said that Suffolk has a reputation for high civic engagement and hopes this will continue in the future.
The key aspect of both ALL IN and Suffolk Votes is that they are nonpartisan organizations. The goal is to promote civic engagement, not political agendas.
The nonpartisan component of Suffolk Votes, Rodrigues said, creates a safe space where all students can find the community and resources they need.
“The mission of Suffolk Votes is to have every student vote. It is not to have every student vote for a particular candidate or a particular party. It is to engage them,” said Cobb.
While the presidential election is over, Cobb is looking to the future for more opportunities for civic engagement. Cobb said that next semester she wants to work on some type of campaign to inform students on how they can understand and track what’s happening at all levels of government. Though no plans are finalized, there will be more events and information coming from Suffolk Votes in the spring semester.
“The fact that we are essentially growing young citizens will have impacts down the line that we can’t even imagine,” Cobb said.
