SA presents bill aiming to increase student voter engagement

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Syracuse University’s Student Association is considering a new initiative that motivates students to register to vote.

President David Bruen and Board of Elections Chair Otto Sutton presented a new initiative, which would place a hold on students’ MySlice accounts that restricts them from registering for classes until they interact with presented voting information, at Monday’s meeting. The plan is part of SA’s greater voting initiative, “‘Cuse Otto Vote,” and requires students to learn about civic engagement and the importance of voting.

“As we moved forward and looked at the political climate on campus, we have been working behind the scenes thinking about strategies to increase civic engagement,” Bruen said. “One of those is voter registration for course registration.”

The hold requires students to learn about civic engagement and the importance of voting with a link to an outside voting information website, Sutton said.

The program is modeled after Stanford University’s StanfordVotes. While voter turnout among Stanford students was 16.9% in 2014, it increased to 42.7% in 2018, the year the program was implemented, according to the StanfordVotes website.

Other business:

• SA is partnering with SU’s Center for Learning and Student Success to provide tutoring sessions for a series of freshman-level classes.
• Bruen reviewed his meeting with Lauren Villanueva, vice president of alumni engagement at SU. They discussed raising money for SA’s sustainability efforts.