This year, I am pleased to be part of Civic Nation’s ALL IN Presidents’ Council and to have our college involved in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge encouraging students to participate in our upcoming elections. Our non-partisan efforts are simply aimed at getting students to develop or continue the habit of voting in local and national elections. Long-term, our ambition is for them to continue to be engaged citizens in their local communities.
Leading a college whose students are adults whose lives are impacted by local, state, and national elections, it is even more important for our learners to take their democratic duty seriously. Voter turnout in the United States is on the rise, but it still lags behind many other countries. We can do better.
College is a place where students learn about who they are, what they are passionate about, and learn about the world. It is also a place where what they may have known as truths are challenged and a place where students meet others different from them. College is a place where students begin to think through their purpose in life and discover what gives them meaning and joy–processes that continue well beyond college.
In college, I became friends with students from Somalia and East Germany who had experienced the struggles for self-determination and democracy in different ways through the conflict with Eritrea and the Cold War. Students from Indonesia with family in East Timor helped me better understand that conflict, and a ballroom dance partner from Serbia shared his perspectives on the Bosnian war. My friendships in college deepened my textbook learning.
I had my own vivid memories of watching the fall of dictatorship and the struggle for democracy as a child growing up in Haiti. The transition from Baby Doc was bloody and violent. There were successions of presidents and prime ministers. School was closed for many days due to violence. People wanted a say in their government. They risked their lives for the right to vote, and some died exercising their democratic duty.
Perhaps it was those experiences that lit and sustained my interest in the fall of the former Soviet Union and the fight for democracy in that part of the world all throughout high school. In college, I became enamored with Mexico, which was also struggling to have free and fair elections following more than 70 years of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. I even served as an election observer when Vicente Quesada Fox won what was hailed as the first democratic election in Mexico in decades in the summer of 2000.
In college, I married my interest in politics with economics. I also developed a deep interest in Asia’s Tiger Economies. I wondered whether that model of economic growth could be implemented elsewhere, in the Caribbean perhaps. No political or economic model is perfect, but each offers learning opportunities.
Democracy is a team sport. We must all participate. The upcoming 2024 elections will be consequential to our democracy. I encourage my colleagues who lead institutions of higher learning to commit their colleges to increasing student voter participation through The Presidential Commitment.
