PVCC Receives Award for Civic Engagement

Callan Shore, assistant editor

For Americans, voting is a right that had to be fought for, and it is a privilege that is not available in all countries. However, voting is still inaccessible or unimportant to many Americans.

According to The Atlantic, 49.3 percent of eligible voters and 31 percent of voters under 29 showed up to vote in the 2018 Midterm Elections. To counter voter inactivity, Connie Jorgensen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, appoints PVCC students to hold events and educate fellow students on voting.

For each major election, a group of political science and journalism students creates a bi-partisan voter guide which lays out each candidates’ positions on important issues. Jorgensen has also helped students to organize non-partisan voter drives and mock-debates with students acting as real candidates.

Additionally, in 2018, two congressional candidates, Leslie Cockburn and Denver Riggleman, came to debate in PVCC’s Dickinson
building.

Jorgensen said, “PVCC is part of a nationwide study, and we are still waiting on the results from 2018 on how many students registered to vote.”

Due to Jorgensen and students’ work to encourage young voters, the Campus Vote Project and NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) recently awarded PVCC with the title Voter Friendly Campus. PVCC will hold this title until 2020.

The Voter Friendly Campus Initiative is dedicated to enhancing civic engagement and is led by both the Campus Vote Project and
NASPA. The Voter Friendly Campus title has not only been awarded to community colleges, but every kind of college, from four-year to private. Liberty University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and James Madison University are among the other Virginia schools that were designated voter friendly for the 2019-2020 school year.

Jorgensen said, “We are wide open to suggestions for the next election, and we would love to get more clubs and classes involved.”

In order to get involved with PVCC’s effort to get out the vote, email Connie Jorgensen at cjorgensen@pvcc.edu. To learn more about the Voter Friendly Campus initiative, visit www.voterfriendlycampus.org.