Rock the Vote: engaging students in the political process

By Tom Moore

Youth culture and the political process merged at a recent Rock the Vote concert and voter registration drive hosted by the Student Government Association (SGA) at Texas A&M International University . Over 90 people registered to vote at the event, which was attended by over 300 students and university personnel and featured live music and food on the university's Student Center Patio.

“Our goal is to register as many people as we can to vote,” said Joseph Holland, an undergrad and chair of student programming at TAMIU who helped organize the concert. “We want to demonstrate that the voting process isn't something that's boring, it is something that can be interesting, it is something that can be fun. And it's very important.”

Holland felt the event was a success. “We had a really good turnout,” he said. “It was well received. There were students who wanted to know about our initiative. Some brought some friends back to register. There were a lot of faculty and administrators as well who came out to support our efforts.”

TAMIU SGA officers and other student representatives were deputized by the Webb County elections office to register people to vote, and they have done so at information tables on the university campus in addition to the concert. Other registration drives throughout the year, heading into the presidential election, are a possibility. “We're considering that right now,” said Holland . “Throughout the semester, we'll be continuing efforts to get people to register to vote. I'm working with Oscar Villarreal with the Webb County elections office, and there are another couple of students on campus who are our only official Rock the Vote street team. So we'll be working to get some more materials, to do some more drives to get that done. But it's something that we'll probably be pushing throughout the semester.”

Rock the Vote (www.rockthevote.com) was founded in 1990 in response to a wave of attacks on freedom of speech and artistic expression. The non-profit, non-partisan organization mixes youth culture and pop culture into its activities to make political participation more attractive and to increase youth voter turnout, coordinating voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote events, and voter education efforts. Last year Rock the Vote added online voter registration (www.rockthevote.com/rtv_register.php) to simplify the registration process.

Rock the Vote Community Street Teams are the backbone of the organization, registering voters at schools and events, marketing Rock the Vote campaigns at street level, and implement Rock the Vote's election programs. Johnny Mansinghani is the local Rock the Vote Street Team leader. Also an undergrad at TAMIU, he became involved with the organization after watching a Rock the Vote debate on CNN. “We found out that TAMIU wanted to do some Rock the Vote stuff, so it was pretty much just contacting Rock the Vote California and going from there,” he said.

“The main drive came from my enthusiam to take advantage of this election, because I felt that this was the first election where the candidates would have to listen to the voice of the people and not the huge corporations. So I think that our generation, our age group definitely needs to take advantage of that. I just want to get a Rock the Vote sticker on every college student's car. I want to let Rock the Vote know that we have a voice here,” said Mansinghani.

Increasing the youth voter population is a goal Mansinghani feels strongly about. “I know a lot of young people who want to participate, but when it comes time to do it they don't know where to go to get the information. Rock the Vote helps you do that. Every issue is there,” he said.

Calling the Rock the Vote concert and registration drive “amazing,” Mansinghani said, “It was a great turn-out and we hope to have many more, as many as we possible can and as many as funding allows. It's just the beginning of what we want to do.” He added that anyone interested in contacting him about future Rock the Vote activities can register at the Rock the Vote website and then contact him from there.

While Rock the Vote activities are aimed primarily at young people, anyone in the community is welcome. “We are not just limited to students, but this has been a big student government initiative as far as our campus goes,” said Holland . “This will be something that we'll be pushing for a while, more than likely. But anybody is welcome. We will register people to vote who are outside our student population, of course. We've also had a couple of public service announcements sent out to the different news media to let them know that we are registering people to vote, so if they have any questions they can come register with us. We're an outlet.”

The concert came about through an initiative by the A&M University System Chancellor's Student Advisory Board. “They asked that the individual campuses use their student government associations to compile their resources, to see what would work as far as their own individual campuses, to increase voter turn-out and to increase the awareness of how important it is to vote. Some of our sister campuses -- Prairie View is doing a form of this event, and I think Texarkana, maybe even Tarleton State -- some of us are doing the event. We decided we were going to take it up, and we were going to go all out. We had promotional materials done, we had public service announcements all over the place. We rounded up our resources to put together this event. We know how important this initiative is,” said Holland .

“It's incredibly important for people to get out there, to at least know what the issues are, and know who represents them, not necessarily political parties or anything like that. Because, for example, there are certain issues that come up with certain candidates that don't with others. The whole idea behind Rock the Vote is the big initiative that says that anything that you do is considered ‘Rock the Vote,' whether you build a web page for a particular candidate, or you go vote, or you look up what the issues are on the table with our candidates -- anything is ‘Rock the Vote,'” said Holland.