BRIDGEWATER, Va. – Walking around campus lately, someone might hear different opinions about the 2024 presidential election. BCVotes, an organization at Bridgewater college, is educating college students about voting to make sure their voice and opinions are heard, while in a safe environment.
Professor Starts BCVotes
Dr. Bobbi Gentry, a political science professor at Bridgewater, is making sure students are engaged with voting. After the 2020 election, she worked on the Valley Votes Project, with the purpose to rebuild trust in elections.
Gentry received a 18-month grant from the scholar strategy network in the fall of 2022 that funds practices for improvement in engagement and to build trust.
She wanted to continue to advocate voting to make sure students are valued. “I saw the value and importance of encouraging students to engage,” Gentry said. “I want students to be able to address issues they care about.”
The Importance Of Student Voting
Bridgewater College junior Caleb Palacios, a member of BCVotes, believes it is a necessity that college students vote. “Especially being an adult having to deal with taxes,” Palacios said. “A community as a whole can change because of an election or a policy that one may not like.”
As new students arrive and graduate, BCVotes has had some changes considering last year being a statewide election compared to this year’s nationwide/presidential election. Gentry believes the biggest change is the differences in engagement with the election and talking about political issues.
A study was done to understand the relationship between characteristics of state political climate and student civic engagement at community colleges. Data was collected by a cross-sectional dataset from the 2012 and 2016 elections.
Results showed that student civic engagement is associated with characteristics and state politics with different laws and location. The results also showed that older white women were more engaged in voting. But in 2012, black students had a high engagement in voting, as well as full-time students.
Gentry wants to make sure the work BCVotes does is inclusive. “Any student should feel like they can be engaged.” Gentry said.
How Students can be Involved
Students can be involved in BCVotes by going to events the organization holds with voting discussions by BCVotes members. A debate watch party, ‘Donut’ Forget To Register and Queso Con Questions are some of the events BCVotes organizes. BCVotes also participates in national civic holidays and the campus democracy project. There is a website organized by BCVotes where students can create an account to find election dates and see their registration status.
As a young voter, and a member of BCVotes, Palacios understands the challenges with voting. “A lot of students are overwhelmed and scared with voting,” Palacios said. He also says students believe it is a lot of work, which, according to him, is not.
“They’ve never been explained the process or educated on voting.” Palacios said.
Another challenge Palacios said as a young voter is what is true or false on social media. “A lot of stuff you see is biased,” Palacios said. “Media literacy is important to understand by looking at bias and factual information.”
BCVotes hopes students feel welcomed into any type of election, and how to vote, regardless of who students vote for. It is important for students to be educated on how to vote for someone who has values the student thinks is important.
