College Voters Plan to Smash Stereotypes
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23- Apathetic and unreliable: two buzzwords frequently stamped on college voters.
But according to a study released Thursday by the Harvard Institute of Politics, young voters will likely shatter that outdated notion on Nov. 2 – and students at Cape Cod Community College are eager to help the cause.
The Cambridge researchers have kept close tabs on college-age voters since 2000, when they noticed a lagging student turnout despite the hotly contested presidential election. Many young voters simply – and maybe selfishly – said that politics had no direct effect on their lives.
Since then, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq War that followed have been hot-button issues. Meanwhile, a sagging economy that makes a recent graduate’s job search more difficult hits home with 20-somethings.
And thanks to the bottomless spread of information from 24-hour cable news, the Internet and the advent of blogging – personal logs published on the Web – has brought big issues to the forefront for many young men and women.
“It appears this campaign has certainly erased apathy among young people,” said John Della Volpe, a partner at the polling firm used in the survey. “These college students are coming on November 2. They’re ready to make their voices heard.”
The Harvard academics surveyed 1,202 students at colleges and universities across the country. While critics often argue that it’s impossible to gauge the youth vote because students are notoriously difficult to contact, these researchers purchased a database that gave them access to more than 5 million student phone numbers – including cell phones.
According to the report, 84 percent of college students reported that they will “definitely be voting” in November, a 20 percent increase from just six months ago. In past elections, 60 percent of these would-be voters actually cast ballots.
In 2000, 42 percent of college students turned out to vote.
Voter registration is also dramatically up – 73 percent of students surveyed said they were registered – evidence not only of a revitalized political fervor but also of the success of get-out-the-vote campaigns such as MTV’s “Rock the Vote.”
An overwhelming number of students – 93 percent – disagreed with the statement, “It really doesn’t matter to me who the president is.” While 87 percent agreed that “politics is relevant to my life right now.”
According to community members at Cape Cod Community College, the Harvard researchers’ findings accurately reflect student opinions on campus.
“I was surprised about how knowledgeable students were about these things,” said Alex Howell, 25, the managing editor of the Main Sheet, the school’s weekly student newspaper.
In a September opinion piece, Howell chided fellow students for the poor turnouts by college voters in the past, saying that the issues at stake in this election “will affect everyone in some fashion.”
The college’s Web site has added a link for student voter registration, and next week the school will hold a forum in the campus’s Upper Commons where curious students can ask professors and peers questions about the candidates and issues.
Claudine Barnes of Yarmouth, a professor of history and American government at the college, said the results of the Harvard study are reflected in her classes each day.
“I see it in the questions they ask and in the correlations my students make between things like Iraq and U.S. imperialism,” Barnes said.
Student concerns span a broad range, she said, citing many students who have military ties and others who are worried about how they will take care of aging parents. While she could not finger a single cause for renewed student interest in politics, she said the polarizing nature of this election might have something to do with it.
Sean Males, secretary of the Student Senate, said he thinks that’s exactly the case.
“Voter registration this year alone has been amazing,” said Males, a Nantucket resident. “People are more interested because they don’t like the way things are being done.”
Kathleen Schatzberg, the college’s president, accepted that a difference of opinion may be one of the prime motivations for students to vote but said that that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“People talk about student apathy at various stages in history,” said Schatzberg, who has worked in community colleges for more than 26 years. “When I was in college in the ’60s, it was the heyday of activism, and I haven’t seen interest in the electoral process in students since then.”
