Public Service Project posts highlight students at colleges and universities across the country within the IOP’s National Campaign for Political and Civic Engagement who are improving their communities through public service on their campuses. As there are many different ways in which one can serve the public, the IOP aims to feature a broad collection of Campaign student public service experiences to inspire all of us to make a difference every day.
Authored by National Campaign student from the University of Rochester Sarah Krulik.
After returning from the National Campaign Conference, my fellow ambassador, Rachel Goldberg, and I met with the Committee for Political Engagement (CPE) and discussed our plans to engage students at the University of Rochester based on what we had learned at the conference. During this time, we focused on how to make politics more relatable to students on campus and on showing students that politics have an impact on their daily lives. Through inspiration from Rock the Vote’s recent TurnOutForWhat music video, we decided that we needed to show students how the issues they care about connect to politics. With the support of the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, we created a photo campaign.
The photo campaign occurred during the week before the November 4th elections. We planned the event for that week in order to remind students about the election and encourage them to turnout to vote on the following Tuesday. We named the event TurnOutForWhat and asked students to pick an issue that motivates them to turnout to vote. Specifically, we had a whiteboard and asked students to finish the sentence, “I turn out for…”. We then took a picture of each student holding the whiteboard and gave them a sticker with the date of the election. Additionally, we posted the pictures onto the CPE Facebook page and encouraged students to make the picture their profile picture.
After posting the pictures, we saw an immediate increase in the number of visits to our Facebook page and likes to the page and pictures. The next day, students approached the table wanting to get their picture taken and get a sticker. It became popular to get your picture taken. While at the conference one of the speakers discussed how voting needs to be the cool thing to do and what everyone is doing. Through this event we wanted students to view voting as the cool thing to do. Additionally, the event caused students to think about what issues they care about and how politics connects to those issues.
Through the planning and implementation of this program, I was able to put into effect skills that I learned at the National Campaign Conference. Engaging college students is a challenge and I think that through this photo campaign we were able to create a dialogue around voting. Additionally, we were able to gather information on what issues students care about, which will help us to create more issue focused nonpartisan discussions in the future. Overall, through our TurnOutForWhat photo campaign we engaged hundreds of students in the elections and in politics.
Sarah Krulik is a sophomore studying Political Science and Public Health at the University of Rochester. She is a community service enthusiast and has been actively involved in her communities in both Philadelphia and in Rochester. On campus, Sarah is active in the Committee for Political Engagement and is leading the Undergraduate Political Science and International Relations Council.