HWS News
6 August 2024 HWS Recognized for Voter Engagement
As HWS Votes prepares for the 2024 Presidential Election, the student organization’s efforts earned national recognition for its nonpartisan democratic engagement action plan.
HWS Votes — the nonpartisan, student-led voter engagement coalition — has been hard at work registering classmates and ensuring they are prepared to cast their ballots in November.
For those efforts, Hobart and William Smith has earned the ALL IN Highly Established Action Plan Seal for the 2024 election cycle. Awarded by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the seal recognizes campuses for developing a nonpartisan democratic engagement action plan. HWS’ plan received 33 of 36 possible points based on the Strengthening American Democracy Action Planning Guide Rubric. HWS is one of only 192 campuses to earn this recognition for the 2024 election cycle.
Assistant Director of Community Engagement and Service Learning Peter Budmen ’15, MAT’16, a staff adviser to HWS Votes, cites the work of outgoing HWS Votes co-presidents Samari Brown ’24 and Katelyn Oswalt ’24, who were both named to the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge Honor Roll for their dedication to increase voter engagement and turnout.
“I am quite proud,” Budmen says. “Samari and Katelyn led HWS Votes for so long and invested quite a bit of time and energy into this document.” He also credits the work of Jasmine Goncalves ’27, “who stepped up in her first year to help lead the student coalition and is continuing as a co-leader this year. I’m lucky to work with these students!”
To help HWS Votes prepare for the 2024 elections, co-president Rafael Aguilar ’25 participated in the Democracy House’s Young Leaders Summer Institute, a nine-week civic education program “designed to prepare rising generations to defend, strengthen and improve democracy.” Each week, guest speakers share their experiences and expertise in democracy and a weekly small-group discussion to exchange ideas and generate solutions for their individual communities. This year’s guest speakers included: ALL IN senior director Stephanie King, Freedom House interim president Nicole Bibbins Sedaca, Partners in Democracy president Danielle Allen, United Farm Workers organizer and Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz, and Venezuelan human rights lawyer Genesis Vasquez.
"Having the space and commitment to practice democracy is instrumental for engagement with our political system,” Aguilar says. “Personal connection pushes people to action. Appreciating the work that voting can do helps political change. Democracy in practice includes voting, but also our principles of organizing, workplaces and decision-making.”
The efforts of HWS Votes are seeing additional support from alumni like Eric Adydan ’97, CEO of Close Up Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, civic education organization focused on voter engagement. Adydan approached the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning with an opportunity for HWS students to participate in America In One Room. The program brought together 500 first time voters in Washington, D.C. this July to engage in dialogue, debate, action planning and idea sharing around civic engagement.
Incoming first year Lincoln Champlin ’28 jumped at the opportunity to participate in the Washington, D.C. event. “It was a great experience where I got to hear perspectives from people all over the United States. As a result, I’m feeling a lot more optimistic about this upcoming election. Regardless of the national political discourse you hear on the news, the other participants’ willingness to share their lived experience and engage in opinions other than their own was inspiring!”
To share strategies to boost voting for the 2024 elections, HWS Votes invite faculty and staff to a Campus Call to Action meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 14 from 10 to 11 a.m. via Zoom. Interested faculty and staff can email budmen@hws.edu for details.
Founded in 2004, HWS Votes is a non-partisan group of student leaders devoted to voter registration and the continuous education of the Hobart and William Smith and Geneva communities. As a commitment to voter access, HWS Votes will pay for the ballot postage when students mail their ballots out of the HWS post office.
