California public colleges and universities are required to make a good faith effort to engage students in civic life.
“It’s required to have a voter registration coordinator in each college and university. UCSB has had one for decades now,” Viviana Marsano said. She is the director of Civic and Community Engagement at UC Santa Barbara.
Marsano said the activities sponsored by her office are non-partisan. The goal isn’t to get students to vote for any particular candidate: it’s to promote participation in general. She said the university earned a top rating among US colleges for voter turnout in 2020, according to a study by Tufts University.
“At UCSB, 78.1% showed up to vote which was over the national average which was 66%,” she said.
Marsano said many students register to vote during move-in week at the start of each school year. They can also register online or at tables around campus.
Last year, Peyton Dilday worked as a student intern in the office of community engagement.
“Usually, four times a week I would have a table on campus for one or two hours, just standing there with voter registration forms and registering people to vote, whoever walked by and was interested,” he said.
Dilday said getting students to register and then reminding them to vote are the two key components of community outreach.
And for the most part, he said, UCSB students are receptive, something he attributes to the school’s long history of student activism.
“There was an oil spill in Santa Barbara. There’s an oil rig that everyone can see from campus. There’s North Hall where, in the 60s, the Black student union was protesting racial inequality on campus. There’s a mural there, there’s newspapers there,” he said.
But Dilday said some students don’t register because they think their vote doesn’t matter. He tries to explain to them that it does.
“In the election, one person/one vote means just as much as any other person’s one vote,” he said.
On another campus in Santa Barbara County, at Allan Hancock Community College in Santa Maria, Associated Student Body president Samantha Martinez also spends time convincing other students that their vote counts.
“Some of the students who come up to our booth have a hard time connecting to where their voice matters and how their vote is significant in the whole process,” she said.
Hancock College draws most of their students from North Santa Barbara County. Per the school website, a majority of students are Latino, and many are first-generation college students.
As previously reported in this series, voter turn-out in Santa Barbara’s north county is low, especially among the Latino population.
Martinez says she talks with students at Hancock College and urges them to get involved.
“We are fortunate enough to be born somewhere where we’re able to exercise these amazing rights that we are given, such as freedom of speech and political participation,” she said. “So, if you do have the privilege, the least that you can do is practice that and take advantage of it, and have your voice be heard.”
Martinez’s interest in student government began back in Junior High School, and she also studies political science at Hancock. But she says many people her age only learn about the voting process when they get to college.
“A lot of first-generation students, first-generation American students, as well, if they weren’t coming here to community college, they wouldn’t be aware of all the resources available including registration, voting drives and all the opportunities that they have to participate,” Martinez said.
Eli Chavez just started at Hancock College. He pre-registered to vote since he’ll turn 18 this fall. He’s enrolled in a leadership course for student government and works with Martinez to register voters.
“Just dip your toe into it, that’s our goal here to get them started on that path because college is where it does start, that's where you’re introduced to this,” he said.
Chavez said now that he’s registered, he’ll make an effort to study state and local issues.
UCSB and Hancock College are ramping up their voter registration efforts this fall, and it’s an important first step. Research shows that voting is habit-forming, and young voters usually continue to vote in subsequent elections once they become familiar with the process.
Polling the People is made possible by a grant from the Sunflower Foundation.
