Shippensburg University students took a class project and turned it into a day of jubilation in an effort to get their peers to the voting booth on Election Day.
Democracy Day — a celebration of voting — is a festival with food, music and games to be held in the academic quad on Nov. 7. It is designed to increase voter turnout for the college-age demographic, and to educate students on voting, according to Mary Grace Keller, one of the students involved with the project.
The new event stems from Leadership History, and Social Change, an Honors Program seminar class taught by SU professor Steven Burg. SU senior and honor student Codey Fickes originally created the idea, Keller said.
“Democracy Day is the brainchild of Codey,” she said. The class took the idea and ran with it. The point of the day is to get people excited about voting.
“There’s no political side we are taking with it,” Keller said, emphasizing it is not to sway students to vote for a particular candidate or party.
The event will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and will feature games and crafts, including henna tattoos and customized buttons for Election Day. SU clubs have been invited to set up tables to hold activities. Professors and other guests will speak on the “soapbox corner.”
Keller said the group of students would like to see Democracy Day reoccur every year or every election cycle.
“We would love it if Dr. [George “Jody”] Harpster could put Democracy Day on the calendar,” she said. Ideally, Keller said, SU would hold the festival in the future and make Election Day a holiday. This would allow students to take a day off classes to vote.
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