Northwestern will be competing against Big Ten rival Michigan both on and off the football field this fall.
Instead of touchdowns, the final score will count who has registered more students to vote.
“I think it’s more in the spirit of doing it,” said Veronica Tong, a vice chairwoman of Associated Student Government’s External Relations Committee, who is helping to run the contest. “No one is doing this just to win.”
The competition is part of a joint effort by NU and Michigan student governments to determine which school can register more people to vote in this year’s election. The results will be announced at the Nov. 11 football game in Ann Arbor, Mich. Voter registration at NU is distinctly a team effort. The Office of Student Affairs, ASG and individual students all have contributed to the effort.
One individual is Ben Gross, a Weinberg senior who began registering students to receive absentee ballots from their home state.
“We’ve been inundated with people,” Gross said. “There’s very little down time.”
Backed by an army of friends with laptops and equipped with voter registration information from JustVote.org, Gross and his friends say they have registered nearly 150 people this week. Gross and his team usually are stationed on Norris University Center’s ground floor.
“I’m just amazed, pleased and astonished that there are students who want to do this,” said Cate Whitcomb, assistant to NU’s vice president for student affairs. “I’ve never had to do this all by myself.”
By offering to register students to vote, NU is complying with the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The law states that higher education institutions must “make good faith effort” to register students to vote by mail.
“I don’t think we are doing this in compliance with a law,” said Tong, a Weinberg sophomore. “Our main motivation is that students are well represented in the community.”
The goal is simple: Students should register, either in Illinois or their home state, she added.
“The reason why I would want them to be registered in Illinois is because there are Evanston issues,” Tong said. “If they want to vote in the swing states, that’s fine too.”
— Shira Toeplitz and Ryan Haggerty
