Political engagement varies as election season begins

By Hongtao Hu     10/22/24 10:33pm

Early voting for the 2024 election cycle began Oct. 20. While some Rice students are preparing to cast their votes, most of whom are voting in their first presidential election, others will not be voting. 

RiceVotes, one of the larger political organizations at Rice, aims to “make participation in local, state and federal elections a social norm,” according to its website. According to Melissa Marschall, a professor of political science and steering committee member of RiceVotes, many Rice students vote. 

“Part of [Rice’s voter turnout] is having a polling location on campus, which is something relatively new,” Marschall said. “This year is the first year that we have no classes on Election Day. That’s a big deal. We’ve never done that before – recognizing that it’s important for students to have time to vote and give them the day off. ”

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Marschall said that 878 people registered to vote this fall, a record number since 1999. Voter registration efforts also began during Orientation Week for the first time this year. 

According to an Institute for Democracy & Higher Education report, in the 2020 election, 77.9% of eligible Rice students voted in the presidential election, up from 59.1% in 2016, and 11.9 points higher than the average institution similar to Rice. 

For Erika Alvarez, Baker College’s civic engagement representative, RiceVotes’ successes are due in part to concurrent efforts from multiple organizations, including Fondren Library and the League of Women Voters.

“I think this year’s [RiceVotes] program has been great, but it also acknowledges all the different organizations on campus that work independently to create voter registration opportunities for students,” Alvarez, a senior, said. 

Alvarez said she joined RiceVotes and became a civic engagement representative in response to the political conditions in Texas. 

“I’ve always been quite civically engaged, even as an immigrant to the U.S., so I can’t vote,” Alvarez said. “I’m always making sure that I am informed, especially in a state like Texas, which makes it so difficult to vote.”

However, voter registration and education efforts haven’t reached everyone. For McMurtry College sophomore Kef Nkosi, registration difficulties prevented him from voting in previous elections.

“Last year, I did try to vote because people were telling me to vote,” Nkosi said. “I ended up missing a lot of class waiting in line to vote, just to be told once it was my turn that something went wrong with my registration, and they weren’t able to fix it. Honestly, I felt like I wasted my time.” 

“This year, when I ran into the same issue, I honestly just didn’t really feel like going through it again,” Nkosi continued.

Still, Nkosi believes that he’ll participate in political processes in the future.

“As I age, I probably will become a little more engaged and actively involved,” Nkosi said. “Right now, I don’t even know who I am, I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know what I want to study, I don’t know what I want to do, so maybe when I figure myself out a little more, I can start to pay more attention to all these other things around me.”

However, Marschall said that student political engagement beyond voting is lacking. 

“We don’t see a lot of student organizing compared to maybe some other campuses or earlier periods in time,” Marschall said. “I wouldn’t say that there’s no activism, it just kind of comes and goes. Most recently, it’s centered around what’s going on in the Middle East with the Israel-Palestine conflict.” 

Matti Haacke, a Students for Justice in Palestine representative, said they found that political involvement in the group has ebbed and flowed in response to global events. 

“As the early spring semester came this past year, I think that the movement slowed down a little bit because of losing momentum,” Haacke, a Sid Richardson College senior, said. “We’ve been working on how to build up the momentum and be strategic about what actions are worth having. For example, our walkout during the opening of the academic quad was really successful. The vigil that we had on Oct. 7 was really successful, where we had over 100 people there.”

Haacke said that Rice’s nature as a STEM-focused school may discourage political activism.

“Given the intensity of the expectations that are put on people at Rice, just socially and culturally, having something that doesn’t fit your resume, help you get an internship or a job after you graduate can be hard for some people to rationalize as being worth their time,” Haacke said.

Alvarez said that lack of engagement is because many student groups focus on single issues. 

“There’s been a shift away from partisanship and toward issue-based organizing, such as SJP or Planned Parenthood Generation at Rice, which is for … people’s access to healthcare resources,” Alvarez said.

Haacke said that increasing political engagement on campus could benefit the community. 

“I think Rice needs more political clubs on campus,” Haacke said. “I think that as a civic citizen, having political discussions and political energy on a college campus, it’s something that can be really fruitful.”

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