WCU Earns a Gold Seal for Excellence in Student Voter Engagement

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Students at West Chester University have exceeded the national average for their voter participation in midterm elections.

More gold for the Golden Rams!

Students at West Chester University have again exceeded the national average, this time by heading to the polls and earning a Gold Seal for their voter participation in midterm elections.

A national study reported 79 percent of WCU’s eligible student voters had registered to vote, and of those eligible, 56 percent voted in the 2018 midterm elections, showing a nearly 30 percent increase since the 2014 midterms. WCU students’ voting rate of 43.8 percent is 4.7 percentage points above the national rate of 39.1 percent.

The national nonpartisan initiative ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge awards Gold Seals to institutions for achieving a student voting rate between 40 percent and 49 percent.

Data was gathered by the non-partisan National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE), an initiative of Tufts University’s Institute for Democracy & Higher Education.

“West Chester University is thrilled that our level of student voter engagement is above the national average,” said Judy Kawamoto, WCU’s Assistant Vice President for Student Development. “We strive to create a culture of civic engagement and active citizenship on our campus, and this recognition is a reflection of the hard work by our Service-Learning and Volunteer Programs staff.”

The WCU initiative is an interdisciplinary effort involving not only the Office of Service-Learning and Volunteer Programs (OSLVP), but also students, faculty, and administrators from a wide array of academic departments; offices within the Student Affairs Division; student organizations; athletics; and the community organizations Your Vote Is Your Voice and the League of Women Voters. Also, three students coordinated various registration and education programs and earned a stipend as 2018 Campus Election Engagement Project (CEEP) fellows: Hanna Donohue, Madison Ogborn, and Kathleen Weber.

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