smartboy10/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
Inside Higher Ed recently published a breakdown of polling results from more than 1,100 faculty members about their plans to engage with the upcoming election, both personally and as part of their classroom experience. The poll revealed a troubling reticence among professors to use their positions to help students become more civically informed and democratically engaged.
According to the poll, while nearly 80 percent of faculty members plan to encourage their students to vote, only 30 percent of them plan to discuss the upcoming election in their classrooms. Even more concerning, nearly twice as many professors—58 percent of respondents—definitively answered “no” when asked if they plan to discuss the election with their class.
Their hesitation is understandable. The toxic state of our country’s politics has made substantive, productive conversations about politics difficult to conduct and maintain. Many professors also face scrutiny and risk imperiling their jobs by holding discussions that could be perceived as attempts to influence their students politically. But in passing on these conversations, professors abdicate some of the only genuine opportunities available to anyone to help change these conditions for the better—and help more students become lifelong voters in the process.
The decline of civic education in K-12 learning has left a concerningly large portion of students unprepared to participate in elections upon entering college. Earlier this year, the Harvard Public Opinion Project found that “42 percent of young Americans believe high school did not teach them to understand the importance of their vote.” In the same poll, 41 percent of respondents said they don’t believe their vote will make a real difference.
Our country can and should do a much better job of welcoming newly eligible voters into the democratic process, and what better place to do so than a classroom full of college students? In the face of young voters’ widespread skepticism, professors can demonstrate that the subject matter they study in school, and the professions they’ll pursue after, will be impacted significantly by the results of local, state and federal elections on the ballot this year.
This could be especially impactful among students studying STEM disciplines, who historically vote at lower rates than students of other disciplines—in part because of the lack of apparent connection between their majors and interests and electoral politics, as well as their professors’ relative lack of interest in helping students make these connections, as reported by Inside Higher Ed. This fall’s election will impact everything from climate change, energy production and environmental regulations to the regulation of civil and commercial engineering and the amount of grant money available to fund scientific research and jobs in STEM fields. Its relevance is easy to find for those who want to and know where to look.
Importantly, demonstrating the connections between students’ interests and their votes need not be a partisan discussion. Simply drawing the connection—“This elected office, which has the power to impact these relevant issues, is on the ballot this year”—sends the message that democracy is relevant to students’ lives, whether they’re interested or not. This is especially true for local elections, which are often overlooked in political discourse but usually have a stronger impact on students’ everyday lives than state or federal elections, and whose margins are often very small.
Free resources such as Your Major on the Ballot, Project Pericles’s Periclean Voter Activation Modules, Clemson University’s Civic Engagement and Voting Rights Teacher Scholars repository, and the Science and Civics Guide from my organization, the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, can help faculty frame these conversations in a nonpartisan manner that moves students toward action.
When executed correctly, the resulting discussions can also model a different, more productive way of engaging in discourse around elections than what is too often used on the social media platforms where most students now consume their news. In this context, professors’ strong preference for withholding their personal political opinions, as found in the Inside Higher Ed survey, is a strength, as it allows them to focus on facts and on empowering students to make their own decisions as voters. At the same time, it frees up the 78 percent of professors who are predisposed to encourage their students to vote to do so substantively and within a classroom context.
The alternative is continued widespread abdication of one of the foundational settings in a young person’s life—the classroom—as a place where they can learn to participate in, shape and improve a democracy that they will one day lead. If higher education is to fulfill its purpose of fostering an engaged and informed citizenry, this needs to change.
