By Chelsea Durgin
Today, as a class, we stood outside the Pomona’s coop with two posters; “Why are you voting?” and “Why aren’t you voting?”. While people walked by, we asked them these questions and then a reason for
their response. Most people actively participated and wrote on the posters themselves while enjoying the leftover halloween candy provided by Alejandra. The class added some of our own inputs onto the posters, in a way, to make everyone else feel comfortable about what they were writing on the poster. An example being “I’m writing on this because I want candy”. By doing this, we hoped to get honest responses without making people feel pressure to talk formally but talk as peers. To my surprise, I saw a lot more students signing the “Why are you voting?” poster than I thought would be signing. We even asked ourselves if people were perhaps lying about voting. But then I realized where I was, Pomona College. Although I go to CMC and I’m suppose to have a certain stigma about Pomona College, the students were active, open-minded, and willing to write on the poster and chat.
I then realized these are the people that I want to be voting and representing the country, the intelligent youth. I wondered if this would be the same at the other colleges in Claremont. If we set up the posters at CMC or Scripps would we have more or less participants? Which poster would be more full? Overall, I believe the Claremont
Colleges are filled with actively participatory students who believe in their vote. It would be another experience to go to a local Cal State and see what the results would be with a much larger demographic. It is easier to reach out to the people at the Claremont Colleges, but would we have the same discussions and responses from
another school/area?
My “hypothesis”, or so, would be no. My freshman year of college was spent at Cal State Fullerton and after my first year I transferred to CMC. From my personal experience at CSUF, I believe the students were more apathetic to larger issues involved in politics. I think comparatively, more students at the Claremont
Colleges will vote than at CSUF. Ironically, this election will effect the demographic of Cal State Fullerton than the Claremont Colleges. I think I learned a lot more about the students at the Claremont Colleges today. I learned that together we count and it is important for the youth to vote, even if the reason is “because I can”.
