To: The Wellesley Community
From: President Paula A. Johnson
Re: Introducing #WellesleyVotes, a Nonpartisan Exploration of Democracy
Date: February 19, 2020
On February 11, the day of the New Hampshire primary, the College featured a story about Simone Archer-Krauss ’19, who is spending the year mobilizing young people to vote. When asked why she is dedicating her days to knocking on doors and organizing volunteers, she said: “Young people are the largest voting bloc in the country. We have the power to decide elections if we turn out…This is about the future.”
This year marks an important U.S. election. It also marks the 100th anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment, which made it unlawful for states to restrict women’s right to vote based on their sex, and the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Fourth World Congress on Women in Beijing, at which Hillary Rodham Clinton ’69 proclaimed “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”
All of these milestones make 2020 the perfect time to remember the progress that has been made and also rededicate ourselves to the unfinished business of women’s equality and of building a more perfect, more inclusive, and more equitable union.
To mark this momentous year, Wellesley is launching a nonpartisan initiative called #WellesleyVotes to bring the community together to explore our shared commitment to democracy, and to remind ourselves that for all our differences, we share a set of core values.
We also have one very specific goal: to increase our student voter registration and voting rate.
In 2018, 52.3 percent of eligible Wellesley students voted in the U.S. midterm elections, a 35.9 percent increase over the 2014 midterms, according to a report from the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life.
On the one hand, this is cause for celebration as it marks a substantial boost over 2014 and places Wellesley students far above the college average of 39.1 percent. But I feel strongly that we can and must do better.
That’s why throughout this year, #WellesleyVotes will bring together academics and activists, organizers and researchers to have robust community conversations with students, staff, and faculty regarding some of the key issues—economic and racial inequality, women’s health, educational equity, and climate change—that will be on the ballot this year and for years to come. Giving students the opportunity to engage with a diversity of ideas, issues, and people is a powerful way to develop skills for lifelong, active citizenship.
We will also work together to register voters and get out the vote here on campus. In September, we will march together on the Boston Common to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. (Details about this march will be shared in the coming weeks.) And on November 3, we will vote—hopefully at record rates.
It’s an ambitious agenda, so let’s get started.
Get Involved
We’ll kick off #WellesleyVotes on February 20 with a panel discussion at Harambee House titled The Cypher: Electoral Politics: Young, Black, and Undecided.
The slate of spring events continues at the Freedom Project on March 6 with a discussion about inequality titled Meritocracy and Its Discontents.
On March 12, the Knapp Social Science Center will bring Liz Miranda ’02 and Lindsay Sabadosa ’02, rising stars in the Massachusetts state legislature, to campus for a conversation about the power of women to effect change titled When Women Win.
This will be followed by a spring break intensive with the nonpartisan group She Should Run that will bring together alumnae who have run for office and 23 current Wellesley students for a week of training and reflection on the unique pathways of women who run for office.
I encourage you to visit the #WellesleyVotes events page to learn more about these exciting events and to attend as many as you can.
And that’s just this spring. We have much more planned for the fall.
There are many ways for you to get involved with #WellesleyVotes. Please indicate your interest in taking part by filling out this Google form.
In closing, I want to share a reflection on one of my heroes, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, she was my congresswoman. At a time when few women, and fewer women of color, served in elected office, she said, “At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.” I believe that is as true today as it was then—for politics and for the broader and equally important work of building democracy.
So this year, let’s get busy building the future we want together.
