The Political and Civic Engagement program (PACE) within the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, along with campus partners, have been awarded a Highly Established Action Plan Seal as part of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, acknowledging PACE’s efforts to engage campus and community stakeholders during the 2024 election cycle.
ALL IN is a nonpartisan organization active in the higher education sphere that works with students to encourage their lifelong participation in American democracy. Colleges and universities engage with ALL IN by developing nonpartisan action plans that detail an institution’s strategy “to increase student voting rates and help students form the habits of active and engaged citizenship,” according to the nonprofit.
The goal of the Democracy Challenge is to recognize the efforts of colleges and universities that make efforts to increase nonpartisan democratic engagement. ALL IN recognizes that these practices help students become active and engaged citizens, make democratic participation a campus value, and create a next generation that cares about preserving and protecting a healthy democracy.
IU embodies these practices through the Action Plan as well as through PACE’s curriculum and campus events.
Where we started
Lisa-Marie Napoli, director of PACE, discovered the Challenge while attending a Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement conference in 2016. After learning more about the program, PACE took the lead on highlighting and promoting democratic engagement efforts on IU Bloomington’s campus.
Within a year of beginning this planning process, the PACE program was also invited to join and accepted a spot in the Big Ten Voting Challenge (BTVC).
“Because of the strong need to make democratic engagement a campus-wide priority for IUB,” said Napoli, “we focused a lot of time and energy to develop a plan, with key metrics, for ALL IN and the BTVC and to allow that to guide our commitment and hard work we’ve done over the years to improve student voter activities, such as voter registration, non-partisan voter education, and voter turnout.”
Napoli believes that the increased numbers of student voters in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections are due in part to the work that PACE and others have done on campus.
The goals of the Action Plan are as follows:
- Empower student leaders to engage peers on issues, candidates, and voting options.
- Activate a coalition of campus and community stakeholders to nourish a culture of civic engagement in Bloomington and beyond.
- Use positive messaging strategies to promote democratic engagement as an act of social solidarity in challenging times.
The goal, said Napoli, is to “create a campus friendly environment for voter engagement where there are opportunities for dialogue and deliberation about important democratic concepts and to engage students early and often in the democratic process.”
Doing this, she said, will empower students to participate in democracy in their own ways.
A student-powered plan
Students were an integral part of the Action Plan’s creation. Senior Pearl Vinard, a Criminology and Criminal Justice major, Political Science minor, and a certificate in PACE, became an integral part of the Action Plan’s development during her freshman year.
As a new intern to the Big Ten Voting Challenge, Pearl was working on voter registration and education. As she gained experience and was hired as a program liaison and social media intern, Pearl became more involved and invested in the voting aspect of the job. Under the direction of Associate Director of PACE Mark Fraley, Pearl joined the planning and stakeholder meetings for the Action Plan and ensured that student voices would be reflected in the Plan.
“It not only allowed students to be in the room but to be respected and have a voice at the table,” said Pearl. “I made sure students’ ideas and worries were in the Action Plan, to better understand why students have these worries, and figure out if there is a way to lessen or completely get rid of these worries.”
These concerns that students brought to Pearl about voting and democratic engagement included worries about their votes not counting, why it’s worth voting, and how the act of voting on a ballot looks and works.
Recognition
IUB and most especially PACE’s efforts to devise and follow through on this campus Action Plan have been successful by both the standards and metrics of the Action Plan and by validation from ALL IN. The campus was recognized by the organization for 2024 because their action plan was comprehensive and followed through on with much success.
The Action Plan promotes civic learning, political engagement, and college student voter participation, and is an example of PACE’s success as a program that it can implement such an ambitious, collaborative plan with an accolade.