Cleveland State University has earned the “Voter Friendly Campus” designation through a program sponsored by the Fair Election Center’s Campus Vote Project and NAPSA - Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. The “Voter Friendly Campus” program requires campuses to develop, implement, and submit a report analyzing the results on how they encouraged their students to register and vote.

Cleveland State University’s Office of Civic Engagement, located in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, developed an action plan to motivate students to register to vote, to get out and vote, and to incorporate voter engagement into the campus experience so that students can establish a lifelong habit of being civically engaged. 

“The strong internal and external partnerships that were formed by Julian Rogers, former Office of Civic Engagement Director, through the ‘Voter Friendly Campus’ program not only got CSU students to register to vote but also encouraged our students to get out and vote,” says Anita Ruf-Young, a program coordinator with the Office of Civic Engagement. “This year, our focus will be on trying to use systems already in place at CSU by working with established programs that reach the majority of our students. This way the process of voter registration and engaging our students in the democratic process is sure to be campus-wide and inclusive of all.”

CSU is one of 123 campuses from across 31 different states to earn “Voter Friendly Campus” status. The Campus Vote Project is also providing sponsorship again to the CSU Office of Civic Engagement to hire two new Democracy Fellows for the spring and fall 2019 semesters.

The goal of the “Voter Friendly Campus” program is to “bolster efforts that help students overcome barriers to participating in the political process and develop a culture of democratic engagement on campus.”