Last weekend thousands of people from Annapolis to Little Rock gathered to commemorate the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., that turned violent when state troopers clubbed and shot peaceful demonstrators. The violence, broadcast on national television, shifted American sentiment and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 five months later.
The anniversary is a powerful reminder of the sacrifices that Americans made to protect voting rights for all people in the United States. The Voting Rights Act targeted literacy tests and other discriminatory practices—methods often used to limit the voting rights of Black citizens, in particular—and established federal oversight of elections where needed. The act also precipitated the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 and significantly expanded the number of students who could cast a ballot.
Worryingly, recent moves at the state and federal level have weakened those protections, including for college students, who are often first-time voters, have busy schedules and might not live at their permanent address on Election Day.
Last month, the Education Department announced an investigation into Tufts University and the National Student Clearinghouse over the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement, a nonpartisan project civic engagement groups praise and more than 1,000 institutions use to understand and improve student voting rates.
The same day, the agency sent a letter to colleges and universities telling them that if they use data released this year by the study, they risk violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research—not influencing elections.” Less than a month later, the NSC ended its 13-year partnership with the study.
The administration has also targeted voter registration on campus. In August, a Dear Colleague letter from Acting Assistant Education Secretary Christopher McCaghren discouraged colleges from using Federal Work-Study funds to pay students to work on voter registration efforts. He reasoned—somewhat irrationally—that the jobs, involving voter registration, voter assistance at a polling place or serving as a poll worker, “involve political activity because these activities support the process of voting which is a quintessential political activity whereby voters formally support partisan or nonpartisan political candidates by casting ballots.”
Meanwhile, student voter registration organizations say as more diversity, equity and inclusion offices close and identity-based affinity groups disband, they struggle to reach all student communities on campus.
The latest steps to suppress voting build on previous legislation that has made it harder for students to cast a ballot. Since 2020, 27 states have passed voter suppression laws that shorten the window for absentee ballots to be submitted and tighten requirements for voter IDs and proof of citizenship. Be sure to tell the college student in your life to pack their birth certificate when they go to campus this fall.
Speaking of birth certificates, all eligible voters might soon need one—or at least a passport—to register. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which has already passed a vote in the House and is awaiting consideration in the Senate, would require all voters to provide paperwork proving citizenship to register, in addition to a sworn voter registration form at the polls.
While state and federal governments attempt to limit voting rights, colleges face political pressure to teach American values and civic thought. And yet, registering young people to vote creates in them a lifelong habit of civic involvement. Legislators understood that when they mandated in the Higher Education Act that colleges make a good-faith effort to distribute voter registration forms to their students during election years. The mismatch between legislation and political pressure creates a unique opportunity for colleges to do more to promote and protect college students’ voting rights.
Since Bloody Sunday, voting rights advocates have continued to mobilize against voter suppression, and students—often students of color—are at the center of the movements. Prairie View A&M University in Texas has a long history of students fighting for greater access to polling sites and against restrictive registration requirements. At Bard College in New York, senior administrators fought alongside students in legal battles with the county Board of Elections, urging them to accept student voter registration and provide polling places on or near college campuses.
Just last month, North Carolina A&T students walked more than half an hour to an early-voting site at the Guilford County courthouse with signs saying, “Use Your Vote or Lose Your Vote” and “Aggie Votes Matter.” They marched against a decision by the North Carolina State Board of Elections to deny the campus an early polling place on campus for the state primary elections.
At a time when voting rights are under threat across the country, institutions can take inspiration from student-led voting rights movements and create more opportunities for more students to get involved—or colleges can become active partners themselves. What greater example of civic engagement can institutions model than to advocate for equal access to voting information and opportunity for all? As the popular student demonstration chant goes: This is what democracy looks like!
Sara Custer is editor-in-chief at Inside Higher Ed.
