Young Democrats and Young Republicans pair voter outreach with social service

Michela Scott, a member of the Young Democrats, calls the lunch room to order, and as the rowdy crowd quiets down, she holds up a voter registration form, alerting people who are or are soon to be 18 of their voting rights. 

Outside the classroom boxes featuring cartoonish cut outs of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, representing the Young Republicans and Young Democrats respectively, call attention to where students should put their canned food.

“The canned food drive was a visual element to draw people to the table, being able to say: I’m voting Democrat or Republican…and to have some sort of interactive element,” said Jamee Robinson advisor for both the Young Democrats and Young Republicans.

This dual event, a canned food drive and awareness campaign for high school voters, is the first big event the Young Republicans and Young Democrats have had since all club activities were decreased due to COVID. 

“I know this year and last year have been kind of rebuilding years,” said Chris Horstkamp, a member of the Young Republicans.

The event has been long in the planning. 

“We’ve been meeting about this and we’ve been talking about it since probably November or December, but we really ramped up meeting about once a week for the past month to hammer out the details,” said Robinson. 

Horstkamp, one the participants in these meetings, helped put together several aspects of the event. 

Along with helping to pick the theme, Horstkamp also created a slideshow presentation that was shown on the cafeteria screens displaying information about each of the potential Republican candidates.

Due to the overwhelming likelihood Jennifer Wexton would be the Democratic candidate an equivalent presentation was not made by the Young Democrats.

Beyond the slideshow, the event was also advertised through the morning announcements and social media. 

Part of the interactive aspect of the canned food drive set up was a competition between who would get more canned food, which FDR won.

As described by Horstkamp, “FDR mopped the floor with us.”

Despite the political climate, there was no animosity between the two groups, who find a common ground in their care for politics. 

“We started sort of separate, but there are three of us in Young Republicans and four Young Democrats, so we sort of got merged,” Horstkamp said.

On top of that both sides saw the bottom line of the food drive as more important than any trivial competition.

“I think with politics today a lot of it is what can I do for myself and not what can I do for others, helping people less fortunate than ourselves is something every person should be committed to regardless of their political standing,” Horstkamp said.

The higher purpose of the event was also to promote voting, something both clubs saw as an important mission in today’s society.

 “What we’re doing right now is just trying to educate the student body. A lot of the 11th and 12th-graders may be eligible to vote this year in 2022, and a lot of kids just don’t pay attention to elections unless it’s a presidential election year,” Robinson said.

The student participants agreed that the student population needed to be educated on their rights.

“I’m a little worried that people are just a little apathetic towards voting, just because how politically stoked everything seems to be nowadays, but I think hopefully at least a couple dozen picked up forms,” Horstkamp said.

“There are so many people who do want to cause change, but they don’t see voting as a way to do that, but voting is a very important tool,” said Sebastian Buryniuk, another member of the Young Democrats.

“I think everything is too hyperpartisan, and voting is such an important right for Americans, that getting people to vote regardless of how they are going to vote is important,” Horstkamp said.