For the first time in its history, Gator Day will coincide with Election Day thanks to the work of student ambassadors involved with the Andrew Goodman Foundation. The foundation has partnered with Allegheny College for 10 years to support civic engagement efforts on campus.
Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Political Participation Andrew Bloeser advises Allegheny’s chapter of the Andrew Goodman Foundation.
“This is one of the most significant, I think, accomplishments of the Andrew Goodman Foundation students at Allegheny,” Bloeser said. “Later this month I’ll be involved in some planning with a number of other folks at the college about what Gator Day programming is going to look like, and how we promote Election Day activities at Allegheny is going to be part of that conversation about Gator Day for the first time ever.”
Efforts to move Gator Day to Election Day began in 2019, with the intention of mobilizing more student voters on a day when they may have more flexibility in their schedules. The idea was ultimately approved by administration before the COVID-19 pandemic caused Allegheny students to be sent home, and effectively canceled Gator Day.
Amya Ruiz, ’20, and George Ackerman, ’21, served as AGF ambassadors during their time at Allegheny and were instrumental in getting Gator Day moved to Election Day. Ackerman explained that the inspiration for advocating that the annual celebration be moved to promote voter and civic engagement came from talking with fellow AGF members from around the country at a conference in 2019.
“Getting Election Day off for students was one of the points that we thought we could make happen,” Ackerman said of the event.
Both Ackerman and Ruiz were new to AGF at the time, and were the only two members of the club on Allegheny’s campus, as other members were studying abroad. Ruiz’s passion for activism drove her to fight for the switch— even when the initial answer was “no.”
“I came to Allegheny with the intention of doing community organizing work and finding a way to make a sustainable living out of that,” Ruiz said. “Me and George were reaching out pretty relentlessly and we were just kind of getting the runaround.”
Attempting to communicate with administration and sharing flyers for the cause proved to be a dead end, according to Ruiz. After a meeting with President Ron Cole, ’87 — then provost and dean of the college — the decision to move Gator Day was brought to other members of administration. The proposal was approved in 2020.
“We kind of did it through the framework of holding administrators accountable to their claim — to Allegheny’s claim — to civic engagement,” Ruiz said.
Bloeser said that civic engagement is at the core of AGF’s mission.
“For a lot of the students who have gotten involved, they have interest in doing this at least while they’re at college, sometimes beyond,” Bloeser said. “There’s an opportunity to develop a skill set and some practical knowledge for how to do civic engagement work that people can take with them long after they graduate, after they’ve made a difference here and now at Allegheny.”
Civic engagement efforts include voter registration, get out the vote initiatives and providing education resources to students. AGF’s “Vote Everywhere” program — of which Allegheny is a “Founding Fifteen” campus, involved in the program since its beginning in 2014 — is designed to support voter registration efforts on college campuses.
“Today, Vote Everywhere partners with America’s colleges and universities to provide resources, visibility, and mentoring to a national network of student leaders who involve their peers in participatory democracy through long-term voter engagement and public policy initiatives,” the foundation stated in an April 1 press release.
Bloeser expressed that the work of civic engagement is always essential, regardless of when major elections take place.
“Civic engagement is sort of like a muscle,” Bloeser said. “If we work at it, and we put in the repetitions and we use good form, we can build up that muscle, we can make it strong, but it requires continued use. So the importance of civic engagement work is that we need to be involved in it all the time. At least, we need some proportion of our citizenry, some proportion of our campus community, actively thinking about civic engagement all the time.”
And training the muscle that is civic engagement has paid off: there was a noticeable increase in voter turnout among Allegheny students after the college began collaborating with AGF. In 2012, approximately 50% of students voted in the presidential election. In 2016, that had risen to well over 60%, according to Bloeser.
“We’re very proud of the accomplishment of helping to increase those numbers and we’re proud of the accomplishment of sustaining those numbers, because that doesn’t happen automatically,” Bloeser said.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, there is work for AGF beyond moving Gator Day. A webpage dedicated specifically to voter education at Allegheny — a project that also began and was utilized in 2020 — is in the works, along with a strategic Instagram presence.
Bloeser emphasized that he is continually impressed by the efforts of students involved in AGF to increase voter turnout and knowledge, but also in students’ continued efforts to promote equity and diversity in civic engagement— something that has been a core principle of AGF from the beginning.
“You try to be a good advisor to students because they’re developing their first sort of experiences with these things, but you also end up learning a lot when you advise students who have the kind of ambition and values that these students do,” Bloeser said.