Students Need Relief

By Cora Currier

When Barack Obama announced his pick of Arne Duncan for secretary of Education earlier this week, much of the discussion focused on early education, with programs like No Child Left Behind and Head Start taking center stage.

But advocates for higher education are pushing for some immediate changes, namely, help for students struggling to get by in this economic downturn.

Campus Progress, United States Student Association, and US PIRG'S, along with many other groups, sent a letter to Congress on Monday asking that relief for colleges and students be included in the forthcoming economic stimulus package. They ask for an increase of the maximum Pell Grant from $4,700 to $7,000; more funding for the Federal Work Study Program, and the creation of an "emergency access" student loan pool for colleges who are committed to providing need-based aid. The letter points out that these changes could be made quickly, since they mostly augment existing programs.

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December 19, 2008

What Can You Do for Your Country?

By Cora Currier

In today's plummeting economy the prospects for young people entering the workforce look especially dim. Youth unemployment (ages 16-19) is at 20 percent. Economists blame this on a domino effect when older workers or workers with a college degree are forced to take lower paying and entry-level jobs, squeezing out the least experienced workers.

Nor is it getting any easier to be a student. A report released yesterday estimates that the cost of college, which had continued to rise at a rate far higher than incomes even before the recession, will soon be out of reach for many Americans. Student borrowing has doubled in the past ten years, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Education. Already, the US ranks beneath Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Greece and Korea in college enrollment, and the US is one of the few countries with fewer younger workers holding degrees than older ones, according to the report.

These parallel developments-- rising college costs and fewer jobs for young workers-- may actually mesh well with the vision for service that Barack Obama outlined in his campaign.

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December 4, 2008

A Diverse Young Coalition Behind Obama

By Cora Currier

Additional analysis of exit polls from November 4th confirms that young voters were the most diverse group of the electorate, with larger percentages identifying as Hispanic, African-American and gay or lesbian than the voting population as a whole. However, a major discrepancy remains between young people with a college education and those without. This analysis-- carried out by CIRCLE, a civic research group-- found that 70 percent of young voters who went to the polls had attended college, even though only 57 percent of Americans under 30 have gone to college. Similarly, only 6 percent of young voters failed to graduate high school, while 14 percent of the entire youth population falls in this category.

There are some obvious reasons for this. CIRCLE has done extensive reports on the state of civic education in American high schools, finding that civic classes were spotty in most public schools, and particularly those in poorer and minority areas. At the same time, they found that individuals who had taken civic education in high school were more likely to be registered to vote, more likely to volunteer, and more likely to trust in the political process. At the campaign level, young people are much easier to reach on campus, leading campaigns to overwhelmingly target college students. Without a central meeting place like a campus, it takes a lot more effort by campaigns to reach out to non-college young people-- something campaigns need to work on.

But despite this discrepancy, young voters at every education level threw their support behind Barack Obama. CIRCLE's analysis confirms what we already knew-- that Obama drew support from young people across all sorts of demographic lines, including young people who identify as conservatives. The Democratic party as a whole also benefited this election-- more young people now identify as Democrats (45 percent) than the population as a whole (39 percent). Most telling, it seems, is this figure: half of young voters said they would be "excited" by an Obama win, compared to 30 percent of all voters and just 20 percent of voters over 60. Obama has certainly captured this generation, and I'll be writing more in the coming weeks about how their involvement will play out post-election.

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November 24, 2008

The Power of Young Voters

By Cora Currier

The numbers are in: youth turnout increased by 3.4 million votes over 2004, for a turnout rate of at least 52 percent. As raw numbers go, this election marks the largest youth turnout since 1972, when the voting age was lowered to 18. In an election that saw a large increase in overall voter turnout, CIRCLE, a civic engagement think-tank, estimates that people under 30 accounted for 60 percent of that overall increase.

There's no question that Barack Obama overwhelmingly beat out John McCain among young voters. While the overall vote split was roughly 53 percent to 46 percent, among young voters Obama won in a landslide: 66 percent to McCain's 31. This split by age group is unprecedented, according to CIRCLE-- youth have historically deviated from the overall margin by only 1.8 percentage points.

While claiming that any one group is responsible for a win is near-impossible, there's no question that young voters comprised a major force no matter how you slice-and-dice the electorate. African-American and Latino voters also solidly backed Obama, and large numbers of those groups were also young voters. According to an analysis by James Carville, young voters were crucial to Obama's victory in toss-up states like Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina. Mike Connery at Future Majority has a great set of maps representing the youth vote visually-- including one that shows how blue the country would be if only youth voted in 2004 and 2008. The difference between the two elections is striking.

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November 8, 2008

Boston Takes to the Streets

By Cora Currier

The college crowd was ecstatic tonight in Boston,taking over city streets and bars to celebrate a president-elect they could call their own.

At Tufts University, the quad overflowed with hundreds of students chanting "Yes We Can" and singing the national anthem.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts -- lovingly known to its residents as "the people's republic of Cambridge" -- the streets were jammed with crowds chanting and cars honking. Hundreds of students and residents shut down over a mile of Massachusetts Avenue, a major thoroughfare, with an impromptu march complete with drums and noisemakers. Finally, around 2 am, police corralled the marchers onto the sidewalk and the crowd dispersed.

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November 5, 2008

Students Flood New Hampshire

By Cora Currier

MANCHESTER, NH-- The Obama headquarters in Manchester is abuzz with college and high school students from across New England, some of whom have been here since the weekend and are running on about 3 hours of sleep a night.

Hundreds of students have come each day from Boston University, Harvard, Wellesley and Dartmouth over the past few days, as well as high schoolers from local public and prep schools. New Hampshire is the lone swing state within reach of New England's large college population, who feel that their efforts are a moot point in liberal bastions like Massachusetts.

Older volunteers at the Obama headquarters said they'd never seen so many young people involved in an election. And indeed, the headquarters felt like a pep-rally, littered with hand-colored posters and kids as young as twelve handing out sodas and snacks. Organizers said they're taking advantage of youthful legs to pound the pavement knocking doors, while others remain inside manning the phones.

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November 4, 2008

Student Voting Challenged in VA

By Cora Currier

Students at Radford University in Virginia got some bad news recently-- the local county registrar's office informed them that they were ineligible to vote because they listed their dormitory addresses on their voter registration application.

The county registrar, Tracy Howard, told a local newspaper in October that "a dorm is generally--and I say generally--the same thing as a long-term motel stay." Some students who had registered using their school address had been sent postcards asking them to re-state their "home" address, and those that replied with dormitory addresses again were disqualified. Other students received no requests for clarification, and though they submitted applications more than a month in advance of the deadline, were notified of their ineligibility a week after it had passed.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that students may register to vote where they attend school, and the Virginia state board of elections explicitly states that a dormitory may constitute a valid address. What's more, the additional paperwork sent to students violates the constitutional requirements against discrimination against particular groups of voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The center, along with the ACLU of Virginia, sent a letter detailing these complaints last week, and threatening legal action if the students applications are not cleared. The ACLU has also set up a service through their website that allows voters to report problems they experience.

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November 2, 2008

Text-Messages Drive Voter Turnout

By Cora Currier

Registration numbers and high rates of early voting point to a real increase in youth voting this year, but organizers haven't let up in their push to get young people to the polls on election day. It seems the most effective new tool may be text messaging.

Young Democrats of America have a plan for a text-message blast reminding people to vote on November 4th. Their program, "Young Voter Revolution," allows voters to sign up to receive an election day reminder by texting "VOTEDEM" to a simple number. It also encourages them to forward the message to all the contacts in their cellphone. A group called Credo Mobile has a similar program through the website Txt Out The Vote.

Text message reminders were shown to boost youth turnout by 4.6 percentage points during the "Super Tuesday" primary contests this February, according to a study by Credo Mobile and Student PIRGs. The Obama campaign has used texting to great effect as a way of reaching out to voters, most famously through their plan (somewhat foiled by leaks) to announce Joe Biden as Obama's VP pick via text.

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October 29, 2008

Across Races, A Progressive Youth Agenda

By Cora Currier

Young people support Barack Obama across racial boundaries, but they also seem to agree on a lot more than a candidate.

The Center for American Progress released a study this week indicating that whites, blacks and Hispanics ages 18-29 are a remarkably united front when it comes to their political and economic views. The study compared its findings to average data from the past 20 years. Historically, young blacks and Hispanics have tended to be more progressive on economic issues than average, but in recent years, young whites are moving farther left and closing the gap on key economic issues like support for unions and universal health care.

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October 10, 2008

Students Fight for Their Right to Vote

By Cora Currier

Last week was both a boon and a bust to student voting rights, as Congress held a hearing on safeguarding students' right to vote, and troublesome allegations surfaced about swing state voter intimidation.

The Supreme Court in 1979 guaranteed students the right to register and vote in the district in which they attend school. Many students who attend out-of-state schools don't do this-- they use absentee ballots to vote in their home state. But for many others, their college town, district, or state quickly becomes their home. They spend the majority of the year there; many students volunteer or work in their school communities; they pay taxes there (sales tax, and income tax if they work while studying). But the process of switching states can be confusing for students-- some states have more stringent residency requirements than others, such as not accepting college addresses as proof-of-residence.

On Thursday, Congress held a hearing entitled "Ensuring the Right of College Students to Vote," with testimony from groups like the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE), who spoke of barriers to voting such as inadequate polling places and long lines. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), also testified in favor of the bill she introduced in July that would require all federally-funded colleges to provide voter registration materials to students when they register for classes. The president of Oberlin College said that Ohio permits colleges to issue utility bills to students as proof-of-residence. All of these would be great steps to giving students fair and easy access to the vote.

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September 29, 2008