St. Lawrence University Students Just Vote More
More St. Lawrence University students are registered to vote in St. Lawrence County than the other three other universities in the county combined.
According to the St. Lawrence County Board of Elections, 206 SLU students are registered to vote in St. Lawrence County ahead of the 2024 general elections. That is more than SUNY Canton’s 54, SUNY Potsdam’s 32 and Clarkson University’s 23.
That’s partially due to student organizations. Clubs like the Andrew Goodman Foundation, which represents a national organization, promote political efficacy on campus.
Rashawn Davis, the AGF’s executive director, said that students registering to vote in their college’s town is not uncommon. “You sometimes see students who register overwhelmingly for the location of their university or their college,” he said.
Davis said that it is important to target college aged students because they are not as politically invested as older generations. “There is a deep sense of democracy, a deep sense of civic engagement in older people, that doesn’t always exist with young people,” he said.
He also said he thinks that the older generation’s heightened interest comes from living in a version of America where not everyone had political rights. “Some privileges weren’t available, you go back in this country 50, 60 years when many folks whether it was women, whether it was people of color, people were winning the right to vote.”
In the Spring Semester, the AGF, alongside SLU’s conservative and democrat clubs put on a student-led voter registration drive. Davis said that students being told to vote by other students is more effective than school administrators doing so.
Jacob Montgomery, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, thinks that the number of students registering to vote local to their university can be explained by the types of students they are.
“So is there a difference in the kind of composition of the student body? That might affect the base rate of how many of those students are registering to vote anywhere,” said Montgomery. “If you can imagine like an engineering school versus a liberal arts college, there might be more interest in politics within the student body just based on the kinds of students who kind of tend to go there”
Of the four universities in the Canton-Potsdam area, St. Lawrence is the only liberal arts college. It also has the highest portion of students studying politically related majors at 9 percent. Montgomery also says that socio-economic factors from student’s upbringing plays a role.
“Higher income families are more likely to vote, people who come from social context for voting is more normal,” he explained. “They would also be more likely to be people who are more interested in politics might be more likely to choose a liberal arts college and choose to vote.”
College voters are overwhelmingly supportive of Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 elections. However, Republican Donald Trump and his campaign would still like to siphon at least some of that voting bloc this November.
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