Tufts had one of the highest voter participation rates in the 2008 elections, according to recently released data from the Campus Votes Challenge that highlighted the importance of student votes.
In the inter-campus voting challenge, Tufts, which attained a voter participation rate of over 70 percent, ranked in the top three in the category of institutions with student populations of more than 5,000.
Only seven out of the over 40 participating undergraduate colleges and universities in all categories reached that mark, while 15 achieved rates of over 60 percent, compared to the national average of 59.7 percent voting for all 18 to 24 year-old college students.
The rates were recorded as part of the Campus Votes Challenge that University President Lawrence Bacow issued for the 2008 presidential elections to encourage voting.
Bacow issued the challenge as a means to promote the ideal that students must vote in order to practice civic engagement.
"Voting is the first responsibility of citizenship," he said in an e-mail. "If students are to be active citizens, then they should vote. This is why I always challenge our students to vote in election years if they are eligible."
Bacow took this idea of active citizenship and saw an opportunity to expand it to a challenge among interested universities.
"Rob Hollister, dean of the Tisch College, suggested that we extend this appeal to other institutions in the form of a friendly challenge," Bacow said. "I readily agreed."
Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service administered the challenge, which grew from Campus Compact's 2008 Voter Initiative, which sought to empower students to engage in the election.
Maureen Curley, president of Campus Compact -- a national coalition of university and college presidents -- explained that the group wanted to be involved in the project because it saw Bacow's challenge as an excellent way to spur civic engagement.
"The idea came from President Bacow, who thought that there was so much being done to register that he was interested to see who would actually vote," Curley said. "We saw that there was great enthusiasm on campuses and were interested in the connection between registering and actually voting."
Curley believes the challenge was a success because it illustrated the importance of voting on college campuses.
"[The challenge] highlighted those schools that were able to have a high percentage of participation and prompted them to look at their initiatives and see how they got those results," she said. "There has to be more awareness and discussion on campuses about the value of voting and educating people about what the issues are so they feel comfortable voting."
Campus Compact's network of about 1,100 members from institutions of higher learning provided a target community for Bacow's appeal, but Curley stressed that the challenge came from Bacow and Tufts.
"President Bacow penned the letter that put out the challenge to our members, his colleagues, and said that Tufts would take the responsibility of collecting the data," Curley said. "We were just the vehicle by which they could reach people."
Students at participating institutions calculated their schools' voting rates, which were then reviewed against the public voter record by a third-party institution. Tisch College's Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) computed national voter rates.
The results of both the 2008 elections and the 2010 Massachusetts Special Election to fill the late Edward Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat made Curley question the gap between the voting population and actual turnout.
"If you register, why don't you vote?" she said.
Director of CIRCLE Peter Levine's analysis of the results of the Senatorial election highlighted the importance of the youth vote.
He found that 15 percent of young citizens voted in the election, making up just six percent of the total voters in the election. This was a significant decline from the 2008 election, when young people represented 19 percent of the vote.
Although Levine is unsure if higher youth turnout would have changed the results of the election, he said the vote would have been much closer.
He predicted that if the youth had maintained their 19 percent share of the vote in 2010, the result of the election would have been approximately 50.3 percent for Scott Brown, 48.5 percent for Martha Coakley and 1.2 percent for Joseph Kennedy or other.
"In short, low youth turnout by itself did not necessarily cost Coakley the election, but it was a major factor in her loss," Levine said.
Curley agreed that the youth vote is important and that voting has great implications.
"Civic engagement is necessary, and higher education prepares students to go on to serve their communities," Curley said. "You have a public purpose to add to the greater good of the community."
