Saint Mary’s Honored for Student Voter Engagement

by Office of Marketing and Communications Staff | November 16, 2022

Saint Mary’s continues to earn recognition for its work to establish nonpartisan democratic engagement as the College has been honored as one of 394 colleges and universities to earn the inaugural ALL IN Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting award.

As a participant in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, Saint Mary’s has worked in recent elections to increase student voter participation. The College’s efforts in the 2020 election led to a Platinum Seal Campus designation, and SMC was one of only 47 schools in the nation, as well as the lone Bay Area institution, to earn the Platinum Seal.

“This honor shows that Saint Mary’s College is doing an outstanding job of preparing students to become responsible members of the communities in which they will live, learn, and work,” said Politics professor Steve Woolpert, who coordinated the College’s voter turnout effort. “Over the past three elections, despite deep negative partisanship and rising support for undemocratic practices, our students have excelled at nonpartisan voter registration, education and turnout activities.”

Schools received recognition according to four criteria:

Participate in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge
Shared 2020 NSLVE Reports with campus voting data with ALL IN
Developed and submitted a 2022 democratic engagement action plan with ALL IN
Have a current signatory to ALL IN’s Higher Education Presidents’ Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation.

The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge empowers colleges and universities to achieve excellence in nonpartisan student democratic engagement. Campuses that join the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge complete a set of action items, with the support of ALL IN Challenge staff, to institutionalize nonpartisan civic learning, political engagement, and voter participation on their campus. The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge currently engages over 9 million students from more than 950 institutions in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.