Get out the vote

With the election less than six weeks away, opportunities for civic and voter engagement abound on Goucher’s campus—through courses, events, and grants to support those efforts. Many of those opportunities are thanks to two political science faculty members, Bill Harder and Nina Kasniunas, who are opening doors so their students can lead the way.

This fall, Assistant Professor Harder is teaching a first-year seminar called College in American Society. Project Pericles, a nonprofit association of colleges and universities, awarded Harder a Civic and Voter Engagement Fellowship in the Deliberative Dialogue track to support the class. “Deliberative dialogue” is a method of discussion outlined by Project Pericles that is more about using a framework to find mutual understanding on an issue than trying to solve the issue itself, emphasizing insight over consensus. “We’re not necessarily trying to resolve individual personal disagreements,” said Harder. “Instead, we’re focused on if this is a problem that society must confront. It has a practical edge to it.”

First-year seminars are small, discussion-based classes intended to introduce college students to academic inquiry and to challenge their views. That makes Harder’s class a fitting one for the grant and for engaging students on the often-partisan topic of the value of college. The students are exploring four areas: student debt and loan forgiveness, the rise of for-profit colleges, prison education and Pell Grants, and academic freedom and free speech, including campus protests.

Harder says the class discussions are passionate, as these are important issues facing society. But building a framework together as a class, while still holding different beliefs and opinions, resonates with him; it gives students permission to really hear each other out and look for possible avenues toward progress.

Associate Professor Kasniunas also received support from Project Pericles this semester, through a Back to School for Democracy Collaborative Fellowship mini grant. Over the summer, Kasniunas was meeting with TaChalla Ferris, the instruction and digital strategies librarian at Goucher, and they came up with an idea inspired by NPR’s StoryCorps—a booth where students could go in and record themselves answering a question posed to them about the election. “It offers them a space to reflect on the election. It could be something that we can archive in the library for future students who might want to do research project,” said Kasniunas. “And more importantly, we thought it’d be really cool.”

Kasniunas and Ferris knew they’d need audio/visual experts, so they brought in Harder along with his team at CAST (Center for the Advancement of Scholarship & Teaching) and communications faculty members Dan Marcus and Siobahn Styles. The mini grant was perfect for their needs; they just needed some support to buy materials and hire student workers for the project, which they dubbed “Speak Up, Speak Out.” Dani Tekhle ’25 is operating the camera and editing the footage, while Kim Vasquez ’25 was hired as the roving reporter asking questions.

The project had its first run September 20 at Goucher’s Voter Extravaganza, a tabling event to build community and register students to vote. “It went really well, and we’re really excited about this,” said Kasniunas. The questions posed to students in the booth were about voting or policy. “It provides a place where a student can, in a nonconfrontational way, share their thoughts, and when it gets put into a video montage, that helps amplify the voice and the diversity of voices that exist on this campus,” she said.

Goucher has been previously recognized as one of the most engaged campuses for student voting, which Kasniunas says is thanks to the work of students, who are the people best situated to engage other students on the topic. “My job is to coordinate and facilitate, but students do the actual work,” she said. For the Voter Extravaganza, many first-year students helped set up decorations and tables. “I was really proud of that,” she said, “and they had a blast doing it.”

Students were similarly engaged at the presidential debate watch party on September 10. “It was standing room only,” she said. “It’s important to know that young people are paying attention; they are engaged.”

As Kasniunas pointed out, it’s vital for the whole college—faculty and staff, programs and events—to create an environment in which students can be empowered and learn to engage with each other. “Goucher is a place where we take voting seriously, and the students embrace that.”