Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

To increase voter turnout at SMU through a GOTV event on election day in order to convince students that voting empowers their generation to let their voices be heard in the issues that will not only affect their lives but also the lives of billions of others in the world.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

My Blueprint addresses the problem of young voter apathy on campus. Since young student voters are usually not directly affected by the policies and procedures politicians put into place they tend to ignore politics all together. Furthermore, young student voters have many distractions at their disposal in college that may seem far more interesting than politics.

What communities will you work with?

• Campus community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: Candidate education campaign
• Set dates for tabeling and find at least ten volunteers to rotate
• Create "How to vote" flyers containing information on the candidates as well as important information for first-time voters
• Send out mass email to entire student body with information about voting and advertising for the flag pole/busing event
• Contact at least 200 people on campus about the party at the flag pole/busing and make sure that they are reminded at least 3 times about the event
• Goal 2: Party at the flag pole
• Use attention grabbing things like balloons, giveaways, food, and music
• Find fifteen volunteers for the event
• Strongly encourage everyone who stops by the flag pole event to get on the bus to vote
• Goal 3: Busing students to the polls
• Reserve SMU vans with the University for election day, register drivers, and find five drivers
• Promote rides through posters, signs, flyers, emails, and other organizations
• Take 100 students/faculty to the poll that day, compared to the 25 that were brought to the polls during the last mid-term election
• Increase the combined total votes of precincts surrounding SMU from 3,909 votes of the 2004 election to over 4,000 votes

What is your primary approach? Advocacy and Activism

Why did you choose this approach?

In order to get students to come out and vote, I think that you must first and foremost get the students to care about the issues and candidates they would vote for. Advocating information about how and where to vote as well as bringing important topics to the attention of students would make students more interested and involved in voting.

Did you have secondary approaches? What are they?

I also plan on building alliances with other groups on campus such as Democracy Matters, Students for a Better Society, SPECTRUM, and the Women's Interest Network in order to spread the message to as many people as possible.

What will your tactics and activities be?

In order to get students to get out the vote, I will mainly use direct action tactics including face-to-face contact with students, hanging up signs, mass emails, passing out flyers, and talking with other student organization leaders.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

My strategy would contribute to my vision by getting young people to be interested in voting and as a result, allow young people to voice their votes.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

Leadership, time management, and creativity