USU Celebrates Super Tuesday in Style
USU students of every party affiliation showed up at the Taggart Student Center Tuesday night to watch poll results from primaries around the nation.
The party, a collaborated event hosted by ASUSU, the College Democrats and USU for Obama, is one of several ways USU has gotten involved in political events.
Ashley Johnson, executive vice president of ASUSU, works as a liaison between USU and local and state governments.
“I really want to get students as civically aware as possible,” Johnson said. “Two weeks ago, we had civic awareness and HASS Week, and me and HASS Sen. Nick West got over 400 people to register to vote in less than four days.”
Johnson said as part of her attempt to make USU more civically aware, she negotiated for early campus registration, which occurred last Friday, and is currently working on getting registration booths and a drop box, to make the voter registration process as easy as possible.
Johnson also arranged for MTV to come Tuesday night as a way to get students to come out to the event. MTV took 30-second clips Tuesday of different colleges around the nation who were getting politically involved, including USU.
“My biggest goal is making it as easy as possible for students to get involved, because most students just don’t know how to go about getting involved,” Johnson said.
Melinda Thatcher, campus coordinator for USU for Obama, said, “Students can really change the way things go, because we are such a huge population.”
Aubrey Hill, president of the USU College Democrats, said she is a supporter of Hillary Clinton because “she has very specific plans for what policies she wants enacted and what direction she wants things to go.”
Jaron Janson, chair of the College Republicans, said he is a supporter of Mitt Romney, and, “Activities like this are exciting, and get us excited about our civic responsibility and specific candidates”
Johnson said she was “excited about the turnout” and was glad to see students taking such an interest in politics.
Though Super Tuesday is over, the election is not, Johnson said.
“Go down and register to vote now,” she said. “Today is Feb. 5, the field is about to narrow, but the election is not over. Get involved, look at the candidate who mirrors your values, and vote.”
“You can have a big effect on the outcomes of elections,” Hill said. “A lot of people tend to think that politics is removed from them, but policies that legislators make and that the president carries out as to education, foreign policy, and all of those kind of things really, really affect us in really specific, tangible ways. It determines what kind of funding we get. It determines how we are viewed in the world, etc. It really is about being aware of and taking control of the future we are going to have. To do that, we have to be involved in politics.”
-lindsay.anderson@aggiemail.usu.edu