USU wins campus cup for second time
For Utah State University, there was more at stake this election season than who would be the next president or governor.
The Aggies had a title to defend, and despite strong competition from Dixie State University, USU students came in clutch and won the Campus Cup for the second election in a row.
The Campus Cup is a competition sponsored by the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office to encourage college students to get involved politically. Every election cycle the cup is placed back up for grabs and students are invited to compete for its possession by registering to vote and documenting their participation via social media.
“The students here are very passionate about participating and this is just another reason for them to actually get involved, to be a part of something bigger and to make sure that we won this competition,” said Matthew Clewett, USUSA’s student advocate vice president who chairs the school’s government relations council.
The winner of the cup is determined by the percentage of a school’s population that participates in an election — which means smaller schools need fewer students to participate to raise their percentage. Dixie State presented the strongest competition, but in the end they were no match for USU, Clewett said.
Still, a victory over Dixie State is an impressive feat considering their population is much smaller than USU’s. To keep the lead, two Aggies had to participate for every single Trailblazer.
“It was still a pretty big feat and they were actually very engaged in the competition,” Clewett said. “We were really worried about them, but the Aggie community stuck it out and we were able to participate a lot.”
In the end, the competition wasn’t actually close at all, though, said Justin Lee, who serves on the lieutenant governor’s staff as deputy director of elections.
Utah State was able to register 1,653 students to vote, compared with Dixie State’s 512. Even with the 2:1 Aggie-to-Trailblazer ratio needed, USU still won by more than 600 votes.
“The number that USU got was so much higher even with the percentages,” Lee said, “at the end of the day it didn’t end up being that much of a contest.”
The next closest competition was the University of Utah, which Lee said registered 880 students.
USU’s government relations council led the school to victory with help from Clewett and GRC co-director Madeleine Waddoups.
“We honestly did as much as we could have, we were out there registering people to vote quite a bit and we got probably everyone that we could have and we got lots of people to hashtag,” Waddoups said.
Though USU returned the cup to the Lieutenant Governor’s Office at the start of the competition, it should be returned to its rightful home in Clewett’s third floor office in the Taggart Student Center in January.
Clewett joked that he wanted the GRC to get their hands on the cup sooner and “maybe eat a bowl of cereal out of it.”
Waddoups said that wasn’t the whole plan but if it happened, she had a cereal in mind.
“Definitely Froot Loops,” she said.
Lee said he’d recommend Lucky Charms or, in honor of the Aggies, “something blue.”
@alyssarbrts