The University of Pennsylvania’s record voting turnout—in a pandemic, no less—coincides with a campus voting challenge award.
Students sign up on National Voter Registration Day in September 2021.
The numbers are in. University of Pennsylvania students voted in unprecedented numbers during the 2020 presidential election, achieving record-high voter turnout during a semester taught fully online in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data were reported in the 2020 Campus National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) Report issued by the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University.
This data might not come as a surprise for members of Penn Leads the Vote (PLTV), who co-wrote an action plan outlining steps to foster student civic engagement in 2020 and 2021. The plan recently won the ALL IN Democracy Challenge 2021 Best Action Plan Award for the Pennsylvania Campus Voting Challenge for a four-year institution.
PLTV, which operates from the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and works in partnership with the Office of Government and Community Affairs, is a non-partisan voter-engagement program. It’s currently co-directed by Harrison Feinman of Los Angeles and Eva Gonzalez of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, both seniors majoring in political science.
The award was a great testament to both Penn Leads the Vote and Penn students, says Feinman. “The sum really is greater than its parts, and we were all able to pull together and work as an entire campus to improve civic engagement.”
Here are the results:
77%
The number of eligible Penn students who voted in the 2020 presidential general election, a 9.2% increase from the 2016 election, and a 23.1% increase from the 2018 midterm election
67%
The turnout rate for the general population
66%
The national college student voter turnout rate
89%
The rate of registered Penn students who voted on Election Day 2020, compared to 73% in 2016 and 64% in 2018
100%
Penn’s eligible voter registration goal for 2028, included in the Action Plan
In Senegal, the ambitious Dakar Greenbelt project seeks to create an extensive network of ecological infrastructure in and around the city to sustainably address environmental concerns and enhance urban life. With support from David Gouverneur and Ellen Neises, Ph.D. candidate Rob Levinthal in the Weitzman School of Design led two courses that included a field trip to Dakar, that culminated in students presenting their visions for parts of the Greenbelt.
From a desert to an oasis: Penn engages in ambitious greening effort in the Sahel
Students from the Weitzman School of Design journeyed to Senegal to help with a massive ecological and infrastructural greening effort as part of their coursework. The Dakar Greenbelt aims to combat desertification and promote sustainable urban growth.
As part of an undergraduate course, Penn faculty and students curated an Arthur Ross Gallery exhibition of works from the Neumann family’s extensive collection of modern and contemporary art.
The University’s nexus for technology transfer supports researchers in their innovative efforts, from CAR T to mRNA advancements that have dramatically reshaped the world.
