Looking to the future
College Democrats plan for the future of their organization
CMU senior Christian Toney shares his opinon during a shared discussion during the Dangerously In Love L.e.g.a.C meeting, Wednesday, Feb. 7, Anspach Hall. Now Toney is the president of College of Democrats. (CM-Life | Auset Pope)
The election season has long passed, but the College Democrats are still around. After a couple of years of being inactive, the group has made a comeback during this election year.
The College Democrats at Central Michigan University is a registered student organization. The group was active for multiple elections a few years ago. President of the College Democrats, Christian Toney, said that the organization has made a strong comeback this year. Toney said that the organization now has 15 people on their executive board (or “E-board"), and around 80 people attend their general assemblies.
Throughout the election season, the organization set out blue tables where members and volunteers encouraged and informed students how to register to vote.
“We recognize (voting) being an important thing,” Toney said. “We want to ensure that people know about their civic duty to vote.”
Toney said that tabling was effective. He said that they received over 800 pledges, or Commit to Votes, during this election through tabling.
Through all of this, Toney said the organization has partnered with a few campaigns, which have helped them with funding. He said that one of the recent campaigns they’ve partnered with was the Elissa Slotkin campaign.
Many of the students involved with the organization are motivated to inform students to vote. One student is Samantha Krawczyk, a member of the E-board for voter contact and registration. Krawczyk said that she thinks it is extremely important for Generation Z to vote.
“We’re the ones inheriting this government, so we should have a say," Krawczyk said.
Now that the election is over, Toney said that the College Democrats are planning for the future. In the next semester, the organization will be switching from meeting once a week to biweekly in Anspach Hall.
“We’re just trying to set up the organization in terms of the future,” he said.
Toney said that he doesn’t have many details on future plans yet, but some of the things they are considering are working on potential collaboration with other colleges, and getting more politicians as potential guest speakers here at CMU. He said that the organization is continuing to focus on informing and encouraging students on the importance of voting.
“It’s really on us to inform them of their constitutional right and duty to vote,” Toney said. “We want to ensure that by (election) time, everyone already has all of their … information down … so they can just vote.”
Toney said that he was mainly proud of all of his organization's hard work during the election season, and he looks forward to the future.
“I think our personal campaign was a success in terms of getting a record number of people to commit to vote this semester,” he said. “(The election) didn’t end up how we wanted to, but we recognize (that) we still have many other students to encourage to vote and ensure that they are informed on the issues.”
