Rowan recognized as a 2024 ALL IN Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting

Rowan University has been recognized as a 2024 ALL IN Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.

The designation recognizes colleges and universities for outstanding efforts to increase nonpartisan student voter participation.

Through the RowanVotes initiative, students helped register 416 citizens to vote during the fall semester. The group's work included staffing RowanVotes tables on campus for 28 days, visiting 31 separate classes, and holding educational events such as a trivia event for Constitution Day, a Know Before You Go event, co-presented by the Department of Political Science & Economics, and a Talking Politics series, co-presented by teams from the Division of Inclusive Excellence, Community and Belonging and the Human Resources Department, among other events.

Moreover, students involved with RowanVotes worked with the Gloucester County Division of Election Outreach and discussed their efforts with local officials.

"In addition to registering hundreds of students, RowanVotes student interns helped students with nonpartisan information about the voting process as well as provided them with tools to make a plan to vote," says Political Science & Economics Professor Kathy Javian, co-coordinator of the RowanVotes program with Rowan Institute for Public Policy & Citizenship Founding Director Ben Dworkin.

Altogether, 471 colleges and universities across the nation were recognized by ALL IN for completing four core actions. Among them:

"The research is clear: colleges and universities that make intentional efforts to increase nonpartisan democratic engagement have higher campus voter registration and voter turnout rates. This year we saw more colleges than ever before step up their efforts to ensure that their students were registered and ready to make their voices heard at the ballot box," said Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, executive director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.

"These Most Engaged Campuses are setting the standard for nonpartisan civic engagement work for colleges and universities across the country."

The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge empowers colleges and universities to achieve excellence in nonpartisan student democratic engagement. Campuses that join the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge complete a set of action items, with the support of ALL IN staff, to institutionalize nonpartisan civic learning and voter participation on their campus.

According to ALL IN officials, the Campus Democracy Challenge currently engages 10.8 million students from more than 1,075 institutions in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.