{"id":2199,"date":"2020-10-20T09:36:29","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T13:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/?p=2199"},"modified":"2026-07-13T22:24:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T02:24:28","slug":"hawk-voices-on-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/hawk-voices-on-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawk voices on voting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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UMES students are focused on presidential election year<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Thursday, October 8, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting is always – or should be – a big deal; UMES students about to cast their first ballots in a national election are stoked about having a say in who will be president for the next four years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was evident on National Voter Registration Day in late September, when more than 350 UMES students turned out at the Student Services Center for a series of activities that reinforced lessons most were exposed to in high school civics classes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organizers of UMES’ event verified 287 participants already were registered and four dozen more registered to vote, joining an estimated 1.5 million others across the country, according to the non-partisan group that began staging the annual celebration in 2012. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That year, Barack Obama was re-elected president.  Current UMES students were in elementary school when he made history four years earlier – in 2008. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think traditionally people think younger people don’t care about politics,\u201d sophomore Amir Gawish<\/strong> said. \u201cThe whole mentality is starting to shift.  We do care about politics \u2026 and we all have a responsibility to create a better tomorrow. Not necessarily for us, but for the generations after us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freshman Jazmin Wilson<\/strong> of Laurel, Md. is excited not only about voting but heartened that her grandmother is committed to doing so as well.  \u201cShe even joined a (get-out-the-vote) march to show her support,\u201d Wilson said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson, a sociology major, comes from what she proudly calls a \u201cmulti-cultural family.\u201d \u00a0Her\u00a0great-grandmother<\/em>\u00a0was biracial and \u201cwhen it came time for her to vote … she had difficulty,\u201d Wilson said. \u00a0\u201cHer race was holding her back, so she stopped voting altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Other members of Wilson’s family were discouraged by a pre-Civil Rights era culture that made it difficult or uncomfortable for people of color to vote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting \u201cis a rite of passage,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cOnce you turn 18, you are considered an adult.  I’m a first-generation college student.  All the events in 2020, people being killed because of the color of their skin – where do I want to see my future?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophomore Mackenzie Freeman<\/strong> registered back home in Cambridge, Md., where she went to high school, because \u201cit’s important.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn order to have a say, you have to vote,\u201d Freeman said.  \u201cYou can’t complain about what’s going wrong if you not willing to at least make a change.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bryan Larose<\/strong> of Philadelphia also was registered to vote before returning for his sophomore year. \u201cI wanted to take control of my future,\u201d he said.  \u201cOne way of doing that is to have a voice in who gets elected to office.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s especially important this year, because of our options,\u201d Larose said. \u201c(Donald) Trump and (Joe) Biden aren’t the best candidates.  It’s about picking the lesser evil.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larose, a mechanical engineering major, said he’s read and heard that young people \u201ctake up more than half of the voting population, and we need to have our voices heard like older voters.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gawish, a computer science major from Burtonsville, Md., is looking forward to voting for the first time because he is the son of Sudanese immigrants who lived under a dictatorship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were not able to vote,\u201d Gawish said.  \u201cThey protested (for that right) as college students.  Now, I have the opportunity, and I should.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freeman finds motivation to vote in 2020 because \u201cthe government needs to be reformed. In the past four years, the current administration hasn’t done much to reform.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy reform, I mean social justice; equality, equity and the way we go about policing is a good example,\u201d the criminal justice major said.  \u201cMany people think voting is not important. You don’t know until you get out there and see the difference you can make if you just vote.\u201d<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UMES students are focused on presidential election year Thursday, October 8, 2020 Voting is always – or should be – a big deal; UMES students about to cast their first ballots in a national election are stoked about having a say in who will be president for the next four years.  That was evident on…Read more Hawk voices on voting<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/scm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}