Student Voting Advocates Say 2025 Brought "Trepidation"

"As part of the coalition's goal of engaging 100 percent of student voters, SLSV and its campus partners have historically targeted specific demographic groups to ensure that their voter outreach message extends to all communities. But some organizations, including SLSV, have reported that the closure of campus diversity offices and crackdowns on cultural events and student organizations have made achieving that goal increasingly difficult."

""If our partners are on campuses that have had restrictions around DEI activities, we've been just trying to support them in different ways that allow them to reach all students on their campuses," said Unger. "In some cases, that might mean switching from working with some specific campus groups to trying to integrate voter registration into class registration processes or things like that.""

"These new challenges didn't come out of nowhere. In some states, DEI offices, which sometimes partner with voter outreach organizations, have been under attack for multiple years now. Beyond that, some states have passed restrictive voting laws in recent years that could negatively impact college students; they include legislation that limits where and when individuals can vote, adds new identification requirements, restricts voter registration organizations, and more."

2025 had few major elections, yet campus voter outreach organizations continued efforts to engage students and raise awareness of local races. The Students Learn Students Vote Coalition pursues a goal of engaging 100 percent of student voters and has targeted specific demographic groups to extend outreach across communities. An increasingly fraught political environment and attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion have made outreach more difficult. Closures of campus diversity offices and crackdowns on cultural events and student organizations have hindered targeted engagement. Some campus partners have shifted strategies, integrating voter registration into class registration and reducing reliance on specific campus groups. Restrictive state voting laws have added further barriers for college students.

Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs