Students Push for Canceled Classes on Election Day

Student government leaders and national get-out-the-vote organizations say classes on Election Day are barriers to voting. They want a designated holiday instead and classes replaced with voter engagement efforts. Jessica McGowan/Getty Images Aditya Jhaveri and Sun Woo Park, student government leaders for the Emory University College of Arts and Sciences in Atlanta, have been working for the past two years to get university administrators to cancel classes on Election Day and allow students time to vote and participate in the political process in other ways.

Their efforts, so far unsuccessful, have been driven by students at the university who say instruction and assignments on Election Day are a barrier to political participation. Jhaveri, the council president, and Park, a fourth-year legislator for College Council, are determined to change this. They are working with Time Off to Vote, a national coalition of students who are spearheading letter-writing campaigns and petitions asking college administrators to make Election Day an official holiday on their campuses, or to at least ask professors not to hold classes or schedule exams that day. The students’ effort is part of larger project led by Every Vote Counts, or EVC, a student-led, nonpartisan organization with chapters on […]

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