The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) is urging students to vote in the upcoming provincial election. More than half a million eligible BC voters chose not to vote last year on election day and student groups says a mobilized student voice could have a huge impact on elections.<\/p>\n
One group of optimists is Rock the Vote BC, a non-partisan voter registration campaign to increase voter turnout among BC\u2019s postsecondary students.<\/p>\n
The campaign is run by the Canadian Federation of Students British Columbia (CFS-BC) and is supported by the CCSS. Rock the Vote BC says students have a strong reason to vote and if more young people show up on election day, bigger changes and new ideas would emerge and benefit everyone.<\/p>\n
According to Madeline Keller-MacLeod, external affairs executive of the CCSS, Rock the Vote BC is an important event for students because it gives them a chance to raise awareness for matters that are important to them. The government won\u2019t change anything unless it\u2019s given reason to, says Keller-MacLeod.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe provincial government has jurisdiction over many issues that are important to students, such as postsecondary education and poverty reduction,\u201d says Keller-MacLeod. \u201cWhen students don\u2019t vote, sadly, many politicians take that to mean that they do not need to take our concerns seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rock the Vote and Keller-MacLeod say it\u2019s in students\u2019 interests to start voting and paying closer attention to their communities. If students and younger people continue to stay home on election day, they shouldn\u2019t expect to see any big changes, they say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last BC election there were over 500,000 eligible BC residents under the age of 34 who did not vote,\u201d says Keller-MacLeod, \u201cthese are many of the students who are currently dealing with the negative consequences of a government that is shifting the responsibility of funding postsecondary institutions onto students.\u201d<\/p>\n
For most students, among the most important issues are tuition and education-related problems. According to Keller-MacLeod, if students hope to make education more adequately funded, accessible, and better managed, it has to start in the voting booth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is possible that more young people voting could have put more pressure on the government to make an accessible postsecondary education system a reality,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unknown how many young people and students will vote on May 14, but one thing is certain: Rock the Vote BC and the CCSS want to see a stronger voter turnout this time around.<\/p>\n
The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) is urging students to vote in the upcoming provincial election. More than half a million eligible BC voters chose not to vote last year on election day and student groups says a mobilized student voice could have a huge impact on elections. One group of optimists is Rock the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-april-3-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6818,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6771\/revisions\/6818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}