Ask Every Student, the national joint initiative that facilitates collaboration between campus leaders and nonprofit partners to help campuses Ask Every Student to participate in the democratic process and achieve full student voter registration, has launched a new iteration for the 2021-22 academic year, led by the SLSV Coalition and the Ask Every Student Steering Committee.
The launch builds on lessons learned from 2020’s successful inaugural Ask Every Student, which had more than 170 participating campuses, including 44 Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions across 40 states, and during which the SLSV Coalition raised and distributed $778,735.46 in funding directly to colleges, universities, and partner organizations participating in the initiative.
Ask Every Student 2.0 includes new features and frameworks designed to make the program even more approachable and accessible. Among the new features are a revamped website and a new “Community Campus” designation that allows campuses to participate in Ask Every Student with less of a time commitment than Codesigner and Commitment Campuses – two designations from 2020 that will continue for the program’s 2021 iteration.
“Throughout the year we’ve been intensely focused on understanding and listening to the feedback and suggestions of our partners,” said Carmen Liñero-Lopez, the Ask Every Student Program Manager for the SLSV Coalition, the national hub and largest nonpartisan network in the United States dedicated to increasing college student voter participation. “Their feedback has been both constructive and overwhelmingly positive. We’re excited about the improvements that came from these conversations because we think it will unlock even more potential for this program to make an impact.”
The revamp is the result of a research and evaluation process that began soon after the 2020 election, as the Ask Every Student Steering Committee – comprised of the SLSV Coalition, the Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project, NASPA, and the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge – immediately worked to assess the impact of the program’s first iteration, which helped contribute to historic youth voter turnout in the 2020 election despite immense challenges faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Later, in the spring of 2021, SLSV Coalition team members led design sessions with the Ask Every Student Codesigner Cohort campuses. The process came to fruition in July 2021 with the launch of the redesigned website, studentvoting.org.
“Even through the challenges of 2020, Ask Every Student had a positive impact on the democratic engagement on our campus and in our broader community,” said Zachery Holder, the Voter Engagement and Civic Learning Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We can’t wait to use everything we learned last year to make the program even stronger, and embed it even further into our campus life.”
About Ask Every Student
Ask Every Student is a national joint initiative of the SLSV Coalition, the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the Fair Election Center’s Campus Vote Project, and NASPA, that facilitates collaboration between campus leaders and nonprofit partners to help campuses Ask Every Student to participate in the democratic process and achieve full student voter registration.
