Election Day has come and gone in the United States.
With a new president poised to take office, the focus on Keene’s campus shifts to making sure students who want to vote are able to vote, while balancing their busy class schedules.
Classes on election day are nothing new at Keene State. Kim Schmidl-Gagne, American Democracy Project coordinator, spoke more in-depth about the choice to hold classes on Election Day.
She said, “Given that we don’t have concrete evidence that students aren’t voting, the cabinet decided that it’s not something that we wouldn’t think more about, but rather didn’t have enough time or evidence to say, ‘Yes, we should disrupt all the classes on Tuesday.’”
Schmidl-Gagne gave some insight on the efforts being made to ensure students have the ability and easiest access to vote, both in procedures set in place now and possible future policy evaluations.
“I was behind the buses and vans we ran from 8 a.m. – 7 p.m. We were definitely really busy throughout the day.”
She continued, “One of the things that I suggested was that the academic policy committee could take a look at whether or not this is something that should be considered an excused absence in the future.”
She went on to say, “I have it on the senate executive committee’s agenda for later today [Nov. 6] to determine whether or not it would be charged to the academic policy committee to take a look at and see if it’s even possible to write policies around excused absences for voting.”
The process of obtaining the statistics from Tuesday’s election is one that will take time.
“We will have all the data about how many students registered to vote, how many students actually voted and how they voted in around six to eight months. So it may be that we don’t look at the policy right away, we’ll have to see what the data tells us and then take it from there,” said Schmidl-Gagne.
She went on, describing the multitude of complications surrounding an Election Day class upholding.
“We have some obligations, students pay – a lot of money – and we are supposed to deliver a certain amount of contact time for students. If we were to, once every four years, in some way disrupt the academic calendar, how do we make up for that? Because it’s tight as it is,” she said. “I build the academic calendars for years out and it’s all kind of an interesting roll of the dice to see how close we come to what we are obligated to deliver to you – and need to deliver to you. So it sounds simple but there’s actually a lot that needs to go into it,” she said.
“Because who knows what was scheduled for classes [election day]? It’s hard enough to curtail operations for bad weather and then play catch up,” she concluded.
Two students commented on their experiences.
Junior Community Assistant Matt Sturtevant said, “I was able to get out and vote, Tuesday was really one of my easier days because I only had one class, which was at noon. Polls are open all day so there were really only two hours where I was busy.”
He continued, speaking to the effectiveness of the bus and van shuttle system provided by Keene State, “I didn’t use the shuttles this year but I have in the past, the experience was fun and the drivers were very informative – not giving their opinions – just a little insight on the candidates and stuff.”
Another student, who preferred to remain unnamed, spoke to their more complicated experience with attending class while finding time for civic duties.
“Because the school didn’t cancel classes, neither did my professors. That left me with no time to vote, because on Tuesdays my schedule is busy from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. – mind you, I don’t get more than a 15 minute break throughout the day. I ended up having to lie to my internship supervisor and come up with an excuse just so I could make time to vote. On top of all that, having to account for the long lines and the time it takes new voters to get registered – just very little wiggle room on an already stressful day,” said the student.
Parker Bartlett can be contacted at
