As the upcoming Oct. 19 federal election looms closer, Guelph students Tyler Valiquette and Yvonne Su aim to change the perception that students are apathetic towards politics.
In 2011, Su organized the first vote mob event on the University of Guelph campus in an effort to combat this stereotype.
“Flash mobs were really popular then,” said Su. “We had done a few other flash mobs on campus for other reasons, like climate change, so we thought, ‘why don’t we do a flash mob for voting?’”
The vote mob was a success, drawing over 100 students and prompting the group to organize a second event.
“A couple days later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was coming to town, so we thought that we’d do a second vote mob because a lot of people wanted to come to the first one, but couldn’t participate,” said Su. “Seven hundred people showed up. We called this one a surprise party, because it was like, ‘Surprise! We’re voting!’”
This event garnered national media coverage, including a mention on the Rick Mercer Report. “He helped it spread across the country,” explained Su.
In the next 31 days, 45 vote mobs took place on campuses across Canada. Su was inspired by the success of the vote mob event to start Vote Savvy, which she now runs alongside fellow student Tyler Valiquette. The student organization aims to educate and engage students in politics through fun events and accessible resources.
“We just ran another vote mob on campus last Monday,” said Valiquette. “This one was really focused on getting first-year students involved, because it was during Orientation Week. If they’re 18, they’ll be first-time voters, so we wanted to combine both the educational aspect and we also wanted to have fun, because we wanted to encourage that politics can be fun—it’s not always necessarily a painful process.”
Another successful O-Week event run by Vote Savvy included every university student’s favourite incentive—free food. “We did an event on campus during O-week that was a political party ice cream event,” said Valiquette. “We had different flavours of ice cream, and you got some if you could name the political party that was associated with that colour of ice cream. So if you could name all four, you got four scoops of ice cream.
“And I would say maybe only 10 per cent of them were able to name all four leaders. Hardly anyone was able to name the Green Party leader. Most people when asked about Trudeau were like, ‘Oh, the guy with the really nice hair but he’s just not ready.’” Valiquette believes students’ confusion is mostly due to a lack of proper education.
“I don’t think that students are disengaged—I think that students are involved in politics in different ways,” he said. “Young people are more likely to fill out online petitions, and surveys and things like that. I also think that our education system isn’t doing a very good job in terms of getting people involved in politics. Civics class in high school is a half-credit, half-semester that’s offered in grade 10, and by the time you get to grade 12, do you remember anything from your civics class?”
Alongside running campus events, Vote Savvy creates and promotes media to empower students to educate themselves, such as 40-second videos called Savvy Ads. “They’re really short ads that deliver the message that a young person wouldn’t usually let someone else choose something for them, like a coffee or cell phone type or your laptop or the clothes that you wear,” said Valiquette. “But when it comes to something like a big decision like who rules your country, [students think that] it’s not a big deal—someone else can do it.”
After students have decided to vote, Vote Savvy also aims to tear down the barriers preventing them from getting to polling stations.
“We’ve been working with an organization called Vote Note,” said Valiquette, “It’s an app that you can download on your phone, and from there you can learn about the candidates in your riding and register directly, but the coolest thing about it is that they have a partnership with Uber, and so you can use an access code to get a free ride to your polling station.”
Valiquette and Su stress that students don’t need to physically travel to their riding to vote for their MP.
“We’re going to have another big event on campus on Oct. 5, which is the first day of special ballots,” said Valiquette. “For special ballots, anyone can vote on-campus for any riding, from Oct. 5 to Oct. 8, with the appropriate ID.”
And with this upcoming election in particular, student voting can definitely have a large impact.
“People are more interested because they think that their vote is actually going to make more of a difference,” said Su. “There was professor at Queen’s [University] who was cited in the Globe article we were in who said that this election will be decided by one to two per cent of votes. That’s huge!”
“And being in Guelph, all four parties have a chance of winning,” concluded Valiquette. “It’s very competitive, so all parties are pouring money into candidates here…I think there’s a lot of excitement in our community about getting involved in politics because it’s so tight.”
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The Ontarion publishes independent, student-produced news, opinion, and commentary for University of Guelph students so that they can make informed decisions in their lives. To do this, The Ontarion provides learning opportunities and training in journalism, media production, leadership, board governance, and other aspects of nonprofit news.
The Ontarion is the University of Guelph’s independent student newspaper. It began in 1951 as part of the Ontario Agricultural College and then began to represent the entire University of Guelph once it amalgamated in 1964. The Ontarion incorporated in May 1970 as The Ontarion, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation registered with the province of Ontario.