09/18/2024
SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. celebrated Constitution Day at SUNY Cortland Tuesday, hosting a panel discussion on the importance of voting and announcing initiatives aimed at encouraging voter registration and civic engagement among students.
And he made it clear that SUNY Cortland was the perfect place to have this conversation.
“I don’t know where democracy and civics are taken more seriously than on this campus,” King said, praising the efforts of President Erik J. Bitterbaum, the longest serving president among SUNY’s comprehensive universities.
“Part of his extraordinary reputation is built around devotion to the principles Constitution Day celebrates and the civic engagement that a great campus consecrates.”
SUNY Cortland student voter registration and voting rates have increased more than ten-fold over the last decade. The university’s voting rate for eligible students was 6.3% in 2014; in 2020, voter registration was 85% and the voting rate was 69%.
Much of that success is due to the efforts of Cortland’s Barbara A. Galpin ’68, M ’ 74 Institute for Civic Engagement, New York Public Interest Research Group and other campus organizations.
Those efforts will receive a boost from a $3,000 mini-grant announced by King at Cortland, one of 23 SUNY campuses awarded grants by the Ibis Foundation to support non-partisan voter outreach efforts on campuses across the state.
SUNY Cortland will use the funds to develop, promote and evaluate voter-education events and activities that encourage civic discourse skills and the complexities of important local issues, said John Suarez, director of Cortland’s Institute for Civic Engagement.
“Our faculty, staff, students and partners in the greater Cortland community have been sharpening their skills in constructive disagreement,” said Suarez, named this year as one of 10 SUNY Civic Education and Engagement and Civil Discourse Fellows.
“We strive to maintain a culture of mutual respect and an openness to a variety of viewpoints because we realize that solving complex issues requires a rich range of ideas.”
In addition to facilitating dialogue with a panel of three election and voting experts and announcing the mini-grants, King promoted the SUNY Votes campaign to educate and empower student voters.
He noted that Cortland was among 39 campuses participating in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, which provides free resources for SUNY institutions to increase student civic engagement, and one of 16 that have polling sites on campus.
“Core to the mission of higher education is preparing well-rounded, civically engaged citizens who will contribute to and strengthen our democracy for future generations of Americans,” said King, a former high school social studies and civics teacher. “At SUNY, our commitment to civics is woven throughout everything we do.”
Tuesday’s three panelists echoed the importance of that commitment.
Bekeh Ukelina, a SUNY Cortland history professor, grew up under a military dictatorship in Nigeria and knows first-hand how precious democracy can be. He said American students don’t always understand the value of their vote.
“A student once told me he didn’t think it would be that bad to live in a dictatorship,” Ukelina shared. “I explained what it was like and asked, ‘Do you still think it wouldn’t be so bad?’”
Joseph Anthony, an assistant professor of political science at SUNY Cortland, said the stakes couldn’t be higher for civic education.
“Elections are the difference between democracy and dictatorship,” he said. “But election only work if we use them.”