Through the years Livingstone College has consistently promoted civic engagement and social responsibility to its student populations, and has served the Rowan-Salisbury community as a foundation of civility and connection. While candidates have spent more than $10 billion in advertisement to amplify participation in this year’s presidential election, coupled with an array of state headlining news stories for North Carolina, as an HBCU, Livingstone College’s voting commitment resonates with the transformative power of a collective voice.
Operating under the theme, Voting ERA (education, registration, activation) the college engaged in a plethora of productions that educated learners on the history of voting in America, ballot referendums, and candidate platforms. Moreover, the campus underwent the process of voter registration to include registration guidelines and processes, and granted learners space and opportunity to become active voters through location identification and transportation. With support from North Carolina Common Cause, North Carolina Black Alliance, Interfaith America, Black Voters Matter, Students Learn Students Vote, and North Carolina Coordinated Campaign, the collective experience kept growing as students were empowered to register new voters, mobilize their peers, and even earn a rights of passage with the larger kinship of persons who believe voting in America is an African American legacy. “There is blood that cries out in the universe,” said Dr. Da’Tarvia Parrish, director of the Honors Program at Livingstone College. “We must answer that blood with our ballot.”
From the Greensboro Coliseum’s Boombox Fest to Bishop William Barber‘s Get Out to Vote Rally to the college’s Candidates and Quesos forum featuring state and county political candidates, Livingstone College has been an informational motivating source that has provided platforms for all roads leading to civic interests and collective citizenship.
But what happens when a community isn’t ready for the collective?
With 13th President Rev. Dr. Anthony J. Davis leading the way, Livingstone galvanized students and community members in a pep rally praise hosted by the Office of Spiritual Life and Student Activities. Campus Minister Rev. Lloyd Nivens IV yielded the podium to the event’s featured speaker, Rev. Laticia Godette who reminded students of various victories of student-leaders in history such as SNCC, and encouraged students to lend their voice to democracy with their vote.
After a collective prayer, chartered buses, church vans, and multiple vehicles caravanned to Rowan County’s Board of Elections with hundreds of eager student-voters, many of them voting for the first time; and yet there was also another first time. For at the polling places, many students experienced first-hand and for a first-time, the subtle fight for a constitutional right. From being mandated to stand in a single-file line, as if voters of relation or familiarity don’t stand together; to being told in the Spencer precinct to “stop talking or get out,” as if community conversation isn’t welcomed in a line of waiting – for over four hours, Livingstone College students endured the effects of the ‘big bus’ arrival that quickly evolved into a hurtful experience that bruised. From pervasive surveillance to the on-the-spot rules, young voters were consistently reminded their presence was an inconvenience.
Freshman Micah Colding said, “This experience reassured the value of letting your voice be heard through your vote. Nothing was going to turn me away until my vote was cast.” With steadfast spirits, the student voters endured the verbal and physical inferences of insensibility placed upon them in the voting atmosphere of polling places that were were inadequately equipped to service the needs of any voter in the timely 30-minute benchmark for acceptable in-person wait times as outlined by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA). The physical capacity of the small number of service stations could not withstand the high arrival rate of voters, and the process for same-day registration and vote was tasked to one person in both locations, Board of Elections and Spencer, who both contended with college leadership when learning the service was needed for multiple voters.
Should Livingstone College, a dominant voter group in the West End defined community of Rowan County continue to endure practices that can be easily interpreted as voter intimidation and/or voter suppression? Perhaps it’s time for Livingstone College to become a polling location to aid in the growing demand for in-person voting. I have voted for four years in Rowan-Salisbury and I know it is time.
So many people refer to the past when explaining reasons to vote, but from what I and my peers experienced at the polling locations on Wednesday, October 30th – I realize my vote was not for a particular candidate or the past – my vote was for me and injustices of the present.
