Article and photo by: Kaytlin Thornton | Contributor
The Political Science Club held a ‘Plants and Politics’ event on April 20 in the Student Center courtyard to celebrate Earth Day and to raise awareness for the upcoming 2022 elections.
Students that stopped by the booth used the soil and flower seeds provided by the club to make their own small plants as well as receive information pertaining to the upcoming elections. The Political Science Club also encouraged students to register to vote by offering the forms to everyone that had not previously signed up.
“We’re doing our part to make sure that the student body is well aware of the elections coming up and how they can participate in the greater political scheme,” said Vice President Darci Lewis.
The Political Science Club wanted to emphasize the importance of young people getting out and being active in elections, as they are typically the demographic that is least often thought about.
“It’s college students that get overlooked during these elections,” Lewis said, “They don’t expect us to come out and vote and be educated in what we are striking off on the ballots. We want to make sure we change that, so everyone feels like they have an actual hand in what is going on in our state’s politics.”
Plants and Politics is a project that melds both the goals of the Political Science Club by educating and informing students of ongoing political events and the messages of Earth Day which promotes a healthy planet. Allowing students to get involved in and learn about two subjects that will benefit them overall.
“We kind of made this passion project for this year to combine our emphasis on environmentalism and trying to make our campus a little more beautiful as we did with our trail cleanup earlier this year,” Lewis said. “We tried to put that together with the knowledge of elections coming up and bring in spring with something that will help students see that if they give attention to politics, like they give attention to these seeds and let them grow they can have an active hand in the progress they want to see. I think it can be very liberating and very powerful for a lot of students.”
The Political Science Club considers the event to have been a success and plans to hold what they hope to be a larger version of it next year as well.
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