As the United States rapidly approaches the 2024 Presidential Election, many initiatives have sprung up on college campuses urging students to vote. This is apparent at Temple University. Pennsylvania is known as a highly contested state for political candidates. Many Klein College of Media and Communication professors have found ways to encourage their students to vote.
Kathy Mueller, associate professor and chair of the Department of Advertising, has had students in her Art Direction I: Concept and Layout class participate in a Get Out the Vote project during this election cycle. The assignment, inspired by the American Institute of Graphic Arts’s Get Out the Vote initiative, requires students to design their own poster encouraging people to vote. However, all designs must be non-partisan; students had to advocate to vote, not to vote for a certain candidate.
Mueller’s class focuses on visual communication and concepts in advertising. She knew the project’s topic was timely, and it fit well into what she was teaching her students.
“They can really practice exactly what we’re trying to learn in the class,” Mueller explained. “And it just happens to be applied to civic engagement.”
Mueller also believes that part of her job as a professor is to teach her students how to be politically mindful.
“As an educator, part of my responsibility is to talk about the importance of voting and civic engagement, so here’s this beautiful opportunity for me to do that in the classroom,” said Mueller.
Destinie Jecrois, a sophomore advertising major, thought that this project allowed more freedom than other assignments in the class.
“You could really go in any direction you wanted,” Jecrois said. “There were so many ideas.”
Jecrois’s design was titled “One Way for Change” and took inspiration from street poles in Brooklyn, where she grew up. Her poster is a street pole with an arrow on top that says, “only one way.” This accompanies two signs that read “Vote November 5” and red, white and blue stickers graffitied on the pole. She explains that the United States is currently politically divided, and the only way out is through voting.
“We’re so divided by our two-party system, really our only common ground for change is voting,” Jecrois said. “That’s the only thing that we all can really agree on.”
Junior advertising major Jared Lopez’s poster was “Shape the Future,” based off a PlayStation controller. The design features shapes one would find on the controller jumbled together in rows. The bottom two spell out “Vote November 5.” He wanted his project to require a second to figure it out.
“I wanted it to be confusing,” explained Lopez. “It’s a really confusing time period. This election is not just as black and white as people think it is.”
Though students had to remain non-partisan, they were allowed to cater to a certain demographic. Catherine Lane’s poster, a junior media studies and production and advertising major, features red spray-painted graffiti that gives a silhouette of devil horns.
The design is targeted towards a punk demographic. Using a blackout poetry style, it reads, “Your vote matters. Voting only helps the rich and corrupt if you don’t. Take a stand. Vote.” Lane explains that the punk scene is very politically active and felt that it was a big group of people to push to vote.
Many students saw this project as a unique opportunity to apply their skills. Lane observed that many of her past assignments focused on a specific product. Get Out the Vote was something deeper.
“This one was like, ‘Hey, let’s advertise an idea, let’s advertise a movement’,” she said.
Lane believes it is of the utmost importance for college students to be politically active. To show indifference to the issues in our country is to be careless.
“You’re neglecting yourself. You’re neglecting the people around you. You’re neglecting the kids that are younger than you and you’re neglecting the people who are older than you,” she stated.
Jecrois thinks that to be inactive in the political realm is to be ignorant. Especially on a college campus, students are surrounded by individuals affected by government policies.
“You’re not in your little echo chamber, you’re not surrounded by people that look like you,” Jecrois said. “There’s so many different types of groups that are affected daily by political choices being made by the higher-ups.”
Overall, Mueller hopes that this assignment gives her students a new perspective on voting and encourages them to do so.
“By talking about voting in the classroom on a small scale, I’m hoping that everyone in my class is going to vote and that they’re thinking about this project,” said Mueller. “Number one, I’m trying to affect my students and maybe encourage them to vote.”