What If We Voted? Just Kidding... Unless...?

Frankie Fanelli - Executive Editor & Online Co-Editor- In-Chief

Over the summer, seniors Anya Ernst (ACT ‘20) and Arielle Dettmer (CMD ‘20) decided to organize an on-campus voter registration drive. Both girls are very politically active and motivated, as well as part of the Orange County School for the Arts official March for Our Lives chapter, and wanted to spread a message they were passionate about. Specifically, the importance of pre-registering to vote. Dettmer had previously tried to coordinate a similar event in September of last school year, but wasn’t able to bring it to fruition until this year. At a March for Our Lives summit over the summer of 2019, she received more information on how to officially plan the event, reached out to Ernst for help as a co-organizer, and the rest is history. “Our aim was to educate students on legislature and today’s active politicians, as well as the importance of being civically active and engaged,” Ernst told Evolution. During the summer break, the students worked together to gather volunteers and plan the on-campus voter registration event that Ernst described as being “student led but club endorsed.”

Toward the end of September, everyone involved went to 11th and 12th grade social science class and gave a 15 minute presentation on the importance of being civically active. Their presentations boasted slogans and phrases like Our Turn, Our Vote, Our Voice and Voting = Your Voice; Voting = Your Power. They gave instructions on how to pre-register to vote and even gave students an opportunity to do it right there in their social science class using the chromebooks, provided they had their California driver’s license number, the last 4 digits of their social security number, and date of birth and address handy.

Alongside in-class presentations, the young women instituted a challenge where the grade who had the most students pre-register to vote would receive early lunch for a week in order to incentivise the drive. The Class of 2020 won this competition but unfortunately the reward was never instituted (Sorry seniors! It should be coming soon!) In addition, they organized 10th street activities, food, and music to help raise awareness and as a final push to get students to pre-register before the October 20th deadline. The aim of these activities were to “promote OCSA’s youth civics clubs as well as its vibrant social justice culture” and accurately dubbed “Artivism.” These included red, white and blue face paint for the students to show their patriotism, a poster that students could write on and finish the sentence “I want my future to…” and OCSA’s JSA club providing “I believe in…” stickers. In order to draw in voters, Ernst, Dettmer and their volunteers also sold boba and donuts to students and donated all the funds to Ms. Cirigliano’s son, Trent, who is currently fighting a rare kind of Stage IV brain cancer (search #TWrecksCancer on google or social media for more information or to donate).

In the end, the organizers of the voter registration drive put out a google form to collect the outcome of those who pre-registered to vote. Of those who responded, 60.3% were seniors while only 39.7% were juniors. There were a large number of responses and those who pre-registered to vote at OCSA would have likely been a fraction of that number had Dettmer, Ernst and all of their volunteers not put together this voter registration opportunity for the upper-classmen of OCSA.

Interested in registering or pre-registering to vote? Go to https://registertovote.ca.gov/

Special thanks to the students organizers involved:

Isabella Szabo (CV ‘21), Sydney Kaminski (CMD ‘21), Julia Gaspari (CMD ‘21), Valerie Chen (CMD ‘20), Mariah Williams (MT, ‘20), Jai Castro (BRD, ‘20), and Cas Efthymiou (CW ‘20).