Liberals find success in student vote

Campus organizers, student turnout fueled Protasiewicz’s Wisconsin Supreme Court victory

By Ava Menkes and Anna Kleiber STAFF WRITERS

As co-director of progressive voter outreach organization Project 72 WI, Teddy Landis goes the extra mile — and hundreds more after that — to energize student voters across Wisconsin. For just the 2023 spring elections, Landis estimates Project 72 WI knocked on 40,000 doors across 15 college campuses.

Getting young people to the polls is typically an “uphill battle” for Landis. But with the future of Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban and the potential to redistrict voting maps that currently lean towards Republicans at stake, that was not the case with the April 4 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

“Young people know that when they vote, it absolutely matters,” Landis said. “People who are in college right now know how important the e ect of their vote is.”

In every key University of Wisconsin System campus precinct with high student populations, student voters retained voter turnout better than overall voters, according to data from Project 72 WI. While statewide turnout in this month’s election was 69% of the turnout in the November 2022 elections, the campus precincts retained between 74% and 97% of voters from last fall.

And campuses turned out big for liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, who carried every determined to vote no matter what.”

Finding new ways to court student voters

Voters of Tomorrow, NextGen America, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Grassroots Democrats HQ also led statewide campaigns encouraging youth voter turnout for Protasiewicz.

NextGen took a nontraditional approach to voter engagement.

Kristi Johnston, the National Press Secretary for NextGen America, led a program with 20 nationwide volunteers who made dating profiles on Hinge to match with students and share voting resources.

Johnston explained how nearly two dozen volunteers nationwide set their location to cities in Wisconsin and designed profiles to attract voters with lighthearted jokes, such as saying they were “crazy for pro-choice.”

NextGen started the program in 2020 after seeing an increase in dating app usage, and the program was a hit, Johnston said.

“Our number one goal is to meet young people where they’re at,” Johnston told The Daily Cardinal. “If millions of them across the country are on dating apps, we’re going to be there.” easier to draw the line with young people that the Supreme Court has the ability to change this.”

Volunteers also made over 1.1 million calls and texts, and brought high-profile names like former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Goldlewski to the UW-Madison campus, Johnston said.

Jack Lobel, the National Press Secretary for the “Gen Z-run” Voters of Tomorrow, said young organizers ran hours of phone banking, building connections with Wisconsin o cials to show both students and lawmakers the importance of the student vote.

UW-Madison, other campuses see high voter retention

On the UW-Madison campus, the Associated Students of Madison (ASM) hosted a series of candidate forums leading up to the election that used community input to formulate candidate questions. ASM also helped print student voter IDs and saw a “near-constant stream” of students getting their ID cards printed toward the end of election night, according to Sarah Nehls, ASM’s vote coordinator.

again for state Supreme Court.

Statewide, Protasiewicz outperformed Gov. Tony Evers in terms of vote share at every key four-year campus ward, as defined by voting data analysis from Project 72 WI.

“Abortion is predominantly a women’s issue. Even more than that, it’s predominantly a young women’s issue,” Landis said. “I have no doubt, and I know, based on my conversations with hundreds of students, that abortion was a key factor in motivating folks to vote.” increasing student voter turnout for liberal candidates was a product of campus culture.

In a string of tweets following the 2023 spring election, former Gov. Scott Walker blamed Kelly’s loss on “liberal indoctrination” and called on the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), an organization of which he is currently the president, to “counter the impact of radicals on campus.”

Wisconsin county with a fouryear UW campus. Statewide, Protasiewicz defeated her conservative opponent Dan Kelly by approximately 11 points, ushering in the court’s first liberal majority in 15 years.

For Landis, the surge in youth voters demonstrated the crucial role grassroots political organizations play in Wisconsin’s elections. Students have voted for Democratic candidates in near-record numbers in elections since 2018, according to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, despite facing voting barriers targeted directly at college students.

“The response to this spring Supreme Court election was unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” Landis said. “It’s clear that something is in the water, and Wisconsin students were

“I’m sure you’ve heard young people don’t vote, and that’s not young people’s fault. That’s the fault of lawmakers who have not given us a seat at the table,” Lobel said.“I think [2023 is] an indication of how 2024 is going to go and how every election cycle is going to go with more Gen-Zers voting.”

Elected officials, including Godlewski, ran their own campaigns to turn out student voters. Godlewski helped with Women Win Wisconsin’s informational campaign which prioritized student mobilization on the platform of access to reproductive rights, according to Godlewski.

“After Roe v. Wade was overturned, half our population lost their rights and have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers [did],” Godlewski said. “I think it really became clearer and

“What excited me the most was seeing students not only voting themselves but bringing their roommates or their friends to vote with them,” Nehls said. “In terms of turnout, the numbers from student wards are some of the largest we’ve ever seen in a spring election. It’s historic, and I could not be prouder of our campus for showing up.”

UW-Madison students turned out for Protasiewicz in record numbers. Among wards containing university residence halls, 91.3% of voters cast ballots for Protasiewicz — 10% more than Dane County as a whole, according to voting data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Madison wards containing UW residence halls also saw higher turnout retention from the 2022 gubernatorial election in the elections data, meaning students who voted last fall were more likely than Dane County as a whole to vote

Students in Ward 20 at UW-Eau Claire saw 91% of voters from last November’s elections show up for the April 4 state Supreme Court election, with long lines to match. Eau Claire County voted 64% for Protasiewicz — over six points greater than Evers’ margin in 2022.

Similar to UW-Madison, UW-Eau Claire was bustling with liberal organizing groups ahead of the April 4 election, according to Matthew Lehner, president of the UWEC College Democrats. Lehner said his group held tabling events throughout the year to inform students about upcoming elections and help them build voting plans.

“The fact that, our campus has caught the attention and admiration of the world for our record turnout, made me incredibly proud to know that our organization had a major role in making that a reality,” said Lehner.

Students refute cries of ‘liberal indoctrination’

Some Wisconsin politicians, mainly conservatives, worried

When asked about Walker’s tweets, UW-Madison’s Young Americans for Freedom did not respond to a request for comment.

Some young voters rebuked Walker’s tweets, stressing the importance and validity of the student vote.

Landis disagreed with Walker’s tweets and stressed the student vote is more important now than ever.

“The 1849 abortion ban is not a hypothetical for students. It’s something that they and their friends are having to deal with,” Landis said. “To dismiss that as indoctrination [is] incredibly condescending.”

Though grassroots organizations had much to celebrate in the aftermath of the 2023 spring election, Lehner said, he and other organizers feel their work must continue with the 2024 presidential election around the corner.

“We are excited by the election results, but we know that in a state like Wisconsin, we cannot rest for a second,” Lehner said. “The fight and hard work must continue because too much continues to be at stake for young people and the next generation.”

“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.” l An independent student newspaper, serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison community since 1892

Volume 132, Issue 27

2142 Vilas Communication Hall 821 University Avenue Madison, Wis., 53706-1497 (608) 262-8000

News and Editorial edit@dailycardinal.com

News Team News Manager Hope Karnopp

Campus Editor Madeleine Afonso

College Editor Anthony Trombi

City Editor Francesca Pica

State Editor Tyler Katzenberger

Associate News Editor Ellie Bourdo

Features Editor Annabella Rosciglione

Opinion Editors Priyanka Vasavan • Graham Brown

Arts Editors Noah Fellinger • Kai Wen Li

Sports Editors Donnie Slusher • Cole Wozniak

The Beet Editor Mackenzie Moore

Special Pages Editor Zoe Bendoff

Photo Editor Lauren Aguila • Meghan Spirito

Graphics Editors Zoe Kukla • Henry Moore

Science Editor Julia Wiessing Life & Style Editor Sophie Walk

Podcast Director Elena Price

Copy Chiefs

Kodie Engst • Ella Gorodetzky

Copy Editors Jasper Bernstein • Kraymer Gladem

Social Media Manager Clare McManamon

Business and Advertising business@dailycardinal.com

Business Manager

Asher Anderson • Brandon Sanger

Advertising Managers Noal Basil • Sam Mayo

Marketing Director Mason Waas

The Daily Cardinal is a nonproft organization run by its staff members and elected editors. It receives no funds from the university. Operating revenue is generated from advertising and subscription sales.

The Daily Cardinal is published weekdays and distributed at the University of WisconsinMadison and its surrounding community with a circulation of 10,000.

Capital Newspapers, Inc. is the Cardinal’s printer. The Daily Cardinal is printed on recycled paper. The Cardinal is a member of the Associated Collegiate Press and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. All copy, photographs and graphics appearing

By Liam Beran STAFF WRITER

“Who influences students to go to college or not to go to college?”

Jennifer Blazek, the Director of the Emerging Leaders Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, asked. In the coming months, the work she’ll be doing with the new Small Town and Rural Students (STARS) Network will seek to answer and address that question.

Blazek will lead the programming and initiative efforts for STARS at UW-Madison. The network aims to “widen pathways to higher education for rural and small-town students,” according to its website.

UW-Madison was invited to participate in the program, which consists of five public schools

— UW-Madison, University of Maryland, University of Southern California, University of Iowa and Ohio State University — and 11 private schools, such as Brown University and the University of Chicago. For UW-Madison, the response to the invite was a “yes, definitely,” Blazek explained.

“This is a population that the university is really interested in reaching more,” Blazek said.

Yet, UW-Madison’s response will di er from what other institutions will be working on, Blazek noted.

“We don’t necessarily want to only focus on increasing access to UW-Madison,” she said. “Of course, if we get rural students, awesome, right? But how do we look across all of the college landscape?”

That means that, rather than focusing on fly-ins or admissions programming, UW-Madison is additionally weighing ideas of pre-college programs or alumni visits. These will help prospec- tive students “get that same experience that undergrads enjoy,” Blazek explained.

According to a Future Wisconsin Project report, 97% of Wisconsin’s land area is considered rural, with 30% of the state’s population living in that space. In addition, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reports “about 44 % of the state’s 860,000 PK-12 public school students attend schools in rural communities.”

Dayne Tallier, a UW-Madison senior, went to Gilman High School in Gilman, Wisconsin, which enrolled 147 students as of the 2021-2022 school year. The conservation biology major described himself as “pretty resourceful” but said support was “not at all” available to students.

Tallier described an incident where his high school counselor didn’t know about Bucky’s Tuition Promise, a program which “really influenced [his] decision to come here.” Teaching staff at Tallier’s high school “didn’t know of these resources” for schools other than more local ones like University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire or Chippewa Valley Technical College, Tallier explained. College preparation, such as tutors for the ACT, and information about what to do “after high school” other than technical college were areas Tallier thought would’ve assisted students.

Jacob Roden, a sophomore agriculture business management student from Cedarburg, Wisconsin and a member of Alpha Gamma Rho, a food and agriculture fraternity at UW-Madison, said Madison having green space helped him transition to an “urban environment” di erent from home. Moving from a smaller community — both in education and schooling — to a more populous, urban setting “can be intimidating,” Roden said, but he also emphasized how adapting to that challenge helped him become “a more well-rounded person.”

Roden hopes to see UW-Madison, especially within the College of Agricultural and Life Science, further help rural students “attend and transition to [the university]” to promote the Wisconsin Idea.

Blazek identified a number of challenges for rural students. Sometimes students “only know what’s in their neighborhood,” Blazek noted, meaning students may limit themselves to local technical colleges or may be intimidated by the transition from a rural area to a “town like Madison.”

“That can be really off-putting and very scary for folks,” Blazek said.

Access — a steady internet connection or the time and ability to travel — can be another obstacle for rural students, Blazek said. Financial access is also a barrier, and part of the reason Bucky’s Tuition Promise, which pays tuition and segregated fees for stu- dents with a household adjusted gross income of $65,000 or less, “has been so successful.”

“A lot of farm students really benefit from that because it helps o set [expenses] because farms, unfortunately, are very capital rich, but cash poor,” Blazek explained.

Right now, developing the program’s plan is Blazek’s main focus. Part of that plan includes continuous communication with the other institutions involved in STARS to find replicable solutions between schools, Blazek said.

One idea Blazek mentioned was “utilizing current students or alumni,” who she’s currently seeking, to reach prospective students who may not see themselves at a four-year university. This would be part of a larger conversation with students and community members — school counselors, teachers, family members — who “help [students] make that decision for college.”

“We really want to be authentic and intentional, and build lasting trust-based relationships. We don’t wanna just go like, ‘we have solutions for you’ — how can we work together with communities?” Blazek said.

By Gina Musso SENIOR STAFF WRITER

When Takisha Jordan sought resources for housing insecurity in Madison, she felt intimidated by the available providers and services because she did not feel they represented her.

“I felt like everywhere I went when I was seeking help in medicine, I was running to people that didn’t look like me,” Jordan said. “I thought it was kind of intimidating, and when I did meet people that looked like me, they were the custodian, the front desk or the receptionist, so it was just a little weird.”

These experiences inspired Jordan to help start the Homeless Services Consortium of Dane County’s (HSC) Lived Experience Council, which gives community members who have experienced housing insecurity an opportunity to play a crucial role in decision making and local advocacy, she said.

For the record or send an email to edit@dailycardinal.com.

“I wanted to make sure those that are being a ected by a lot of the [systemic] barriers in the community have an opportunity or a chance to be at the table where decisions are being made, and that’s either for funding or either creating new housing programs,” Jordan said.

At its core, the HSC aims to partner with local agencies, donors, advocates and those who have experienced housing insecurity to connect individuals in the community to shelter and housing programs. The Lived Experience Council plays a role in developing committees, grant writing and making funding decisions based on members’ experiences with di erent programs and services to help determine where funding should be funneled.

Torrie Kopp Mueller, the HSC’s continuum of care coordinator, works closely with Jordan in supporting the Lived Experience Council.

“We all come together to try to work as a system and identify gaps and services and try to work with other sectors and make sure we’re all moving forward together,” Kopp Mueller said.

Hearing from youth with lived experience

Under the HSC, the Dane County Youth Action Board incorporates community members ranging in age from 16 to 25 — over two thirds of whom have lived experi- ence with housing insecurity — in discussions surrounding housing insecurity in Dane County.

The Youth Action Board provides a platform for individuals with lived experience to engage in community listening sessions and make decisions regarding support programs and advocacy for individuals facing housing insecurity.

Kayla Every, the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program coordinator, has worked with the HSC since March 2022. Every said she relies on her prior experience to support, recruit and build a community among the 24 members of the Youth Action Board.

“I was a young adult who was homeless in Madison for a few years, so it was very emotional for me coming into this,” Every said. “It’s been very healing because it’s so near and dear to my heart.”

The members are tasked with supporting events and fundraising, grant writing, social media e orts, collaborative policy reading and writing, and other project management tasks. Youth Action Board members are compensated for their time and expertise thanks to grant funding, but the program also relies on donations to support their mission.

Every said meetings range from “very serious” discussions to bowling alley trips and Perkins Restaurant visits to build community.

“I’m thankful that I’m at a point where I’m comfortable talking about my lived experience, [but] not everyone is and that is entirely alright,” Every said. “But I’m thankful I’m at that point because it has been incredibly useful, incredibly powerful and has given me the ability to consider things I know would have maybe not been considered.”

While Every’s job is to support Youth Action Board members, she said her work has also helped her process her own experiences and provided her a space to connect with others who have experienced housing insecurity.

“We’re a community now,” Every said. “We have trust between each other to really support each other in those ways and understand what someone might be going through at a really di erent level. I’m really thankful for that because I didn’t have a group of people like that ever before.”