Community discusses police relations >>See page 3
Burlesque Fest comes to Knoxville >>See page 5
Injuries and penalites plague Vols >>See page 10
Peyton Gupton • The Daily Beacon
Vols leading Gators at the polls Alex Holcomb
Contributor The Vols and Gators are going head-to-head, off the football field. The Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee and the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida are competing to register the most students to vote. Three UT organizations: the Student Government Association, the College Republicans and the College Democrats are working together on the project. “Representation is important, and this election is one of the most important elections we’re prob-
Volume 132 Issue 22
ably going to have in a long time because of where the candidates are,” Alex Kaplan, senior in political science and sociology, said. Kaplan helped with voter registration as a Baker Ambassador and an SGA member. The Baker Center is encouraging students to vote in part because students do not tend to vote as much as other demographics. During the 2012 election, according to a study done by the National Study of Learning Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), only 61 percent of students voted at UF. UT was behind with only 41 percent of students voting in the 2012 presidential election. “I don’t think you can call it a democracy if only 40 percent of the people vote,” Benjamin Bailey, senior in political science who has worked on the competition for a class, said. “For instance, there
utdailybeacon.com @utkdailybeacon
are 440,000 people that live in Knox County, and last year in the general election year, only nine percent of the people voted. I think that’s abysmal, and like I said, that’s not a democracy. That’s not even an aristocracy or an oligarchy.” In 2012, young voters were one of the key voting blocks for Obama’s victory, despite having a low registration rate. Nissa Dahlin-Brown, associate director of the Baker Center and organizer of the competition, believes the student vote is important. “All the laws we make now are the ones that are going to impact (college students),” DahlinBrown said. “My age group are the ones that are making the decisions because we’re the ones that See VOTING on Page 2
Monday, September 19, 2016