MSU student organizers are pushing to cancel classes on Election Day

The last time Michigan State University students went to the polls in droves, for the 2022 midterm elections, they did so in addition to a full day of classes, work and extracurricular activities. Some students, particularly those who voted in Brody Hall, had to wait in line for nearly four hours before they could cast their vote.

For social and politics juniors Vasily Yevseyev and Addysen Russell, these conditions represent an unfair obstacle to voting. For students who work during the day or carry heavy course loads, these obstacles to voting would further discourage students from participating in the electoral process, according to Yevseyev and Russel.

Your suggested solution? Get the MSU administration to recognize Election Day as a university holiday, meaning there will be no classes on that day.

Yevseyev and Russel, co-founders of the MSU chapter of Un-Pac, said they met with some university trustees in the spring to propose their Election Day holiday initiative. What they were told at the time, Yevseyev said, was that they lacked evidence to show sufficient student support for their proposal.

Since then, Yevseyev and Russel, along with a handful of student volunteers, have begun searching academic buildings and residence halls across campus, collecting signatures to demonstrate student interest in their cause. The group has currently collected around 1,100 student signatures.

Russel said the group aims to collect 3,000 signatures by the end of the academic year. But that means the group’s ultimate goal of canceling classes on Election Day wouldn’t be relevant until 2026, when the next general election takes place.

“Even if our demands are not met,” Yevseyev said. “There will still be elections after this election, and by getting our name out there we are getting the idea into the minds of students.”

This is not the first time that MSU students have attempted to influence university administration on this issue. Most recently, in 2021, the Associated Students Of Michigan State University (ASMSU) recommended that administration not hold classes on Election Day as part of a larger restructuring of the academic calendar. This proposal was ultimately rejected because of concerns that the additional day off would throw the calendar out of balance.

Georgia Frost, the 2021 ASMSU General Assembly president, said a major obstacle preventing the university from adopting the proposal was that Election Day is not recognized as a federal holiday. Frost said it is more difficult for the university to create rules and holidays that do not comply with federal regulations.

“(MSU) has a lot more opportunity to make special programs and special arrangements for other state-recognized appointments,” Frost said. “The fact that that doesn’t exist on Election Day means they can’t use that as a starting point.”

However, Frost expressed skepticism about the university’s reasoning for blocking the proposal. For other dates, such as fall break, she said the university has had no problem moving the calendar around to make it work.

Ultimately, Frost attributed ASMSU’s inability to approve the ballot proposal to a lack of “appetite” from the university. If there was the collective willpower of students, faculty and administration, she said, the proposal might have passed.

In 2019, just a few years before Frost’s ASMSU attempts, Wayne State University students pressured their administration with a similar goal. The only difference? They succeeded.

Stuart Baum, president of Wayne State’s Student Senate in 2019, said their proposal to cancel classes on Election Day was just one element of a larger voting rights package. Baum said her original goal was to open a polling place on campus and she only took up the holiday initiative later after hearing concerns from the student body.

Since then, the university has seen an impressively high level of political engagement among its student body. According to Wayne State, in the 2020 election, more than 90% of students there registered to vote and 73.5% ultimately voted.

What made the proposal successful, Baum said, was that the students, the university and the city of Detroit all had aligned interests that produced the necessary political will. The students wanted to make it easier for them to vote, the university wanted to reaffirm its commitment to civil rights and the city was interested in opening another polling station. These overlapping interests ensured a collaborative process rather than one mired in administrative power struggles.

Un-PAC’s student organizers, who operate outside the confines of student government and therefore have no direct line to administration, seem to find it more difficult to muster this level of willpower. However, Baum said the key to success still lies in forming a coalition with like-minded people.

“Collecting signatures and gathering interest within the student body is critical,” Baum said. “But then also building power with teachers who perhaps feel passionately about this and with the unions, where many of their members are already volunteering during the election season and may also be interested in working with them.”