Photos by Ralph Freso/Slideshow
Grand Canyon University doesn’t host Election Day events quite like anyone else, adding a little hype to the occasion, including on Tuesday for its Party at the Polls.
Not only could voters cast their ballots inside GCU’s Cañón 49, but they could play cornhole, make charm necklaces, relieve a little stress in a bounce house, grab a mini-Constitution or have a bite to eat, with pizzas courtesy of the campus’s culinary arts students.
“We know our community,” said Claire Winn, chair of the Canyon Civic Institute, a civic engagement fellowship on campus that focuses on integrating biblical values into civic engagement. “We wanted to host something so that people coming to this precinct can come and gather and build relationships with our students and our neighbors.”
Party at the Polls, organized by the civics group alongside the Associated Students of GCU, Ingram Honors College and the university's Government Relations department, also celebrated GCU as an official Maricopa County polling site, which it has been for a couple of years.
"We are thankful to be able to serve the surrounding community and our students with a place to vote,” said Dana Drew Shaw, vice president of Government Relations.
Civic engagement is something that speaks to Winn’s heart as a senior government major with an emphasis in legal studies.
“This is something that we love to do,” Winn said of bringing people together, particularly when it comes to being active in government. “We love to foster community, across the aisles, across every single different background. … It definitely helps that Grand Canyon University has a voting precinct in this area.”
GCU also engaged the community in September, when Ingram Honors College hosted the Canyon Civic Conference in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The event invited the community to explore America’s founding principles and their meaning for the next generation of leaders.
And Associated Students of GCU President Judah Floyd and Vice President Gracie Zimbardi traveled to Washington, D.C., over the summer to participate in the Campus Victory Forum conference for the country's semiquincentennial.
For Election Day, Canyon Civic Institute started preparing well ahead of time.
About 60% of GCU’s students come from out of state, Winn said. So before Party at the Polls, the civics group hosted a registration event, registering 300 GCU students so they could vote in Arizona.
“Me included,” said Winn, who is from Iowa. “I voted today.”
She added, “We’re really grateful, and I think it’s been such a good turnout – great music, great food.”
Historically, voters ages 18-29 have participated in elections at lower rates, reported the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
According to data from the University of Pennsylvania, approximately 53% of eligible voters ages 18-29 did not vote in the 2024 United States presidential election, and 77% did not vote in the 2022 midterms.
GCU nursing student Mari Garcia showed up with one of her friends to break that mold after seeing social media posts about Party at the Polls.
It was important to her to vote, she said, “because I think what we pick and choose right now affects us later on – what we say yes to and no to, you know? I think it takes a community to make changes.”
Not that the university’s polling site only attracted college-aged voters.
Felicia Romero and Tabari Miller, who live near GCU, got a text message encouraging them to vote, then looked up voting sites.
“But we wanted to come to GCU,” said Romero, who had never been on campus before, but “I always read about GCU doing a lot for the community.”
Attending Party at the Polls has her thinking about volunteering at a polling site in future elections.
The last time Raymond Beltran was on campus, it was to vote in presidential elections.
“I live down the street. … I just like the convenience and just how professional people are here – and I like the university. It feels safe here. It feels special to be allowed to come here (on campus) and put in my vote and do my part in the community.
“And then my son saw the bounce house,” he said. “Then I saw the food, and I’m like, ‘OK, let’s hang out.’”
Judah Floyd, president of ASGCU, the university’s student body, said this event was important “to bring that spirit of civic engagement to election day.”
He said student organizers worked with campus fleet to bring staff and students from the main part of campus to Cañón 49, just a few blocks away at the university’s academic and business complex on 27th Avenue and Camelback Road. GCU received a grant, he said, from the ALL In Campus Democracy Challenge, a national nonpartisan initiative that empowers colleges and universities to improve civic learning, political engagement and voter participation.
“We’re demonstrating by where we are putting our resources that it’s important to GCU that our students are engaged – that our students participate in American democracy," Floyd said.
“I look forward to what our generation is going to do in America, and it’s just the beginning of it – to make sure we’re actively engaged when we’re young. It’s huge.”
Manager of Internal Communications Lana Sweeten-Shults can be reached at [email protected].
***
Related content:
GCU Communications and Public Relations press release: Arizona Supreme Court grants historic approval for GCU's new College of Law
GCU News: Canyon Civic Conference to reconnect with country's founding principles
GCU News: Parent Council brings GCU story to Washington, D.C.
