Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee
Make the 2020 Election a Teachable Moment
By Marcus Messner
AEJMC Standing Committee on Teaching
Virginia Commonwealth University
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, January 2020 issue)
It’s 2020 and this year’s presidential election promises to become one of the hardest fought in the nation’s history. The presidential primaries are about to begin and the road to November will be long with many opportunities for students to get involved.
There will be days when your students will talk about nothing else. So why not make the election a teachable moment in your classes?
Now is a good time to get your colleagues together to make a plan for the fall semester. Here are a few projects that you can plan on your own or as a team for your school or department:
Get-Out-the-Vote Campaign
Offer a course or class project that designs and carries out a non-partisan campaign to get students to the polls. It’s a great experiential learning opportunity, especially for public relations and advertising students. Put students in the driver seat and let them design campaign materials and social media strategies that will engage their peers.
Start out with a voter registration drive on campus. If students are registered at all, many of them will be registered in their hometowns. They need to either newly register, change their registration or vote absentee. Your campaign can tell them how to do that.
Then turn your attention to the get-out-the-vote effort and go beyond just the horse race. Prepare detailed materials that show the policy positions of all presidential candidates, so that students can make sophisticated decisions at the polls. Focus especially on the issues that are top of mind for your students (a survey can help). If preparing the materials is too time consuming, you can contact one of the many non-profit organizations with voter-turnout operations who are always willing to share their materials.
Also prepare instructions for students on how to get to the polls in your city, if your campus does not have its own polling station. Increase your campaign’s presence on central places around campus on a daily basis between October and November.
Your student affairs unit might have extra dollars to spend for your campaign’s social media advertising during the final days.
Mock Debate
Only very few universities get to host presidential debates with the actual candidates. If yours is not one of the lucky four, it does not prevent you from holding your own mock debate. Put your debate team or communication studies majors in charge of organizing a panel discussion by inviting representatives of the Young Democrats and Young Republicans to debate the policy positions of the presidential candidates on your campus (of course invite third parties representatives as well, if they are available).
Alternatively invite local party politicians to engage in a debate about national issues. It will be a great showcase of what the election is truly about and which choices students face. It will also contribute to a civilized discourse about the election on your campus.
Speaker Series
Bring engaging speakers to your school or department between Labor Day and Election Day. There are many opportunities to bring your students together for speaker events without going through an expensive speaker’s bureau.
Invite some of your alumni, who work in political campaigns or cover politics for a news organization, to talk about their work. You might also have a professor on your faculty who has done so in the past. Ask a historian or a political scientist at your university to bring some perspective on the race unfolding in the fall. Invite international students to discuss difference to elections and political systems in other countries. Hold an open forum with a moderator at which students can share their views.
Election Coverage
Journalism classes can already get a head start by covering the primary election in your state this spring semester. During the fall semester, the general election will be a great testing ground for students to put their reporting skills to use by covering the candidates and the most important issues for voters at your university and in your community.
Partner a journalism class with a local news organization to add student reporting and perspective to their coverage. Let the reporting efforts during the fall culminate in an Election Day project that covers voters at the polls in the morning and provides live updates on the election results in the evening. It’s a great opportunity to give your students a chance to work in a newsroom-like setting and to sharpen all of the skills they learned your previous classes during a breaking news situation.
Creating an engaged campus during a presidential election is a great contribution you can make to our democracy. While the presidential election will likely lead to more political division this year, making it a teachable moment in your classes will not only engage your students, but allow them to have an impact with their coursework by helping their peers make informed decisions at the polls.
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