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Date October 4, 2024
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Photos: From the locker room to the ballot box, Brown Votes boosts student-athlete voter education

As part of broader outreach efforts, Brown Votes and Athletics and Recreation at Brown have teamed up to bring voter-registration workshops to student-athletes ahead of the November elections.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In many ways, a student-athlete’s most valuable asset is time. Between practices, competitions, travel, volunteer service and the academic responsibilities of being a student at Brown, it can be a challenge to find enough hours in the day for much else. 

With that in mind, leaders from Brown Votes have teamed up with the Division of Athletics and Recreation to craft a creative way to enable civic engagement for student-athletes: by convening workshops in team locker rooms. 

As part of a multifaceted outreach campaign across campus, Brown Votes —  a nonpartisan, University-wide initiative committed to cultivating participation in the nation’s democratic process — is providing Brown’s varsity athletic teams with short, practical presentations on how to prepare to vote in November’s elections and answering their election-related questions on the spot. 

Student volunteers with Brown Votes have already met with close to a dozen teams, including the women’s field hockey team, which sat down with Brown junior Percy Unger, a civic engagement fellow at the Swearer Center and Brown Votes leader, in early October to learn how to register to voterequest an absentee ballot and more. 

It’s so helpful to have outreach like this, especially while we’re in season and so focused on sport. It’s great to have them come into our space, meet on our schedules and actually show us around the process.

Lizzie Loftus, Class of 2027 Women's Field Hockey
 
Lizzie Loftus speaks to reporter in locker room

Unger covered the nuts and bolts of absentee voting and alerted team members to important deadlines and resources they may not have been aware of — like text-message reminders, voter registration kits available at locations across campus, and the fact that students at Brown don’t have to pay postage fees for election-related mail. 

Even though sophomore field hockey player Lizzie Loftus is already registered to vote in her home state of Massachusetts, she said the collaboration between Brown Votes and the Athletics teams is a shrewd way to ensure that student-athletes are civically engaged. 

“It’s so helpful to have outreach like this, especially while we’re in season and so focused on sport,” said Loftus, who plays defense on the field hockey team. “It’s great to have them come into our space, meet on our schedules and actually show us around the process.” 

The goal is for every varsity team to participate in a presentation in the upcoming weeks.

“Brown and Athletics and Recreation do a really great job of finding resources and support in so many ways for student-athletes,” said women’s field hockey Head Coach Britt Broady. “When it comes to civic engagement, if we have help and guidance in that space, why wouldn’t we take advantage of that resource?”