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Ahead of the fall election cycle, Syracuse University’s Student Association is working to restructure the ‘Cuse Otto Vote initiative, a plan that aims to educate students about voting to increase voter engagement.

Following several years of decreased voter turnout on SU’s campus, SA leaders are hoping the initiative will encourage students to vote in SA’s elections. SA will also look to prioritize student engagement over the next couple months through several events, including the Harvest Festival and Mental Health Awareness Week.

Otto Sutton, SA’s Board of Elections chair, said SA leadership will implement structural changes to the initiative this year.

“The hope is that it’ll be an ongoing, long-standing permanent initiative of Student Association,” Sutton said. “It’ll kind of be its own group moving forward that’ll continue to work each year in preparations for elections.”

In November 2022, SA presented a plan that is now part of ‘Cuse Otto Vote, which would place a hold on students’ MySlice accounts and restrict them from registering for classes until they interacted with presented voting information.

Sutton said the initiative was inspired by other universities that had similar initiatives, such as Stanford University and Cornell University. SA is working with SU administrators on policy initiatives to make voter registration easier for students by creating an accessible online hub for elections, Sutton said.

Sutton said ‘Cuse Otto Vote will not be fully implemented during this week’s fall elections because SA is still finalizing future plans. SA hopes to begin instituting the new initiative for the spring 2024 elections, when students will select SA president and vice president for the 2024-25 academic year.

“Doing all the work we can to make it easier for students to vote and register to vote, that’s what we’re going to do,” Sutton said.

After the upcoming elections, SA will host its second annual Harvest Festival on the Women’s Building field on Oct. 28 from 4 to 7 p.m. SA President William Treloar said the festival will feature lawn games, free food, a chili cook-off and a flea market organized by Olivia Curreri, SA’s vice president of university affairs.

Treloar said he hopes SA can emulate the high attendance from last year’s event as he works to organize this year’s.

“There are events that are really centered around making sure that students get engaged with the community, but this is really just a chance for students to have fun,” Treloar said.

The SA Sustainability Committee will run the flea market, with all proceeds going toward a local environmental nonprofit organization. SA is still deciding on a nonprofit to donate to, Curreri wrote in a statement to The Daily Orange.

Curreri said the flea market will include selections of donated secondhand clothes for sale to SU and SUNY ESF students.

“We want to promote sustainable shopping on campus and promote the idea of reusing clothes that we have,” Curreri said. “Also, there’s a graded added benefit of donating to an environmental nonprofit based in Syracuse to have that wider community impact.”

Students can donate their clothes to the flea market by dropping them off at the SA office in the Schine Student Center, Curreri said.

SA’s Mental Health Awareness Week, from Oct. 2 to Oct. 6, will offer services all week in the Schine, Curreri said. SA will table in Schine alongside therapists from the Barnes Center at the Arch to promote the mental health services Barnes offers, including Barnes’ Crowley Family MindSpa and the Headspace app. There will also be guided meditations in Hendricks Chapel and pet therapy sessions in Schine, Curreri said.

Yasmin Nayrouz, SA’s vice president and lead organizer of Mental Health Awareness Week, said the event strives to erase the stigma around mental health on campus and dedicate this time of year to offer students the support they need.

“A specific goal of ours is to ensure students know that there are resources and a community of support on this campus for students who are struggling with mental health so that they don’t feel alone and that they know there’s hope on campus,” Nayrouz said.

Mental Health Awareness Week will also include a fundraising concert, “Amped Up for Mental Health,” on Thursday, Oct. 5, which will raise money for local mental health nonprofits. Curreri told The D.O. that the concert will feature four performers: Doors, Bella Fiske, The Accountant and All Thumbs and Nancy Dunkle.

Tickets will go on sale this Thursday for $5, and all proceeds will go to NAMI Syracuse, a nonprofit that offers support groups for people with mental illnesses.

Published on September 24, 2023 at 10:04 pm

Contact Roxanne: rmboychu@syr.edu