Editor’s note: People of UW is a human interest series produced by Badger Herald staff members. The series aims to highlight a student or student group at the University of Wisconsin making an impact on the campus community. These Q&As are edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about yourself. Where are you from? What year are you in school and what is your major?
My name is Kayley Bell. I’m from Sturgeon Bay, Wis., but pretty much everyone just says they’re from Door County. I’m a junior, so in my third year, and I am studying history and political science with a certificate in public policy.
What is the Student Voters Union?
The Student Voters Union is a student organization here at UW Madison that me and Amanjot Kaur co-founded that promotes general, “get-out-to-vote messaging”, nonpartisan civic engagement and voting rights advocacy at UW-Madison. So we’re also in the process of forming a larger coalition structure for UW. The plan, tentatively, is called the UW Madison Student Voting Alliance. We’re kind of figuring out the name. As of right now, we’re hoping to branch out the outreach scope of our organization and connect with other organizations that are in the political public service realm. In terms of what we have to do with SVU, a lot of our work focuses on aiding in voter registration. Most of our members are election officials, so they both serve at the actual polls and also help staff the voter registration drives on campus and in the city of Madison.We also do a lot of educational work on social media and have helped facilitate voter education workshops. Our interns have done that through the university, sometimes outside of the university. Everything that we do is nonpartisan, and what we do is advocate in the terms of supporting voting rights and ballot box access for students.
What made you decide to start that journey with the Student Voters Union?
It’s a little bit complicated because the SVU was originally a different organization. And I can’t disclose all of the information regarding the logistics of that, but what I can say is that it was originally supposed to be an official function of the university and not a separate RSO. So BadgersVote is both a campus wide initiative that supports nonpartisan democratic engagement at UW, but it’s also a campus wide coalition, mainly of very administrative department head type groups. Although students are allowed to attend and encouraged to attend, it’s a very from the top kind of approach to civic engagement at UW, and we identified that there was definitely a need for a bottom up student approach to fostering civic engagement and participation at UW. So in 2023, me and Amanjot Kaur were co-lead interns for the BadgersVote coalition, and we started the process of forming a student coalition, and basically it all got approved, and we all did it. And then because of some messaging guidelines from university administration, we were made to de-affiliate. And so we took away the BadgersVote name and then took on the title of SVU as an RSO rather than the official, branding function of UW-Madison. Although our history is very connected to BadgersVote, we are now completely a separate entity.
Why do you think it’s important for students to vote?
This is one of those questions where I think there isn’t necessarily one universal answer in that, obviously, students come from different backgrounds. They have different political and ideological opinions that represent them, and so the reason I might vote might not be the same for everyone. Generally, across the board, voting is a way to make your needs and opinions known and advocate for the changes you’d like to see in your community. Generally, the metaphor that I use when talking about voting in relation to broader civic engagement is voting is the hammer in your civic engagement toolbox. It’s not the only mechanism of change and way to get your voice across, but it’s one of the primary ways. So, yes, you should also sign up to be an election official, get in contact with your representatives and all of that wonderful stuff, but also voting is one of your very essential tools. In order to make your project that you’re working on as successful as possible, you’re the one to utilize it as much as possible. So that’s my very literal, picture version metaphor. Broadly, voting is a way for people to express what they believe needs to happen in their communities, who they think represents their communities, or whoever they would like to see in the future represent their communities and advocate for both their needs and the needs of their broader community.
What goals do you have for SVU?
One thing that we’re trying to advocate is to get the Wiscard to be voter compliant. Right now, our student IDs are not voter compliant, so you can’t use them as a form of voter identification at the polls. Wisconsin requires identification at the polls. As far as voter ID laws, there’s precedent there. I believe there are multiple other schools in the state of Wisconsin, where the student IDs are voter compliant, although UW isn’t one of them. UW-Stevens Point was the most recent to update their student ID to make it voter compliant. All that would need to happen for our IDs to be voter compliant is for the expiration to be every two years, and for there to be a signature of the students on there, and they would be able to use it for voter identification at the polls, just like a passport or driver’s license. That’s one of our biggest advocacy things, but obviously that does not have any sort of partisanship associated with that. Something that we struggle with is to facilitate conversations and safe spaces for students across different political, different parts of the ideological spectrum, to have a voice, not just on campus, but also in the greater Madison community, and we’re helping to kind of facilitate that. Something that I found very alarming was a study of free expression at UW, and it was highlighted that a lot of students don’t feel comfortable talking in the classroom on political topics, and so something that there’s a big need for at UW is a group that doesn’t necessarily have a partisan agenda, hoping to make all students on campus, regardless of political or ideological affiliation, have a voice and to advocate for them across the board.
Does SVU have any specific plans for the upcoming presidential election?
Yeah. The voter ID stuff in relation to Wiscard is kind of an ongoing project. Although, I would like to see that implemented as soon as possible, obviously, there’s a lot of red tape and logistical things to do with that advocacy journey, and so personally, I would like to see that implemented before the 2026 term although obviously the sooner the better. But realistically, I don’t see that happening in the upcoming presidential election. Like I said though, we partner directly at the state of Madison, so we are under oath, trained election officials. There’s been kind of an issue on campus, in the community, with a lot of external entities doing improper voter registration. So we’re not only providing information to students, but we’re a very primary and trustworthy source and resource for students to get registered to vote. We’re also continuing to post more educational materials on Instagram, like educating students about the election. Something that we’re also going to be working on is actually part of UW-Madison’s faculty policy and it says that professors are to the best of their ability, supposed to avoid scheduling exams or large assignments for election day. We’ve noticed that a lot of students have come to us and said, “Hey, I have an exam on November 5” And while the policy doesn’t necessarily forbid professors from scheduling exams on election day, they are supposed to avoid it. So we’re in the process of trying to formulate communications between both our organization students and the professors to try to help advocate for those students in those classes to have their exams moved to not on election day. So that’s a big thing that we’re working on right now and then also, just broader coalition building is a big project that we’re working on as well.
How can students get involved with SVU?
We don’t have a digital website yet, but students can follow us on social media. @studentvotersunionuw is our Instagram handle. If you want to get involved, we have general membership meetings this semester every other week at 5 p.m. on Thursdays. Those meetings will be hybrid. It’s not just for people that are really, really hands on. We also have opportunities to get involved in a lower commitment capacity as well for people who just want to attend an occasional meeting or volunteer here and there. So, follow on Instagram, request to join our LinkedIn network, and we’ll add you to the slack and Outlook group. That’s the main thing. I’d also highly encourage students to apply to the city of Madison, speak with election officials that they’re interested in and aid voter registration efforts on campus.
