The Board of Elections, a state agency charged with control of elections and voting procedure, performs a wide range of roles from voter registration to training poll workers, and candidate filing to ballot proofing. It involves disseminating accurate information and assistance with absentee ballots, which directly concern college students.
“They are a subset of the population we try to engage with as much as possible. It's fantastic when you see faculty willing to engage with us or with their county board of elections so there is good information,” Bell said.
Students can face particular difficulty when trying to vote, Bell said. They may not have a photo ID, may have trouble receiving their absentee ballot to a campus address, or may just not have the stamps needed to mail the ballot. They are challenged with deciding between voting in their hometown or their college town.
Despite the challenges, UNC Asheville has consistently high student voter turnout, even receiving a Platinum Medal in the 2021 ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, for voter turnout rates of 80 to 89 percent in the 2020 Presidential Election.
Bell cites the University’s curriculum for inspiring students to practice their civic rights.
“When you have a humanities program, when you have ethics classes, every student in every discipline is being taught that big picture aspect they have in what they do and the effect it has on the world,” Bell said. “When that is always front and center in the curriculum here and in the community’s engagement with the campus, that changes the dynamic."
She paraphrases her former political science professor, Dwight Mullen, who taught at UNC Asheville from 1984-2018:
“The importance of a liberal arts degree is that it teaches you critical thinking. While there may be other degrees that will give you skills that will help you immediately out of college to land a job and it might be harder for a liberal arts student, over the course of time that ability to critically think will carry you far.”
Bell continues, “I won't say I'm the poster child in critical thinking, but I do know that my degree here gave me that foundation. Everything that I took – be it a humanities class, a news writing class, a political science class – every professor, no matter the discipline, challenged you to think critically. It makes the difference; I see it in the work that I have to do."