Eastern Michigan University’s Student Government hosted an After the Election Party in celebration of Election Day in Ballroom A of the Student Center Tuesday.
Student Government representatives were passing out t-shirts, food, refreshments and raffle tickets to celebrate student-voters who took time out of their day to exercise their constitutional right to vote.
“We wanted to do something to congratulate them on being good citizens and to thank them for voting,” said Eden Zimak, EMU Student Government director of social justice.
Zimak said that 300 T-shirts, with the words “I voted” on them, were passed out throughout the day to students and faculty to encourage the EMU community to go out and vote.
Two televisions showing the poll results and a buffet table were set up and were free of charge to the EMU community.
“From 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., we provided ‘Rides to the Polls’ for students and faculty that were registered and wanted to vote,” Zimak said. “We had three vans that took them to their poll locations within Ypsilanti.”
The vans provided a service for students, faculty, and staff with pickup and drop-off located in front of the Eastern Eateries.
Zimak said the vans took students to different poll locations such as Estabrook Elementary, Ypsilanti Senior Center and Emmanuel Lutheran Church.
“We had been planning for this event for about a month now in coordinating poll stuff, marketing, T-shirts, logos and flyers,” Zimak said. “For the past two weeks, we worked more closely with VISION, Center for Multicultural Affairs, and Academic Service Learning in getting the word out throughout campus and through social media.”
She said that 60 to 65 people came out to the event to talk about the elections, watch the results, eat the food, drink the refreshments, and participate in the raffle of an iPod Mini.
Harune Ziad, a fourth-year undergraduate student and General Business major, said he is not huge on politics but the event posting around campus caught his attention.
“I saw flyers outside the library and they have some in the Student Center,” Ziad said. “I thought I’d come out to check it out and learn more about something I didn’t know about.”
He said the event was good for the EMU community because it brought people together to talk to other students about what they thought about the nation and state of Michigan.
Despite this not being a presidential election year, the EMU community still showed an interest in poll results.
“We promoted this event a lot on social media and used two main graphics for flyers that were posted throughout the residence halls and buildings throughout campus,” Zinak said. “It was cool to see the EMU community come out t to talk and interact with each other to understand and learn more about the elections. It was good to see a lot of young people out here talking about politics.”
