ASG to fund voting initiative for campuses

CORRECTION — Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this story said that only 36 UNC-Greensboro students voted in last year’s local elections. The number was for the municipal election in 2011. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.

DURHAM — The UNC-system Association of Student Governments voted Saturday to allocate $50,000 to a new initiative that will promote student voter education on system campuses.

In its meeting this weekend at North Carolina Central University, the association — which meets monthly at system schools and is funded by an annual $1 student fee — ratified the initiative, a part of the non-recurring budget, in an effort to raise student awareness of recent changes to voting laws.

The bill will give $10,000 to fund the association’s collective voting education efforts. The remainder of the money will be available for schools to apply for grants, starting today, to fund awareness programs unique to each campus.

Association President Robert Nunnery said promotional resources — including stickers, door hangers and drink koozies — would be distributed to schools in advance of this fall’s municipal elections, based on need and student population.

Nunnery said less aid would go to a school like UNC-Pembroke, where he is a student, because it only has 6,000 students, and students cannot participate in Pembroke’s local elections because the university’s residence halls are located outside Pembroke’s town limits.

Christy Lambden, UNC-CH’s student body president, said he thinks the new investment is a good move for the association.

Voter registration and education efforts have been reduced over the past couple of months, Lambden said.

“It’s a trend we need to keep doing,” he said. “We need to make voting easy and accessible for students.”

But Crystal Bayne, president of student government at UNC-Greensboro, said at the meeting that she doubted the usefulness of focusing on municipal elections, because only 36 UNC-G students voted in 2011’s local election.

The association also passed a resolution reviving the role of an ASG chief information officer. The job was one of several paid positions cut earlier this year to reduce stipend costs, Nunnery said.

“We realized we needed an information technology person for the website,” he said. “But we won’t be able to pay them.”

Delegates also began preliminary discussions on a proposed trip to the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. in early November.

Nunnery said ASG representatives will present recommendations regarding FAFSA forms and how to educate students on repaying loans.

The meeting also included an update on the hiring of a professional adviser for the association, a process Nunnery said would be completed this fall.

He said he is still answering questions from delegates about the adviser’s duties and salary, which he said would be an increase from the previous office manager position.

“It’s a lot wider than just the scope of office management,” he said. “This isn’t new information to everybody.”

“There are just a lot of questions because it’s a lot of change.”

Assistant State & National Editor Sarah Brown contributed reporting.

state@dailytarheel.com