“Are you registered to vote? Are YOU registered to vote? ARE YOU REGISTERED TO VOTE?” The students at the University of Massachusetts Boston have heard this in the halls of the campus center for the past two or more weeks. MassPIRG is the university’s Public Interest Research Group, a student-interest advocacy group. This year they have been able to register 741 students to vote in this past election, as well as to educate 300 students about what was on the ballots.
MassPIRG has the mission to help students build something with immediate impact, and to teach students how to be activists. Their goal for this semester is working for the recycling campaign, the affordable textbook campaign, and the hunger and homelessness support group. For the recycling campaign MassPIRG wanted to get question 2, to update the Bottle Bill, passed as well as host a number of river clean ups. For the homeless and hunger group, masspirg goal is to raise $1200 for charity. Lastly, the textbook campaign’s goal is to raise awareness about open-sourcing and to get faculty and students support.
“We wanted to motivate students to go and vote on Nov. 4 and educate them; we kept it completely non-partisan, on what was on the ballot so they could vote confidently,” said Souraya Beydoun, the campaign coordinator for the New Voters Project, “For the New Voters Project, we originally wanted to get 1000 students registered to vote but we then revised the goal to move realistic 700 students.”
MassPIRG may have annoyed many students but they do not regret it because they knew that it would take asking some students more than once to get them to register to vote. At the end of the day, they did more good than bad. Alicia Bissonnette, MassPIRG organizer, says that a general goal for the organization is to get students engaged to make an impact right here, right now.
“We want to show students you don’t have to wait to make a difference, and that there are definitely efficient ways of doing things and making things happen,” Bissonnette said. “We can show students that organize effectively leads to positive social change.”
Now that the elections are over, MassPIRG is going to focus on the Affordable Textbook and Hunger and Homelessness campaigns. They have some cool events coming up for Hunger Week starting on the 12th. From the 17th to the 21st, Masspirg will have a canned food drive. Everyone who has canned goods that want to donate to the needy are encouraged to drop them off at their office in the Office of Student Life on the third floor of the Campus Center.