There Is Hope - VOTE!

It’s hard to have hope after all the devastating events that have occurred in the last four years. This country has been through it all: feasts (if you received a golden parachute), famine (if your factory closed leaving you with questions and no answers), homelessness, drought conditions all across the land (ask any farmer), storms, floods, fires (victims of Hurricane Sandy and the west coast fires), and war (Afghanistan and pulling out of Iraq.) It is difficult to ask Americans to keep the faith, but we must persevere. We must be resilient.

We need to demonstrate our resolve to remain hopeful in our future to our children. When I was teaching, I became the Student Council sponsor in the elementary school where I taught. Since it was an election year, I wanted to be able to demonstrate to all the students how important one vote can be. The school itself was an official voting place so children knew they had to be quiet on Election Day, that the lunch room was to remain as quiet as possible that day while all these adults (many of whom were their parents) could come in and pull the lever. But they really had no clue as to what it all meant.

Our Student Council was made up of two student representatives and an alternate for each fourth, fifth and sixth grade classroom. We would meet at 7:30 AM each Tuesday morning and discuss what service project we could do for the school community. I suggested we hold a mock election the same day as the national election and allow all children to vote for something. Many ideas were batted around and we finally settled on the platform of changing the school colors from Red and Yellow to something else. Several color combinations were suggested and we settled on three options at first and after a Preliminary campaign, the upper grades voted and selected the final possible change of Purple and Blue.

I have to say it was pretty remarkable. Each Student Council Officer was given the assignment of going to all the lower elementary grade classrooms and making a presentation explaining how the voting process worked, what would happen on Election Day, and how this was the student’s chance to make a choice: change the colors or keep the same colors. Each Student Council member was told to make posters supporting a change or keeping the same colors in place. They all gave speeches to their classroom peers as well.

Election Day went smoothly and the students Rocked the Vote! Our mock school election stirred up so much interest within the school community that it spread into the actual city community as well. To say it was the talk of the town was an understatement. I did not expect it to become controversial, but it did! Past students now all grown up and at college wrote letters protesting the possibility of changing their alma mater’s colors. Parents called the school (and me) to ask all kinds of questions, including were we buying new uniforms if the students voted to change the school colors. Even the mayor and City Commissioners called me to ask what was going on and why it was happening.  It was amazing! It really opened the eyes of these children who were learning firsthand that the concerns of people mattered and that their opinions mattered; their votes would count.

It starts with each one of us. As a Property Manager, one way to make sure our Residents understand the importance of voting is to try to make it easy for them to vote. Holding voter registration days and registering your community’s club house as a polling place are two ways to emphasize the importance of voting to our Residents. Providing treats and stickers saying “I VOTED” is a fun little way to support our Residents’ right to choose. I cannot tell you how important it is to me to have the right to make a change or support the status quo. It is up to each one of us to make sure our voices are heard.