SALISBURY — With the election less than a week away, organizers at Livingstone College are mobilizing the student vote.

Large crowds gathered outside of Varick Auditorium on the college’s campus Wednesday morning. Parked alongside the festivities were buses set to take Blue Bear students to cast their votes, many for the first time. 

“The Blue Bears Rock the Early Vote rally and associated events are part of ongoing efforts to educate, empower and energize students to actively participate in shaping their community,” a release from the department of student affairs said.

Terri Stevenson is the vice president of that department. She was organizing alongside Livingstone students who were preparing to board those buses and participate in their civic duty. 

“We do a three-pronged approach to voting on this campus,” Stevenson said. “We register, then we educate and then we participate.”

Dr. Laticia H. Godette, founder of Laticia Hill Godette Ministries, emphasized the importance of exercising the right to vote during the “I Need a Word Wednesday” session and encouraged students to participate actively in democracy as part of the “Blue Bears Rock the Early Vote” campus-wide rally.

Wednesday was hardly a one-off, but rather a culmination of a months-long effort to engage students in the voting process. 

“What we have been doing for weeks now, our LC Get Out the Vote Committee has been meeting all semester,” Stevenson said. “We start meeting in the late summer and we make sure that we start planning activities for students, faculty and staff on that committee to talk about what students need, what is important to them and what they need to get them interested in each and every election.”

On Tuesday, Livingstone’s Office of Student Affairs, in partnership with the Black Voters Matter Fund, hosted its Annual Candidates and Queso forum in Aggrey Cafeteria. The event featured 12 candidates and allowed students to ask questions and gather insights before making informed choices at the polls — all while enjoying queso. Livingstone students Denayih Coleman and Chris White served as moderators, facilitating a dialogue that promoted unbiased decision-making.

Earlier in the month, the college collaborated with Dr. Rev. William Barber II, president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign, hosting the North Carolina Rise Up & Revival Get-Out-The-Vote Tour on campus, uniting students and community members in a powerful call to action.

“For the last couple of weeks, we have been doing engagement educational activities,” Stevenson said. “That event last night (Candidates and Queso) was our culminating activity for that. Then, today is participation.”

Stevenson indicated that being able to see students capture the significance of their own self expression through the civic process is rewarding. 

“It’s pretty amazing,” Stevenson said. “Even last night, they did not realize just how important that their vote is and how important their voice is in each and every election. (We discussed) things that involve their community, their families, the economy, all those things we have been stressing how important those things are. We go over the ballot and each candidate. 

“We have a lot of first generation college students. Those are the students who need to understand how important every election is and how every vote is.”

While Stevenson’s parents encouraged her to vote from a young age, it was experiences at her own HBCU that enshrined that significance. 

“I tell people, my first vote was cast as a freshman college student at my HBCU. North Carolina A&T,” Stevenson said. “That is when I immediately started to understand how important the voice of a 18- to 24-year-old can be. 

“Being from Salisbury, I remember going to polls with my parents as a child. They instilled the importance of voting in me but it was reinforced when I attended my HBCU.”

Years from now, maybe a student that voted for the first time on Wednesday will be telling a similar story.