Students board a UTA van Oct. 20 outside the University Center. The closest voting site to UTA is the Tarrant County Sub-Courthouse in Arlington.
Photo by Chipasha Chishimba
Early voting for the Nov. 3 midterm election kicked off Monday. Various student organizations and groups are ensuring the UTA community gets to the polls, as the Maverick Activities Center is not available as a voting site for the second year in a row.
In response to the Tarrant County commissioners’ decision, three vans transported students between the Tarrant County Sub-Courthouse in Arlington and the University Center for the second day of early voting.
The event, hosted by Student Government, Delta Sigma Theta, Omega Psi Phi and Mount Olive Baptist Church, assisted over 30 students to the voting site on Tuesday.
On Sept. 1, commissioners approved a list of early and Election Day voting sites. This reduced the number of sites in Arlington from 59 to 37 for Election Day and from seven to six for early voting.
With the removal of Maverick Activities Center as an early and Election Day voting site, the nearest polling place to campus is now the Tarrant County Sub-Courthouse in Arlington.
Biology senior Avian Hines Bell, president of the UTA Lambda Chi chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, helped organize the event. Hines Bell said that after the removal of the MAC, she and her sorority wanted to find a way to alleviate some voting stress for students.
“We could get students to their destination when they said that was one of the biggest things that were hindering them from voting,” she said.
Hines Bell said she felt there is a narrative that students do not want to participate in elections, but she does not think that is true.
“Students seeing what it’s like to have things taken away from you because you’re not going to those polls is really driving students to really think, ‘OK, I need to make a change. I need to use my voice. I need to get out there and vote,’” she said.
A student writes her name on a clipboard Oct. 20 outside the University Center before going to vote. Vans transported students to the Tarrant County Sub-Courthouse in Arlington.
Photo by Chipasha Chishimba
The vans ran in 30-minute intervals from noon to 4 p.m. Nursing freshman Anika Penton was one of the students who used the service.
Penton said this was her first time voting in an election and having the vans helped ease some of her voting stress, as she doesn’t have a car and would have had to pay for a ride to the polls.
Penton said she had been planning to participate in this election.
“They always say your voice can be the one to make a change, so I want to make that change,” she said.
Aerospace engineering sophomore Shetonde Polepole learned about the service from event organizers promoting it outside the University Center. Polepole said having the service be spearheaded by students was inspiring.
“Honestly, I would just have gone to the library, but seeing another young person care about voting made me care about voting,” he said.
Early voting runs until Oct. 30, and throughout the rest of the week, campus organizations are hosting events to get more students to the polls.
From 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, the Victory Coalition, the UTA NAACP chapter and Kappa Alpha Psi will provide rides from in front of the University Center to the Tarrant County Sub-Courthouse in Arlington. At 4 p.m. on Friday, Walkable Arlington is hosting a bike ride from the Maverick Activities Center to the sub-courthouse. At noon Oct. 30, the Zeta Chi chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, in partnership with Student Government, UTA NAACP and the Young People’s Alliance, is hosting a walk from The Commons to Brazos Park. They will then go to the sub-courthouse together.
“If we can just get even just one person out there to go vote, that’s a lot right there,” said nursing junior Temi Oluwaseto, who is also a member of the Mu Beta chapter of Omega Psi Phi.
@tay._.sansom