{"id":450557,"date":"2026-09-28T23:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T23:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/450557\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T23:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T23:42:09","slug":"former-nasa-astronaut-danny-olivas-visits-epcc-to-encourage-students-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/450557\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NASA astronaut Danny Olivas visits EPCC to encourage students to vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EL PASO, TEXAS (KFOX14\/CBS4) \u2014 El Paso Community College students had the chance to hear from a former NASA astronaut on Monday, as the school hosted Dr. Danny Olivas as part of a national effort to boost civic participation among young voters.<\/p>\n<p>EPCC\u2019s Student Government Association and Campus Leadership &amp; Student Life hosted Olivas, an El Paso native and Burges High School alumnus, who is representing Astronauts For America as part of the \u201cVOTE FOR FREEDOM\u201d non-partisan national college tour.<\/p>\n<p>Organizers describe VOTE FOR FREEDOM as a nationwide initiative to encourage young Americans to seek common ground and help heal the nation by being active participants in representative democracy.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Olivas spoke to students, faculty, and staff at EPCC&#8217;s Valle Verde Campus in a moderated \u201cfireside chat\u201d about civic engagement, followed by a discussion with student leaders.<\/p>\n<p>According to EPCC, more than 100 former astronauts are traveling the country to encourage students to vote and to show that their vote matters. <\/p>\n<p>RECOMMENDED: <a href=\"https:\/\/kfoxtv.com\/news\/local\/epcc-trustees-weigh-173m-budget-that-could-raise-property-taxes-for-county-homeowners?src=link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">EPCC trustees weigh $173M budget that could raise property taxes for county homeowners<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/kfoxtv.com\/sign-up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sign up<\/a> to receive the top interesting stories from in and around our community once daily in your inbox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, TEXAS (KFOX14\/CBS4) \u2014 El Paso Community College students had the chance to hear from a former&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-450557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}