UChicago Students Get Out the Vote With a Little Help From World-Renowned Artist Jenny Holzer
With the 2020 elections a little more than a week away, UChiVotes is ramping up its efforts to boost voter turnout on The University of Chicago campus by mobilizing students to make a voting plan, and encouraging the campus community to vote early.
The student-led UChiVotes is a nonpartisan initiative created by the Institute of Politics to combat voter apathy and to help make UChicago one of the top voting campuses in the country.
UChiVotes’ get-out-the-vote efforts were amplified last weekend with the arrival on campus of a rolling art installation created by world-renowned, New York-based neo-conceptual artist and UChicago alumna, Jenny Holzer.
Holzer’s YOU BE MY ALLY is a multi-pronged artistic expression infusing technology into art, allowing a broad audience to engage with nonpartisan messaging centered on democracy and the importance of voting.
On Saturday, October 24, as UChiVotes voting ambassadors spread out across campus, setting up informational tables as part of the “Push to the Polls” event to mobilize voters, two specially-equipped trucks made their way to the main University quad.
The trucks, which are part of Holzer’s YOU BE MY ALLY project, had side panels converted into multicolored LEDs displaying messages including the simple “Vote,” and “Vote for those who cannot.” Aliza Oppenheim, AB’21, and the UChiVotes Vice-Chair, said that “having the trucks present made the event feel much larger than some of our previous work, and much more connected with other efforts to get out the vote. It's hard to have that sort of feeling of connection in this day and age, when we're all so limited to our immediate surroundings.”
The arrival of the trucks on campus drew local media attention as journalists made their way to the quad to chronicle their appearance.
“It was also really exciting to know that the messages being projected on the trucks were written by UChicago students.”
UChiVotes students made the most of the opportunity and posed for photos in front of the trucks to further amplify the shared mission of voting.
For first-year students like Ime Inyang, 2020 will be her first time voting. She believes getting out the vote, particularly among young people, will be more important than ever.
“This is the quality of people’s life on the line,” Inyang said. “We need to make sure that we have someone in office who values people’s well-being and doesn’t hurt the needs of one specific group more than others.”
Oppenheim explained that the broad reach of the LED trucks had more than just a visual impact on the event and her volunteers. “We've been working on our GOTV (get out the vote) efforts for a long time, trying to reach every inch of campus, and to have this external acknowledgement and amplification of the importance of the work we're trying to do, especially something that's as cool of a project as Jenny Holzer’s work, was very meaningful. “
Third-year Sophia Michel was a bit more blunt. “This truly did feel like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. When's the next time we're going to have massive LED trucks drive around Chicago and share our message?”