Major Updates

• Are You, Your Students and Staff Registered to Vote?
  College campuses have played a unique role in both Census data collection as well as voting efforts this year, as students who may live on or near campus have been rapidly displaced or decided to move to other places as campuses closed or their studies went fully online. Registering to vote requires a primary address, and not updating whenever these changes occur is one of the main ways voters can be left out. Have you encouraged or let your students know this is the case? Have you encouraged your staff to vote and provided them with resources on how and where to vote? Do you provide for time off to allow for your staff to utilize their most important political participatory right in the United States – the right to vote? The stage is set, and time is short, the election will be here much sooner than we think (although not soon enough for many of us).

  This year is different, and it is incumbent upon all of us to act differently, and make sure that our students, staff, and faculty all are primed to take part in this “most important election of our lives”. Be sure you are utilizing your personal and professional voices to make sure higher ed and our student voices are heard. For more information on voting requirements, deadlines, and guidance, visit (and share) the following resource: https://www.vote.org/

• Political Influence on Fall Plans
  “New analysis found that a college’s reopening decision for the fall term is tied to the red or blue shade of its state, even if political pressure may not be direct. Colleges and universities looked at several factors when determining whether to reopen their campuses to students for the fall, including local COVID-19 case numbers, campuses’ ability to physically distance students and what students said they wanted in surveys. But another factor seems to have played a major role in the decision-making process, one that is not being touted in news releases or letters to the community: colleges’ decisions appear to be closely tied to whether the state they are in is red or blue.”

  Read more here.

  See the data and latest on college reopening plans across the country with the College Crisis Initiative from Davidson College

• DeVos: “Religious liberty” required for Education grants
  Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said universities and colleges that don’t allow “free inquiry and religious liberty” and public colleges that don’t give religious student groups the same rights as other organizations on campus will no longer qualify for grants from the US Education Department. Private colleges must “promise their students and faculty free expression, free inquiry, and diversity of thought” to qualify for federal education grants.

Read more here.

Stay engaged and informed! Submit comments, or ideas for topics of inclusion in this newsletter. For more information on UPCEA government affairs, contact Jordan DiMaggio ([email protected]).