A Drake University student is hoping to get more of his college friends to buck the trend of not voting through a leadership conference. Students from across the state will meet for the “Iowa Student Power Conference” Sunday to discuss a variety of political and social issues. Organizer John Noble, a sophomore at Drake, says he knows about stereotypical students.
“We hear people say ‘oh students are lazy, students don’t really care, students aren’t engaged’, and that’s simply not true,” according the Noble. “And I think that this conference will do a lot for that because we are bringing in dozens of students from all over the state who are engaged, who are interested, and who really want to create real political power in the state.”
Noble says all of the campus groups advocating for social change are proof students care about politics, but there’s still a problem getting them out to vote. “But the issue that we saw was the fact these people very rarely did things together. So you know have your racial justice group doing racial justice work, your feminist group is doing feminist work. But we saw this as an opportunity to get these groups together,” Noble says.
Noble says this particular November election is crucial for Iowa, and the conference is one way to get students out to vote.