Human Rights Institute promotes the importance of voting

By Christian Grullon | Published by October 7, 2020

Kean’s Human Rights Institute (HRI) hosted various events promoting the importance of voting ahead of the 2020 U.S. election. The HRI looks to address voting in the United States and also addressing voter registrations with students.

The events regarding voting took place throughout September. All the events were held virtually on Zoom.

Lauretta Farrell, director of the HRI, said voting is fundamental to our rights as human beings.

“We believe that voting is one of the most basic human rights. If you have the right to vote you can influence so much else in your life and in your community,” Farrell said.

Farrell referred to a speech by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom where he pointed out state level inactivity over the Brown v. Board of Education’s Supreme Court decision that declared segregation in schools illegal.

“States weren’t really going to integrate schools.” Farrell said, noting that King was quoted as saying “One of the problems that we have is that we are not out there voting.”

Farrell said it’s important to get students on board with voter registration.

“Given the challenges that we face this year, particularly with remote learning and the fact that most students who are not registered will be freshman in college, so we needed to have really more of a full-court press of pushing this voter registration initiative,” Farrell said.

The Kean community has supported this initiative for voter registrations.

“The entire Kean community has really supported this and faculty from a variety of disciplines have invited our students into the classrooms to talk to their students about voter registration and to kind of walk them through the process,” Farrell said.

Farrell also talked about how the resurgence of Black Lives Matter and the COVID-19 pandemic played a huge role for voting this year.

“We’ve seen killings of black men and black women, but certainly more black men and unfortunately that’s nothing new,” Farrell said. “When George Floyd was murdered, it was so graphic and with the prevalence of social media, you’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard of it or seen it. I think we all just had it, we needed to do something, we needed to get out and do something to support our community,” Farrell said.

The HRI events included a Presidential Debate Party on the institute’s live Twitter feed, a Voting Scavenger Hunt, and Issues Night: Voter Suppression.

These events occurred on the heels of the approaching 2020 election with the top candidates Donald Trump of the Republican Party and Joe Biden of the Democratic Party. Despite the campus recently opening up for hybrid classes from the lockdowns, all of the events were held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic and to obeying the social distancing guidelines of six feet apart.

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