As part of our effort to uplift student voices during this important election season, the Hart Leadership Program was delighted to host the Why Vote? Video Challenge. A total of eighty-eight Duke students participated in the spring and fall contests, submitting seventy-one 30-second videos aimed at convincing non-voters to vote. The non-partisan messages spoke to students’ aspirations for and discontent with democracy not only in the United States but across the planet. On November 2nd, the Hart Leadership Program held an event to showcase students’ remarkably creative work, “Celebrating Students’ Vision for a New Democracy: The “Why Vote?” Challenge,” where student finalists in six categories were honored.
The six categories included animation, humor, global citizenship, voting rights in a pandemic, the people’s choice award, and the fall 2020 best overall video. Finalists were selected based on a set of criteria by our four judges. Bryant Lewis is a senior majoring in Public Policy who helped advertise the competition in the spring of 2020. Mayte Ramirez-Calderon is a junior from Florida Atlantic University who is majoring in computer science. Jessica Sullivan, a former SOL student, is a senior and the current chair of Duke Votes, a non-partisan, student-led organization that aims to register, educate, and mobilize the Duke community to vote. Antonia Fairchild is a wonderful creator, artist, storyteller, theater producer, teacher, and activist who has produced, directed, and performed in critically acclaimed plays and readings in New York City and produced media in the Bay Area and RDU markets.
The animation category included entries that embraced technology and delivered critical voter information and storytelling in an innovative way. Shania Khoo (T’22) took home the award for best animation video, with her submission, “Voting is an Essential Tool to Make a Difference.” Our humor category encompassed videos that brought levity and laughter to an election cycle that has often been defined by negativity. Horacio Rios (T’22) and Georgia Price (T’22) received the best humor video award for their submission, “Voting is Sexy.”
The global citizenship category contained videos that touched on the message that democracy work has never been solely an American project, but part of a global community. Maria Zurita Ontiveros’ (T’21) video, “If I Could Vote,” directly engaged those aspirations and inequalities within American elections. The global covid-19 pandemic has also been on everyone’s mind this election cycle, sharpening citizens’ anxieties about their personal safety and their voting rights. Susana Gutierrez’s (T’21) video submission “Resist, Inspire, Uplift, & Empower…Vote,” won the award for best PSA in the pandemic by effectively framing the aspirational opportunities that democracy has created despite the covid-19 virus.
To include our live audience in the democratic process of electing a top video, we also created the People’s Choice Award, one in which the fifty three attendees to our award ceremony got to choose the winner. Finalists for the people’s choice award comprised a wide range of creative and insightful videos that transcended the previous categories. After showing five finalists, each showcasing students’ creativity, technique, and persuasion, the audience choose Gracie Joo’s (T’22) provocative and effective submission, “Unmute Yourself.”
Our final award of the evening went to the best overall video submission, a message which spoke to people beyond Duke and the Durham Community. In Esperanza Hernandez’s (T’21) “If Kids Could Vote” the videographer’s two younger cousins were asked if they could vote, why would they? Their perceptive and straight-from-the-heart answers underscored the fact that voting is a privilege which should never be taken for granted.
Congratulations to all our winners! The Hart Leadership Program extends a warm thank you to our judges, our audience members, and all the students who submitted a video. Choosing winners among such a terrific cohort of messages was no easy task given how engaging all of the video submissions were. In that regard, all of the attendees and videographers succeeded in explaining why voting matters, why this imperfect thing called democracy is far more powerful, resilient, and aspirational than partisan arguments and outcomes. Democracy itself we know depends on that unflinching mixture of critique, honesty, and aspiration.
You can watch the recording of the event here: