Essentially, teams of two or three students representing each of the remaining candidates were tasked to research their candidate's positions and platform and then participate in a moderated Q & A, with questions coming first from a list of around 20 questions compiled by the moderators and then a round of questions from the audience.
Because of Democracy Matters' involvement at nearly every stage of the planning process, including writing a fair amount of the questions, campaign finance reform and clean elections were two of the hottest topics at the Forum.
More than just summarizing an event at our campus, this entry is being written also to try and give other Democracy Matters chapters an idea of how to pull off a successful campus event. We packed one of OSU's largest lecture halls (and with an undergrad population of 50,000+ that's no small feat) and got rave reviews from other student groups and especially from our campus press.
How did we do it? Here's a step-by-step breakdown of what our chapter did to pull off this event. Feel free to use it as a guide to ensuring your chapter becomes one of the dominant voices on campuses of all sizes.
1) If you haven't done so already, get registered with your college or University. At some schools, this will allow you greater access to resources like free flyer printing, access to buildings to reserve space for meetings or events, and maybe even money to help cover the costs of events. Being a registered student group also increases the sense of your legitimacy on campus, which is essential if you want to move to step two.
2) Get close with faculty in the Political Science and Sociology departments. This doesn't mean send them a random email about DM. Find out which professors are interested in or supporters of voter-owned elections and schedule a face-to-face meeting during their office hours. Invite a professor to your next DM meeting, and turn that meeting into a professor-recruitment opportunity: get as many students as you can out to the event, make it fun with free food and drink, and watch perhaps a series of televised discussions on voter-owned elections or a documentary on the subject. DM has a lot of resources for this, so ask your coordinator.
3) Start showing up to the "big" political activism clubs on your campus: usually these are the undergraduate club sponsored by the Polisci Department, Young Dems and Young Republicans, and the ACLU. If your members take an interest in them, these groups will probably return the favor. It's important to network with these big clubs first because the reality is that these groups are always holding events and always looking for new ways to publicize themselves. You should be one of those big clubs, and you can be.
So how does it all fit together, and how did we turn our event into a success?
First things first-set a date and secure a room on campus (easy to do if you've got step one down). Next, send out an event press kit (details like Time, Place, etc) and get the other groups on board (step 3). Our coalition for the Mock Presidential Forum included both College Dems and Pubs, the Undergrad PoliSci Club, and the Black Student Caucus.
Once you get the groups buzzing, talk to some of your faculty friends (step 2 in action here). Most groups have faculty advisers, and if your campus is anything like mine, most political clubs have advisers who are engaged to what is happening on campus. They are crucial connections if you are looking to get additional support from a sponsoring department.
Once we had the details of the event worked out, the rest is just like knocking dominoes: if you've set things up right, it'll flow perfectly right up to the event. After you have a room, co-sponsors, and a solid idea of how the Forum will proceed, then you start making ads and talking to the campus press. Talk it up on campus. If there are first year dorms, spend a lot of time there distributing literature. RAs are often tasked to provide programming outlets for their residents, and they will jump at the chance to get a gold star from their bosses by sending their residents to a political awareness event.
There's not much more to it-be sure to document any and all DM events with photos and film. These are great to put on a facebook group or chapter website, or to send to DM national. If you can get these three organizational goals down, your chapter will be able to pull off any event, provided that you plan far enough in advance and be sure to promote it well. Even if things don't go 100% according to plan, if enough people are there the sheer energy of your audience will pull your event through.
Good Luck,
Zach Germaniuk
Ohio State University
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