Two major events occurred at the Magic Stones this Tuesday: Trinity University’s National Voter Registration Day (NVRD) event and El Mercado, hosted by Student Inclusion and Belonging (SIB), which kicked off the department’s Latinx Heritage Month festivities.
NVRD, taking place between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on Sept. 17, featured university sponsored organizations (USOs), registered student organizations (RSOs) and outside organizations targeting youth voter turnout. Many of the organizations tabling were representing Trinity’s Voter Engagement Task Force.
El Mercado, taking place between 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., overlapping with NVRD, prominently featured SIB and the Mexico, the Americas and Spain (MAS) program, as well as outside Latinx organizations and vendors selling food, jewelry, clothing, instruments and other products. The event also featured live flute performances by Peruvian musician Acmed “El Foco” Tuesta.
Jackson Delhagen, senior political science major and Student Government Association (SGA) senator, stated that NVRD has been in the works since early June. He noted that these sorts of events, as well as Trinity’s Voter Engagement Task Force, came about due to low student voter turnout prior to 2020.
“Having different partners throughout the city such as Youth Do Vote, as well as on campus partners like the police department, MOVE [Mobilize, Organize, Vote, Empower] Texas, SPB [Student Programming Board] … it was a combined effort between all of us to set this up and have a lot of resources available for anything voting-related,” Delhagen said.
Nina Pollak, junior political science major and president of MOVE Texas’ Trinity chapter, emphasized her optimism about the effectiveness of the NVRD event.
“We table every week in Coates, but this is nice because we’re right next to the library and a bunch of buildings,” Pollak said. “We’ve gotten a ton of people registered to vote, a lot of people interested in learning more about MOVE.”
Pollak stated that sometimes students from outside San Antonio are reluctant to change the city on their voter registration. In those cases, she said they try to assist non-local voters in acquiring mail in ballots so they can vote in their home county.
“This year people have been really receptive to changing it, which is so nice because I personally think it’s way easier,” Pollak said. “I’m from out of state and I changed mine to here, because it’s a pain to try to mail in the ballot and everything.”
Cliff Jenkins, a representative of Youth Do Vote, described his organization’s goals as demystifying voting for young people and registering high school seniors and college students to vote. He said their participation in the NVRD event was due to direct invitation by Trinity staff, and that they had been using the opportunity to recruit poll workers.
“Young people need to know that it’s a safe space, and they need people that look like them when they go in to vote so that they feel more comfortable,” Jenkins said. “We’ve had a lot of students here say they feel a little bit uncomfortable voting for the first time, and the best thing we can do is not only help them learn about the process but then have someone who looks just like them when they walk in the door.”
Outside organizations played an even more prominent role in El Mercado. Tracie Andrews, event coordinator for La Villita Historic Arts Village, and Nickolas Flores, special activities coordinator for Historic Market Square, were tabling together at El Mercado. Flores stated that Historic Market Square was promoting their annual car show on Oct. 5 and Oct. 6, while Andrews said La Villita was trying to attract locals for their free biweekly events.
“La Villita and Historic Market Square are minutes from each other, and we always are about offering culturally significant events and attracting all ages [and] all backgrounds to either of our facilities,” Andrews said.
Karla Camacho, program manager at the Mexican-American Civil Rights Institute (MACRI) which participated in the event after being invited by SIB, described her organization as the first Mexican-American civil rights museum in the country.
“We are grounded in San Antonio because so many important movements and historical figures came out of here specifically,” Camacho said. “We call it the cradle of Mexican-American civil rights history.”
Camacho said she was there to promote MACRI’s Alonso S. Perales: Civil Rights Trailblazer exhibit, showcasing Perales’ achievements as a prominent early 20th century lawyer who helped found the League of United Latin American Citizens. She emphasized the role of their table’s button-making machine in attracting attention, which allowed students to create buttons with designs featuring various Mexican-American civil rights leaders including Perales.
“It’s going great, I’ve had quite a few people pick up events calendars and also quite a few people sign up for our newsletter,” Camacho said. “I’ve been able to tell people about these civil rights figures that they didn’t know about, and people seem pretty excited to learn about us.”
