I think this video is super cool. Waller County is famous for trying, year after year, to not let Prairie View A&M students affect their local elections. So they put the only early voting site 7 miles from campus, even though thousands of students vote at Prairie View. A real attempt at disenfranchisement. In response, the students organized a march to the polling station and shut down the highway. 7 miles! Impressive.
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I'd be curious to know if other rural area, small colleges had polling centers on campus. If most other rural, small colleges don't have polling centers on campus than the call of "disenfranchisement" loses its luster.
Praire View A&M Students don't have cars? Seriously, they have to drive 7 miles so they are crying "disenfranchisement?"
The City of College Station was notorious for having City voting during finals or duing summer vacation. I guess it was an attempt to "disenfranchise" the white college students.
Now...if the Praire View situation was unique and small, rural colleges typically have polling centers than I get the arguement and the walk was a good thing.
Oh...I love going on fact-finding missions.
This whole thing was over "early voting" polling places not actual polling places.
On March 4th TWO polling centers will be on the campus of Prairie View A&M.
Just so you know...the entire COUNTY of Waller only planned 4 polling centers county-wide. That means that many citizens were "disenfranchised" and had to drive more than seven miles to vote early!
All of Waller county is only 35000 citizens. The population of Prairie View A&M is over 7000. So yeah, keeping 20 percent of your county's residents 7 miles from a polling place IS disenfranchisent.
"Praire View A&M Students don't have cars?"
Wow. These are lower-income, if not poor black college students. And since when is having a car a pre-requisite for voting? I didn't have a car until I was a junior in college.
By the way, the majority white Texas A&M campus (Walker's Alma Mater) has an early voting location
right in its student center.
And early voting makes a difference in turn-out. Which is why Waller did what it did. These things matter, especially to people who know a thing or two about disenfranchisement.
By the way, the majority white Texas A&M campus (Walker's Alma Mater) has an early voting location right in its student center.
There are 50,000 students at A&M right now. About 15,000 live on campus.
54% of PV A&M Undergrads live on campus. That amount to about 3,200students.
A 7 mile drive on a country highway would take about 10 minutes. I'd be very surprised if less than 90% of the students at PV A&M have cars.
Yet this is "disenfranchisement."
Abilene Christian University is in Abilene, TX. A smallish town. The enrollment of ACU is very similar to PV A&M in terms of number of undergraduate enrollment.
Interestingly enough I search a search for Taylor County early voting sites reveals the fact that there IS NOT an early voting site on the campus of ACU!!!!!! Where is the outrage!!!! Paging Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton...these kids at ACU are disenfranchised!
Just because 50 percent live "off-campus", that doesn't mean the other fifty lives 90 miles away in Houston. Off-campus usually means right outside school property.
My population enrollment numbers don't even include the PVAM faculty and support staff who are directly in the vicinity, and therefore 7 miles away from the nearest early voting station.
Nice try with that Abilene Christian hoo-ha. You need to do a little more research. The closest early voting location is 6 BLOCKS from the university. So no, ACU is not disenfranchised.
Look, Waller County has a long, long history, since the 70s, of trying to keep black students from PVAM off the voter rolls by various tactics. It's good old rural Texas bigotry. They don't want black students voting in their county, so they do what they can to limit the impact. It's just that simple.
You should probably look a little deeper into the history. You might be a little disturbed by the fine people of Waller, who's side you have taken up.
I am not "taking the side" of the people of Waller county. I just think that crying "disenfranchisement" over having to drive 7 miles for EARLY voting is horse manuer and an insult to the civil rights forfathers who really were disenfranchised.
I promise, if I had the time I could pinpoint a small, rural college that meets the same criteria as PV A&M, apart from race, where students have to drive several miles to "EARLY" vote.
We college students at A&M (I went there too) didn't have a civil rights rally when the city council held votes while we were on summer break on purpose. Please.
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