 HBCU judges, welcome back. We are privileged today to have two distinguished guests from the great North Carolina Central University. Dr. Jarvis Hall, he is a professor of political science with the institution and Ms. Jeb, forgive me, Jasmine Abney who is, and I wanna make sure I get this correct because I just started wearing glasses because I'm old. The co-chair of the Political Action and Civic Engagement Committee of the NCCU Student Government Association. That's a lot, but I hope that I got it right. So thank you so much, both of you for joining. Central Endurum is a early voting site and so obviously with HBCUs and specifically HBCU students as the longtime heartbeat of political activism in Black America. Ms. Abney, I will start with you. Talk about some of the trends that you've seen over the last few weeks of early voting and your work with the SGA in helping to make sure that people are engaged with the early voting process and are aware and educated on a lot of the issues that are of import today. Absolutely. So when we talk about our early voting precinct, of course there are students going to vote, but we overwhelmingly see community members leading away. And with the pandemic, it's a little different. There are fewer students on campus, but when I say folks are coming out to vote and with SGA, we're doing things to really encourage people. Yes, we're holding our regular March to the polls as we had yesterday, but we're seeing students get involved in a different way than normal. So we've seen students host their own March to the polls. We're seeing student organizations hold text banking. We as SGA are holding text banking and getting involved even beyond just going to our polling precinct and casting their ballots. For me, that's really, really exciting because in my years on campus, this is the first time I'm really seeing students go beyond registering folks to vote, going beyond casting their own ballots and reaching out to students, their peers, their family members and community members to get them to our polling precinct. What's the energy like for students even though we're at reduced capacity on campus, even though we're in the midst of a pandemic, what's that energy like for you and the student body because we know that HBCU students are critical in getting out the vote and not just getting people to the polls, but getting them aware of what their voice really means and how educated they need to be about issues, not just elected officials, but measures that may also be on the ballot. What is that like for you guys? So the energy is really high. So we're seeing students get involved with both campus organizers and other non-priced organizations that really work with our campus, whether it be Common Cosmo or Carolina or Black Folks Matter Campus Selection Engagement Project. These folks are coming on our campus and they're passing out really good information to help break down what's actually on the ballot. So not just the people, but the offices. And then I'm seeing students take that information and share it with their friends, right? Like we're seeing it on social media. People are talking about soaring to the polls. People are talking about how Turner Law School is a polling precinct in ways that they just haven't before. We're seeing professors make cohoots to give to the students at the beginning of their courses. And students are like doing well and getting engaged and sharing those links even further to get both inside of them. Dr. Ho, what's the role of faculty? We've known for generations that HBCU faculty, as much as students are the lifeblood of getting communities active, a lot of that starts in consultation with the faculty at the HBCUs. Is that still the case, even with reduced capacity and even with so much at stake in this election? There's certainly still the case and I'm happy to be with you today. The COVID crisis of course has created new challenges for all voters and especially for HBCUs. And so the faculty has played the role of not only as educator, but partly as organizer and as well as resource mobilizer. And what I mean by the latter is one of the things that we try to do with the civic engagement working group, which myself and Ms. Abney are a part of, is to try to marshal the resources, not only money but people and of course the efficient use of time in order to increase the level and quality of participation or say quality of participation, knowing about not only the offices that are at the top of the ballot, but also the entire ballot because we want to create informed voters. And so we work with wonderful students like Ms. Abney all the time and try to get them motivated and then stand out of the way and just let them do their thing. What is the research component behind this? Cause one thing that central is very, very well known for is not just having that one-on-one engagement with students to say here are some of the issues that you want to talk about. But there's also research behind that. There's also scholarly discourse behind that. What are some of the latest examples that central or your office have developed that are really speaking to the issues or really speaking to the urgency of the 2020 election? Well, in particular, we realized that we are in a special moment and we realized that with COVID as well as the political environment that we have minus COVID, that these are really special times. And so being aware of that as we are doing the things that we are doing in terms of civic engagement, we are keeping in mind that research component, those questions that will help us answer better, questions like why do people vote? Why don't they vote? What are the kinds of things that will mobilize, especially young people? How can we work with the community? Because we always keep that as an important function of what we do. So not just working on campus, but how do we become good community partners and make sure that it's not only our students, but the community is involved too. And how do we provide the resources that we are uniquely positioned to provide, not only to our students, but to the community. And the research issue is always there. How do we ask the correct research questions? How do we set it up? How do we disseminate that information so then we can learn? And that's the most important thing so that we can do things better as we go forward. Do you find that... Well, let me frame it this way. One of the unique things about this election, more so than I can remember in any other during my lifetime, is that there is a diversity of political perspective. In other words, we're seeing a lot more people come out and challenge political ideologies on both sides. Has that been happening at Central? No campus is a model if no black person speaks for all of us, but have you noticed either of you an increase in the political diversity? In other words, people saying, not just a particular candidate, but I feel this way about these issues or I think that this works better for our community. Have you noticed an uptick in that as opposed to previous years? I could say absolutely. I think people have straight away from the talk about who's running for president, right? We're not really talking about political parties, but we're talking about how we're gonna advance our institution firstly and how we're going to advance the people that we care about. What's gonna make change in our community? And that's where I'm really seeing the difference of opinion for folks is, is how do we get to where we wanna be and where exactly is it that we wanna be, right? Is it gonna be a financial thing? Is it, and what does that look like, right? We're seeing people talk about different forms of economy, whether that be communism or socialism or capitalism, that actually impacts Black and brown folks at home. Yeah, I think we see a robust discussions going on in classes, even though many of those are virtual. We see a diversity of opinion. We don't see the traditional marriage, if you will, to the one political party or another. What we see is attention to issues. And that is a part of the maturation of the electorate in the Black community and the community by far. That the largest, the group of voters with the highest rate of increase in terms of registration or independent voters. So you don't see the party's loyalty that you used to see in the past. You guys work with a lot of external partners on a lot of your outreach and mobilization efforts. Can you talk a bit about some of those partnerships, how closely they work with, not just central, but HBCUs throughout North Carolina and what do those partnerships really mean to community empowerment and engagement? So I'll begin as I'm a fellow with Common Cause North Carolina. So Common Cause is a national organization and then there are different chapters throughout the country. And so our North Carolina chapter hosts what is known as the HBCU Student Action Alliance. And so we have fellows on HBCU campuses throughout the state and throughout the program we've had them on all campuses. And so that's a great way for us as students to have resources that expand far beyond maybe the normal reach of a student organizer and of course have extra support, right? In reaching out and actually getting our message to our audience, which has been really pretty exciting. But it's also created for me as a student, a blueprint of how to connect with students on other campuses to make sure our initiatives aren't just hitting college students, aren't just hitting HBCU students, but are hitting our hometowns and are hitting the folks who are in between, who often are overlooked. And it's been really successful thus far. Yeah, I would say that an important thing that we thought about at the beginning of our work for this particular election cycle was how do we work with and help to use the resources that are presented by a community partners. And when we talk about community partners, there are organizations that do this kind of work all the time, Common Calls North Carolina Jasmine has already talked about. Democracy North Carolina is also a very important organization that we work with. They provide wonderful resources and support for what we do. We also try to work with our houses of faith within the community, working with them on souls to the polls and all kinds of creative and innovative ways to get people out and for those of us who have a little more gray and less hair than we used to a few years ago, how to use social media in order to get people involved. So that's why we rely upon, again, the students that we have as well as our community partners, how do we use the technology in order to get the message out and to inform voters about what is going on and the role that they can play. And then the final question for both of you guys, when this election is over, what steps should be taken to make sure that the Eagle community, Durham, North Carolina stays engaged in political issues? So it's one thing to be active during a campaign or an election season. It's another thing to monitor legislation, to lobby for legislation, to engage with elected officials. How do you transition energy from an election over to advocacy and action for, with and sometimes against elected officials once they get there? Well, go ahead Jasmine, you can go ahead. So for me it begins at the local level, right? It's about educating folks about who's in office, right? And what is the full capacity of the office in which they're serving in? I mean, what does that do for you? What does that look like for an everyday citizen, right? And understanding that there are ways that we can connect and interject ourselves into their work every day. So whether that is sending letters to your city council and to that mayor's office to make sure that you're getting what you need or even calling your representatives at the state and federal congressional level. Because it doesn't stop. And so for us it's really about the education but also letting people know like here's the email, here's the phone number. If you don't like it, here's how we protest in a way that the system actually responds to. But then it's also going further. We just finished our census. So it's about understanding what fair maps look like and how we can contribute to that. And I'm sure Dr. Hall will talk more about that. Yeah, as we started out on this journey for this particular election cycle, one of the things that we stress that we underscored and that we emphasize all the time is institutionalization. So it's not just for this election cycle. We want to make sure that central students and our community are engaged through all election cycles that they are registered to vote, that they vote, they stay informed, but that they make sure that they are engaged in accountability efforts so that those who are elected are accountable to the people. We've talked about a number of things that we're still working on in terms of how we're gonna do that. But the real work actually begins after the election because many elected officials count on voters sort of going back into their cocoons after the election. But we will emphasize the importance of constant 24-7 participation on the part of the people. And very important to that too is Jasmine mentioned, local elections, our real challenge in terms of civic engagement is to get our community involved in local elections as well as presidential elections. Our aim is to make sure that turnout and participation is just as high in local and municipal elections as they are in presidential elections because those are the people who make the day-to-day decisions that impact the quality of life of people while they're on campus, and of course, again, in the community. Dr. Jarvis Hall, Ms. Jasmine Admi, thank you so much for all of your hard work. Again, good luck for the remainder of this week. Y'all ain't getting no sleep. I always tell the students to sleep after the election. Sleep after the election, but we appreciate your time and we're so grateful for you guys continuing a tremendous legacy at NC Central and in North Carolina, which we know is a stronghold and a changing stronghold for political activism, and particularly for you, Ms. Avni, because we're nowhere without the young people. So thank you for all you're doing and Dr. Hall, thank you for what you were doing and your advisement and mentoring capacity of the young people. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us.