Prof. Caroline Lee visits White House as civic engagement panelist

By Bryan Hay 

At the invitation of the White House, Prof. Caroline Lee gathered with students, policy experts, and political engagement professionals from across the country on Nov. 26 to discuss the future of civic engagement on college campuses.

Lee, professor of sociology and Anthropology and Sociology Department head, was asked by the White House Office of Public Engagement to be part of the panel, which assembled in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and included Jennifer Domagal-Goldman, executive director, ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge at Civic Nation, Nicholas Crookston of Voto Latino, and Robert Healy of the Office of Public Engagement, who moderated the discussion.

Chris Byrnes ’26 (government and law and Asian studies, minor in data science), accompanied Lee and participated in a town hall that followed the panel presentation. He is co-director of Lafayette Votes!, assists campus community members with voter registration, and is active in nationwide voter turnout efforts through the nonprofit Every Vote Counts.

Lee reminded the audience of about 50 people, mostly student voter advocates from large universities, that college students could not vote until 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18 with the ratification of the 26th Amendment to the Constitution.

“A lot of people fought for that, and it took a long time,” she said, drawing from her contributions to Leaning into Politics: Higher Education’s Role in Building the Democracy We Need (Information Age Press, 2024).

“It started during World War II, and there were a lot of losses in the fight until 1971,” Lee said. “We just totally take it for granted that the voting age is 18. I shared that all young people, not just college students, need to be fully involved in democracy. They need to feel like democracy is theirs.

“A lot of it is about being really inclusive in terms of making democracy work for everybody and showing people, beyond just voting, about the importance of being educated about the issues,” she added. “Feeling like you have a say in the issues, feeling like you have faith in democratic institutions–that’s what we need to keep democracy going.”

Lee said her participation in the White House event provided a national forum to bring even more visibility to Lafayette College’s reputation of organizing successful programs to promote voting and civil engagement. In particular, she noted how Landis Center for Community Engagement staff works tirelessly year after year to register voters, even working directly with the Pennsylvania Department of State to resolve electronic registration issues this fall.

“Our voter education events really engage the issues students care about,” said Lee, who serves as faculty director of the Landis Center. “And we have the work Mark Crain (William E. Simon Professor of Political Economy) does with his students on election broadcasts with PBS39. This is not a once every four years type of thing. Lafayette Votes! does work every single semester at the highest level.

“It was just so fun for me and Chris to be there representing Lafayette, talking about the work that we did on Lafayette Votes! and sharing ideas,” Lee said. “Our awesome liberal arts college was represented there among Big 10 universities, showing what we do to promote voting.”