features
fall 2024
By Erica Noonan
Photography by Michael J. Clarke
The fall semester had not even begun, but a committed group of Suffolk Votes student volunteers agreed their last, precious summer days should be spent doing something meaningful. Two weeks before classes started, these Rams were busy registering voters in East Boston and the city’s South End for the September 3 primary and November 5 general election.
It was slow, patient work, starting with greeting passersby who stopped to examine the group’s colorful tables laden with voter flyers and registration forms in Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, and English.
Many of them took a flyer and promised to think about it. But some were ready to vote, some for the first time. They filled out the registration form and handed it to Brian Le, BS ’23 (above), who placed it carefully into a sealed envelope. Each completed registration form is a victory for civic engagement, said Le—and a sign of the positive impact Suffolk Votes is having on the city.
Since graduating last year, Le—a political science & legal studies major who was active in Student Government Association as a class senator—has managed student services at NeighborHealth, the largest community-based primary care health system in Massachusetts. Its two locations in the South End and East Boston serve tens of thousands of people in low-income communities. Suffolk Votes was the ideal group to give his organization’s patients nonpartisan information about how to register and cast their ballots, Le said.
Incoming Ram Keeva Donoghue, Class of 2028, of South Boston heard about the Suffolk Votes effort and decided to volunteer at both locations while wrapping up her summer job at a pizza shop. “It’s so important to vote. You can’t talk about what’s wrong but not take part in the process,” she said.
Volunteer Shreesha Jamkatel, Class of 2025, was—like Donoghue—excited to vote in her first presidential election.
“I am pretty passionate about educating yourself and connecting that to your values,” said the psychology major from Malden. Knowing where you stand matters, she added, because “every vote counts.”
Susan Woods, also Class of 2025, brought a longer perspective to her work registering new East Boston voters. After raising a family and running a dance studio, she returned to college to get her bachelor’s degree in political science.
“There are people who really think politics doesn’t affect them,” she said. As a veteran Election Day poll worker and campaign volunteer, she knows better. These sidewalk conversations are, she stressed, “a real opportunity to make people understand why their vote is important.”
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