The Asian American Students Association (AASA), Black Student Union (BSU), Center for Jewish Life (CJL), Princeton African Students Association (PASA), and Princeton Latin American Student Association (PLASA) joined together on Oct. 23 for a voter education event, held just two weeks prior to Election Day. APIAVote, a non-partisan, national voter engagement non-profit for Asian American and Pacific Islanders, funded the event.
“CHOMP the Vote” drew in participants with a diverse offering of foods brought by the different affinity groups including SC House, Dvaraka, and Five and Loaves African Restaurant.
“The dinner allowed for discussion on voting access and political issues,” wrote Black Student Union (BSU) vice president Mary Sowell ’26 to The Daily Princetonian. “These conversations are crucial and specifically even more crucial to hear from many diverse groups of people and diverse lived experiences.”
Vinayak Menon ’27, the Policy and Service Chair for AASA, spearheaded the event, helping bring the student affinity groups together. He told the ‘Prince’ in an interview that he first had the idea for “CHOMP the Vote” months ago, over the summer.
“I really wanted there to be a multicultural event on campus,” Menon explained. “And I really wanted to do something on a larger scale to get people out to vote.”
Other leaders who helped to organize the dinnertime discussion underscored these related goals, noting the importance of diversity in voter education programming as one of the event’s strengths.
“I was mainly impressed with the diverse audience that the event was able to offer,” Sewell wrote. “As VP of an affinity group, it can be hard to garner different audiences for such a diverse issue like the presidential campaign.”
About 30 minutes in, Menon started a presentation designed to help people understand how they can vote. The first part of the presentation concerned voting for people registered in New Jersey. Menon also explained how to vote early and on Election Day for people registered in New Jersey.
For those registered in a state other than New Jersey, Menon went over how they can either go home and vote in their home state, or apply for an absentee ballot. Menon also stressed the importance of voting early to avoid issues with processing times at Frist Campus Center.
“The event gave insight and specific instruction on how to vote no matter what U.S. state you are from,” Sowell wrote. “It was very detailed and informative.”
Menon pointed to college students as a demographic that have historically had low voter turnout to explain the importance of the event.
“I think a big reason is that there is a lot of information out there, but it’s complex, and it’s difficult as an individual student to figure out how to kind of parse through this,” he said. “Minority communities, especially, have faced a lot of barriers in terms of voting.”
In order to pull off the event, Menon reached out to APIAVote for help. After becoming a campus ambassador for the non-profit, Menon and AASA received enough funding to allow the collaborating groups to cater their own food.
“This is really important, because as a student organization, it’s really hard to do events like this and get buy-in,” Menon said. “And [funding from APIAVote] really helped us out a lot.”
To follow up on “CHOMP the Vote,” AASA plans to hold tabling events in Frist. At the pop-up tables, people will be able to access the same information from “CHOMP the Vote.”
Doug Schwartz is a Sports contributor and a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.