Successful HYPE Played it Safe

We congratulate the organizers of the Harvard Youth for Political Empowerment (HYPE) rally and hope that more students have educated on election issues and have registered to vote. About half the undergraduate population attended, and we can only hope that just as many students turn out to the voting booths in November.

The Institute of Politics (IOP) and the Undergraduate Council organized the event that asked campus groups to sponsor awareness booths in which they could display issues important to them. By making it necessary that students visit at least 18 of the booths to enter a raffle, many students were forced to learn more about topics ranging from the lack of women in the United States Senate to human rights violations in Turkey. We are glad that the tone of the booths did not sway far from government issues and that they attempted to show the importance of a having a voice in government.

HYPE should also be recognized for registering at least 400 voters during the rock-filled fest and for its efforts in enticing students to attend by closing some house dining halls, recruiting speakers like Susan Roosevelt Weld and George Stephanopoulos, and hiring bands like Expanding Man, Piraeus and Daily Planet. By making the afternoon fun, they showed how pop-culture and politics can work together to inform students about the power of voting. We encourage students to take advantage of events like HYPE in the future.

The unbalanced speaker ratio of five Democrats to two Republicans, as well as the notable absence of alternative perspectives such as Socialist and Libertarian, is something that should not have been overlooked in planning HYPE, which claimed to be a non-partisan rally. The partisanship which was evident by negligible anyhow. Politics is about strong opinions, and it is played out through parties. To ignore this reality and supply trite blather about voting obligations--rather than strong campaign endorsements and policy contestations--will not encourage anyone to vote.

Although HYPE organizers tried to keep this strictly a Harvard event by posting guards at all entries into the MAC Quad and blocking off the streets leading both to Winthrop and Eliot Houses, we wish the event had not been as exclusive. In trying to politically empower students by registering them to vote, it would have been more effective if students from the Boston area had been included in this event. We hope that the IOP and the Undergraaduate Council look at the overall mission of the event and not ignore the abundance of college students in the area in future planning. Perhpas we'll see a collaboration with other schools for a more ambitious event by the year 2000.

The HYPE event was a fine first effort. We encourage the IOP and the council to host more rallies like this in the future and to continue working toward increased student participation in elections.