Students from Friendship Collegiate Academy’s Collegiate for Change club held a voter registration event on Sept. 26 in Northeast, D.C. (Courtesy Photos By Friendship Collegiate Student Dezirae Gross)

By Donna Lewis Johnson
Special to the AFRO

With Election Day coming up on Nov. 3, a group of civic-minded high schoolers took to the streets of D.C. on Sept. 26 to register voters, hoping to boost voter participation in the national and local elections.

Brucionna Cook, a senior at Friendship Collegiate Academy in Northeast, joined her schoolmates in canvassing Minnesota Avenue N.E., sweetening the call to action with hot dogs, soda and chips.

“We set up a table of food and drinks in front of the school for the community,” Cook said.

Cook, 17, is a member of Friendship Collegiate Academy’s “Collegiate for Change” club that emerged this past summer in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests taking place across the nation.

“So many troubling things were happening in our community that our students needed and wanted a voice,” said Jazzmine Ellis, dean of students of Collegiate’s lower school, “So, we formed Collegiate for Change.”

The new student club aims to foster youth activism in response to urgent social issues, including policing in schools, voter suppression, and the coronavirus pandemic.

“In July, we held a virtual open forum for students, their families and community members to discuss how to get students involved as participants and leaders in social justice causes,” explained Ellis. “A number of Black organizations joined the forum and gave their support, including representatives from Collegiate’s Alumni Association, Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Delta Sigma Theta sorority and Howard University.”

Twelfth-grader Cook saw the opportunity to register local voters on the Saturday afternoon in early autumn as a chance to inspire positive, measurable change in her community. “I made a spot for everyone else who couldn’t go anywhere else to register,“ Cook said, explaining that not all voting-eligible D.C. residents have signed up to cast a vote on Election Day.

Some twenty or so students participated in Collegiate for Change’s first-ever voter registration drive, successfully signing up nearly ten D.C. voters or updating their vital information.