Local student does her part to get out the vote

After moving to Bloomington during high school and working on a local election campaign, junior Katie Waters said she realized the lack of interest in politics and voting among young people. Waters, compelled to make a difference in youth involvement, decided she wanted to do her part and get young people to vote.\nCurrently studying political science, 21-year-old Waters has been a major player in the IU chapter of the Indiana Student Public Interest Research Group, which might be more familiar from its frequent sidewalk-chalk advertisements as INPIRG.\nINPIRG, a branch of a nationwide nonpartisan group dedicated to the education of young people on global and political issues, has been working this summer and fall to register as many 18- to 24-year-olds as possible to vote in the Nov. 2 election.\nSince August, INPIRG has been working on the New Voters Project, a campaign started at the national level. This project, which set a goal to register at least a 500,000 young adults to vote, is the "largest youth voter registration and voter mobilization campaign in history," according to the official INPIRG Web site, www.INPIRG.org. \nWaters has been working as an intern for INPIRG since the beginning of the school year.\n"An INPIRG representative came to one of my classes at the beginning of the semester," Waters said. "Being a political science major, I was very interested." \nAs phone bank coordinator, Waters said she has her work cut out for her. She spends many late nights cooped up in the closet-sized INPIRG office on the fourth floor of the Student Activities Tower of the Indiana Memorial Union. The cozy little office is filled with posters covering the walls, fliers and stickers stuck on the doors, and a maze of boxes stuffed with hats, T-shirts and buttons all proclaiming the same red, white and blue message: "VOTE!"\nWaters bears the responsibility of making sure everyone who registered with INPIRG is called and reminded to get to the polls on Nov. 2. Her duties include establishing the database of registered voters to be called. \n"Katie did such a great job," said Waters' supervisor and Campus Organizer for INPIRG, Laura Birnbaum. "She had to take over 2,500 names and put them in lists of 20 for our volunteers to call. When this is all over, there will have been a total of over 100 hours of phone calling." \nWaters has also been recruiting and training volunteers to help make calls and compile databases since she was assigned the job at the beginning of the semester.\n"Katie is so organized," said junior Kathleen Taylor between calls to voters. "She has a job elsewhere, is a full time student and spends all kinds of time doing work for INPIRG. Yet she still has a great sense of humor." Taylor, also a an intern with INPIRG, has known Waters since their freshman years. \n"We had a class together as freshman, but we kind of reunited with INPIRG," Taylor said. "She's a really great girl."\nAlthough INPIRG is nonpartisan, Waters said she's always been a Democrat. As for which candidate she's voting for this fall, she said she's still a little unsure. Waters holds strong in her belief that the War in Iraq is wrong, especially the way the U.S. government handled it. On the issue of gay marriage, she simply stated: "People should be allowed to choose their own lifestyles." Abortion, another big issue for young voters, is something in which Waters doesn't believe, but she's not for or against it being legal. In certain circumstances, such as rape or injury to a mother, Waters believes abortion could be necessary, she said.\nWaters has been involved in politics since grade school student council. She moved with her family from Fort Wayne to Lebanon, Ohio, and then to Bloomington, where she said her work on the Chris Redmon campaign in 2002 influenced her to pursue politics. The coverage of local politics in Bloomington, compared to other cities where she has lived, and being of age to vote when she arrived in Bloomington also sparked her interest. \nBy setting up tables all around campus and Bloomington, INPIRG registered more than 3,500 young people to vote, which exceeds their goal by about 300. \nMedia hits through the Indiana Daily Student, The Herald-Times and local radio and television stations also helped to get out the vote, Waters said. \n"It's important that (young Americans) vote," Waters said. "If more young people go to the poles, then (politicians) will have to care about issues that are important to us."\n-- Contact staff writer Jenny Evans at jrevans@indiana.edu.