Bard College Awarded Grant to Support Voter Participation Ahead of Midterm Elections
Hand-painted signs outside of the Bertelsmann Campus Center polling place in 2025. Photo by Gaspard Bason ’29.
The national nonprofit Campus Connect has selected Bard College as a recipient of its 2026 Election Rapid Response Mini-Grant Program award. The college’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) will receive $5,000 to immediately fund a peer mentorship program with the goal of increasing civic engagement and voter participation among first-year undergraduate students.
“Bard and the Center for Civic Engagement have a proud history of helping students explore their civic identities,” said Erin Cannan, the vice president and managing director of the CCE. “We help students explore what it means to be engaged. And, we help connect them to the available mechanisms within the community to get involved. This grant is an opportunity to help make this engagement more visible to our newest community members.”
Campus Connect’s Election Rapid Response Mini-Grant Program is designed to support innovative approaches to student civic engagement that go beyond registration drives and standalone programs. The award is intended to promote high-impact, non-partisan activities that prepare students and campus communities for purposeful engagement around the 2026 midterm elections.
“This grant allows us to reach first-year students earlier and more personally than ever before,” said Damian Ramirez ’29, the lead student facilitator of the mentorship program. “Civic mentorship invites every student to the table, connecting them with a peer who can help them navigate not just campus life, but their role as engaged citizens and voters heading into the midterms. It's a small, direct investment that we believe will have an outsized impact on turnout and participation.”
For a half-century, Bard has been a leading institution in the fight to promote democracy on college campuses. In 1976, three students sued the town of Red Hook for the right to register to vote, which was ultimately upheld by the New York Supreme Court. The student body has repeatedly fought back attempts to limit students’ voting rights and, in 2020, a permanent polling place was established on campus. The peer mentorship program joins this long line of student-led activities.
Post Date: 10-07-2026
“Bard and the Center for Civic Engagement have a proud history of helping students explore their civic identities,” said Erin Cannan, the vice president and managing director of the CCE. “We help students explore what it means to be engaged. And, we help connect them to the available mechanisms within the community to get involved. This grant is an opportunity to help make this engagement more visible to our newest community members.”
Campus Connect’s Election Rapid Response Mini-Grant Program is designed to support innovative approaches to student civic engagement that go beyond registration drives and standalone programs. The award is intended to promote high-impact, non-partisan activities that prepare students and campus communities for purposeful engagement around the 2026 midterm elections.
“This grant allows us to reach first-year students earlier and more personally than ever before,” said Damian Ramirez ’29, the lead student facilitator of the mentorship program. “Civic mentorship invites every student to the table, connecting them with a peer who can help them navigate not just campus life, but their role as engaged citizens and voters heading into the midterms. It's a small, direct investment that we believe will have an outsized impact on turnout and participation.”
For a half-century, Bard has been a leading institution in the fight to promote democracy on college campuses. In 1976, three students sued the town of Red Hook for the right to register to vote, which was ultimately upheld by the New York Supreme Court. The student body has repeatedly fought back attempts to limit students’ voting rights and, in 2020, a permanent polling place was established on campus. The peer mentorship program joins this long line of student-led activities.
Post Date: 10-07-2026