COMPACT PRE-THANKSGIVING NEWS ROUND-UP

On Saturday, November 22nd Campus Compact used the occasion of the Brawl of the The Wild (aka "Griz/Cat" or "Cat/Griz," depending on where you're from) to honor ten exemplary college student volunteers from our network.

Photo courtesy of Todd Goodrich

Please join us in congratulating our 2014 Montana Athletes In Service:
Tyler Adair, UM
Hunter Chandler, MSUN 
Aubrey Conceicao, MSU Billings
Darrell "D.J." Fish, SKC
Jordan Johnston, Carroll College
Dilan Starkel, Montana Western Football
Katie Tabaracci, Montana Tech
Julie Theis, MSU
Tinaya Monroe, Blackfeet Community College
Kelsey Oblender, Rocky Mountain College

As we head into this holiday, the Compact's network office staff is thankful to live in a state where our two flagship universities, Montana State University and University of Montana, use their rivalry to raise a collective $150,000 in cash and close to 300,000 lbs of food for food-insecure Montanans. Here's to Educating Citizens and Building Communities. And thanks for the example you set with Can the Cats/Griz, UM and MSU.

GET INFORMED AND VOTE (AND GET YOUR FRIENDS TO)!

We're not sure what exactly this means, but we like the sentiment.

Tuesday, November 4th is Election Day across the country, and here in Montana we've got plenty to think about with important local elections and bond issues, state-level races and even a senate and (our lone) house seat all being sought.

Montana Campus Compact has partnered with the Campus Election Engagement Project which works nationally to engage students in the important, practical work of being involved in elections, campaigns, voter education and mobilization and, ultimately, voting. Student's from Compact affiliate campuses across Montana and South Dakota are working hard to engage their peers, educate on the races and issues, and get out the vote for Tuesday.

We're supporting get out the vote projects at Blackfeet Community College, Fort Peck Community College, the University of Montana, Montana State University, Salish Kootenai College and Bitterroot College of UM, as well as at Augustana College in South Dakota.

Voter guides for races across the country, including Montana and South Dakota can be found here.

Certainly there's plenty to be said about midterm elections lacking some of the panache of the quadrennials, when everybody's been hearing about the president's race about seven times a day, every day for the past 23 months. That said, we like to think of midterms as every bit as important, in the grand scheme, because even though the singularity of the president's role makes it easy to focus on, the Congress has the purse strings. Additionally, states are hugely empowered to manage their affairs in the U.S., compared to other places in the world and being informed about local races helps to ensure government is doing, or not doing, what it ought to. See you at the polls (or, if you've voted via absentee, at the post office!)