Beat Yale (At the Ballot Box)

Although the 2016 Harvard-Yale football game was a tragic letdown (the Crimson fell to the Bulldogs 21 to 14), Harvard prevailed over our New Haven neighbor by a razor thin margin in something arguably more important that year: the rate at which undergraduate students voted. In 2016, 57.8 percent of Harvard students voted in the presidential election, compared to 56.7 percent of students at Yale. Those numbers might seem surprisingly low, but according to a survey by the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, the average rate of voting in 2014 among participating institutions of higher education was just 18.8 percent. Yet while Yale might claim to be part of the voter-turnout elite, Harvard still managed to #BeatYale.

In order to increase voter turnout for the significant upcoming elections, organizers have coordinated to launch the Harvard-Yale Votes Challenges, a competition to see which school could garner a higher number of pledges to vote. We are in full support of this idea — any match in which we can prove Harvard’s objective superiority is a match we’d like to see. In a year when many students fear that the relocated Harvard-Yale football game will be a dud, we wholeheartedly welcome another creative outlet to rally our school spirit, crush Yale, and (perhaps) even more importantly, get out the vote.

Voting is a vital civic duty. It is especially important for young people, who are notoriously absent at the polls, to participate. Less than half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 voted in the 2016 election, while over 70 percent of seniors did. In a year when there are a great number of key political seats at play, students should have no shortage of opportunities to have their voices heard. It is for this reason that we find it especially regrettable that Yale students, who reside in a more electorally competitive state than Harvard students, have voted at a lower rate than us in the past.

Today marks three weeks until Election Day, and 33 days until Harvard-Yale. While the outcome of The Game remains unknown, it is still well within our power as a student body to fulfill our civic duty and vote — and to fulfill our duty to Harvard by voting more than Yalies do. After all, nothing is scarier than the thought of Yale students choosing our future leaders.

This staff editorial is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.