The EU referendum and our college library

There's a big vote coming up in the UK. On the 23rd June 2016, everyone in the UK aged 18 and over can vote to decide whether they want to stay in or leave the EU. I won't go into my personal views here, but we're doing some cool things in the Library to help get the students interested in the whole situation.

The college I work at takes students aged 16 and over. This means that many of them won't be able to vote. But that doesn't mean they won't have an opinion. I created a display on a notice board giving the basic details about the Referendum (the pro-leave and pro-stay campaigns and supporters with details of how to vote and where to find information). We then popped this up in the main walkway through the Library:

This was just an idea to give students the chance to voice their opinion, but mainly so that those who can't vote in June because they are too young, have a chance to have their say now.  Now, these things can occasionally fall flat on their face and you're left with a lonely looking notice board with nothing written on it. But here, the opposite happened. This was after three days:

I then had to start rubbing off the ticks and starting a tally so that other people would have space to tick and cast their vote. The next picture is after 8 days:

(Leave 51, Stay 76, Not Sure 2)

So far more students seem to want to stay but the leave voters are catching up. For anyone thinking of planning something similar in their library, here's two big things to know:

1) These students have a definite opinion. Less than five people so far have said that they are 'not sure'. Most have confidently ticked either yes, or no. They are more interested in this than perhaps people would give them credit for.

2) They can be sensible. I was expecting penis drawings and random swear words. But apart from one person who wrote 'racist' on the board, nothing like that has happened. Just people looking at the board, asking us questions at the desk and happily ticking what they thought.

We did a similar experiment back in October, asking students to join the debate on whether we should still celebrate Black History Month.  That worked out really well too, with lots of students writing comments on the boards as well as just ticking yes or no. Basically, give them a whiteboard to cast their vote on something political and important and they will deliver and you'll have minimal penis doodles. The other main point to all of this was to remind those who can vote in the real referendum to register to vote. We have set up a dedicated computer permanently logged into the register website to get people to sign up and help them if they need help.

Libraries are really good places to get people interested in important community and global events. I think I read somewhere that during the last general election there were more people who didn't vote at all than who voted for any of the parties. It's important libraries work to get those who can vote to go and vote and those who can't interested enough so that they care enough to register when they can. Enough political rambling for today.

Over and out.