With a vote over the future of the Valley Transit system scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 9, and Walla Walla residents with vote-by-mail ballots in hand, a group of Whitman students have become involved in the Campaign for Valley Transit, spending their weekend afternoons getting the word out to potential voters.
The proposed Valley Transit measure would raise the sales tax by .03 percent, or three cents per 10 dollar purchase, in order to avoid a 50 percent cut in public transit services.
Senior Camila Thorndike, who has gone doorbelling for the campaign, is trying to recruit fellow Whitman students to join her.
“It’s easy to be a part of and it’s really immediately rewarding,” she said.
Thorndike got involved in the Campaign for Valley Transit through her work on an earlier campaign to oppose a coal plant from being built near Walla Walla. During that campaign, she met several people who now head the effort to keep Valley Transit services from being cut. She also helped organize the Network for Young Walla Walla summit that took place in December, and believes that saving Valley Transit fits in with issues discussed there.
“This campaign epitomizes what the summit themes were: economy, equity and environmental sustainability,” she said.
Senior Pedro Galvao has used the campaign to continue his previous outreach efforts to Latino voters. He has recruited other Whitman students, most of whom are members of Club Latino, to ring doorbells in primarily Latino neighborhoods.
“Everybody else is targeting the non-Latinos,” he said. His interest in encouraging Latino voting stems from his work with a group called Commitment to Community over the summer. Going door-to-door to collect survey data for the organization, Galvao realized that Latino voters in Walla Walla often didn’t participate in elections, and that outreach efforts were often absent.
“They were really sporadic,” he said. “The last major effort was in the ’70s or ’80s.”
Both Galvao and Thorndike said that reaction to the campaign has been overwhelmingly positive.
“Nobody said, ‘No way, no thanks,’ and slammed the door,” said Thorndike. Compared to campaigning for partisan offices, such as with the state representative race last fall, asking people to vote for Valley Transit is much easier, she said.
Campaign Manager Dan Clark said that he’s seen a lot of Whitman students helping with the campaign.
“Over the last few years, Whitman students have gotten much more involved in the community,” he said.
Clark attended Whitman in the 1960s, and said that at that time, there was almost no community involvement on the part of students. He attributes the change in part to the establishment of the Center for Community Service.
Thorndike hopes to see more students get involved in this campaign, as well as in political issues in general.
“I’m definitely one to think that voting isn’t enough,” she said. “I think that our democracy depends on everyday citizens taking the next step to keep it alive.”
Besides that, she feels that the Valley Transit issue is simple and relatively noncontroversial.
“You’ll either have a bus after this, or you’ll have half a bus,” she said.
