20
Vote Leaves: A treemendous
demonstration
of student democracy!
After a successful bid to the Keele Key Fund in November 2019, Keele SU review
their Vote Leaves project.
For the past few years, KeeleSU has
been running a “Vote Barometer”
to incentivise voting in the KeeleSU
Elections. This did see a significant
increase in voter turnout in its first year,
however there has been a year on
year decline since then. Incentives for
election voting is a divisive topic in the
student moment. Evidence suggests
that it does drive engagement, but
critics of the tactic believe it sends
the wrong message. Participating in
hard won democracy should not be
simply done in exchange for a Nando's
voucher.
This year, Student Voice wished to
promote participation in democracy as
a public good, an act of responsible
citizenship that everyone should
feel duty bound to contribute to. If
democracy is intrinsically linked to
responsible citizenship, then it feels
natural to link democracy to the
planet's single greatest threat to its
citizens; climate change. Student
Voice and Activities had the idea that
we could commit to planting a tree
for every student who voted in the
election. At this stage, we did not know
the feasibility of this idea, nor did we
have the funds or permissions.
Because this idea was conceived
by SU staff and not climate change
experts, we felt it was important
to assess whether or not planting
thousands of trees would have a
significant environmental benefit. We
invited a number of academics from
the school of Geography, Geology
and the Environment who were all
able to confirm that there would be a
significant long term carbon offset to
planting over a thousand trees as trees
sequester carbon emissions as well as
encouraging biodiversity and providing
a habitat for local wildlife. Keele
campus has also suffered a number
of devastating tree diseases such as
Ash dieback. Due to these diseases, a
number of trees have had to be felled,
so we wanted to replace those lost
trees.
It was also clear from the Sustainability
Skills Survey that sustainability was
important to our student body, with
92% of students surveyed agreeing
that sustainable development is
something which universities should
actively incorporate and promote. It
was also clear that we needed to do
something innovative to drive our voter
turnout after a decline in voter numbers
since 2017. It was because of these