A trolley circled the route between Mary Washington’s Double Drive and the City of Fredericksburg’s Dorothy Hart Community Center, carrying students to submit their ballots. Photo by Karen Pearlman.
University of Mary Washington students Kaiden and Noah Rojas hopped off the red trolley wearing smiles, carrying stickers and clinging to a new accolade. The brothers, who grew up in Lubbock, Texas, were now first-time voters.
Nearly 300 UMW students joined them in catching a trolley ride and casting their votes during Day on Democracy, an Election Day tradition that allows for the cancelation of most UMW classes to provide opportunities to get to the polls. A trolley circled the route between Mary Washington’s Double Drive and the City of Fredericksburg’s Dorothy Hart Community Center, carrying students to submit their ballots, many for the first time in a presidential election.
Students and staff set up near the Bell Tower to greet them with patriotic balloons, free T-shirts, buttons, stickers – and, of course, coffee and doughnuts – and to hand out sample ballots and provide voter information. The trolley rental was made possible by a Fund for Mary Washington Impact Grant awarded earlier this year to UMW Votes, a nonpartisan program dedicated to educating the community about all aspects of the voting process. Read more.