With the 2024 United States elections less than two months away, four students launched Wesleyan for Harris, a new coalition seeking to engage the University community and rally support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. What started as an informal group chat has quickly transformed into a campus-wide effort to increase student mobilization, encourage voter turnout, and create a shared space for political organizing. In the week since the creation of Wesleyan for Harris, over 100 people have signed up to get involved, and dozens have volunteered to join an organizing team.

The grassroots coalition is led by Luca D’Agruma ’27, Ella Matthews ’26, Sage Saada Saar ’26, and Xander Starobin ’27. Upon meeting each other, the organizers immediately realized that they shared similar political values and goals, and they decided to combine efforts as soon as the semester started.

“So many people on this campus were already planning on doing work for the election,” D’Agruma said. “We all kind of stumbled upon each other and realized that, well, we want to do the same things. We share the same values, and we want to win this election. Why don’t we just do it together? And do something really exciting and powerful.”

By the second week of school, Wesleyan for Harris was already distributing flyers around campus. The group took advantage of last week’s presidential debate watch party at the Frank Center for Public Affairs (PAC) as an opportunity to promote their presence and speak with politically engaged students on campus.

In addition, the Tuesday, Sept. 10 debate—which saw Harris go on the offensive against former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee—generated enthusiasm on campus for the Democratic candidate.

“There’s just the urgency that the election is right on top of us,” Starobin said. “From those first couple of meetings, we, as soon as we could, tried to capitalize on the debate and to just get our word out so that we could start this work and gather as many people into this effort as possible.”

Matthews concurred, stressing that the stakes of the election necessitate swift action.

“It does feel all very sudden, but in the most passionate way,” Matthews said. “[This election] feels different [from] other elections, in that this is such an essential moment to just get involved and engaged, and to make it so every voice counts and every vote counts…. Like Trump can’t be our president again, or else we’re gonna have permanent consequences from that.”

Organizers around the country have rallied around the Harris-Walz campaign, forming broad coalitions like White Dudes for Harris, Republicans for Harris, and the Taylor Swift fan base’s Swifties4Kamala, as well as local action groups such as Yale University’s Yalies4Harris. Wesleyan for Harris mirrors this nationwide trend whereby the Harris-Walz campaign has enjoyed outpouring support from grassroots communities.

“Our group is reflective of the global reaction,” Matthews said. “People are coming out of the woodworks, [people] who wouldn’t normally be interested in politics or care at all about who’s president, really. And now they’re so deeply engaged, involved, and just feeling the need to do something.”

For Saada Saar, much of the political organizing—both nationally and on Wesleyan’s campus—might not have happened if incumbent President Joe Biden hadn’t dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in mid-July.

“I think people are just really excited about [Harris],” Saada Saar said. “And it’s creating a response in her fundraising from these groups on campus that possibly wouldn’t have been sparked if it had still been Biden. I worked at a restaurant over the summer, and my coworker, a Black woman, was saying that she wasn’t going to vote in the election because she wasn’t moved by any of the candidates.”

Saada Saar pointed to her enthusiasm watching the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which took place from August 19 to 22 in Chicago, as a major driving force behind her personal involvement in the Harris campaign on campus.

“It started with watching the DNC…[during] the last week of summer,” Saada Saar said. “And it was just the first time that an election felt so exciting. It was also really beautiful to see a woman of color, and just the presence of women in the DNC, like, ‘Wow, we can really do this. We can really pull this off.’ Knowing that I was gonna go right back to school, I just wanted to see what people could do to support her. [Wesleyan for Harris] has taken on a life of its own, through the force of this collaboration that was just so spur of the moment.”

D’Agruma actually attended the DNC in person as a delegate from California, representing registered Democrats in his congressional district. He, too, was inspired by the energy he felt at the convention, and decided to play his part through founding a coalition back on campus.

“It was really inspiring,” D’Agruma said. “It was a moment of such joy and anticipation and possibility. It was really cool to see hundreds of other young delegates. I met someone who’s a freshman at Middlebury. It was incredible to see the diversity of the Democratic Party and have such interesting conversations with so many people from across the country. That was actually the reason why I wanted to create a coalition here on campus, because I was kind of overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of everyone else, and how much enthusiasm there was. And I thought, well, I saw everyone liking @KamalaHQ reels, so maybe that will translate to campus. And I think it did.”

Even on a campus as progressive-leaning as Wesleyan, the pro-Harris organizers believe their work is critical.

“Wesleyan is a relatively isolated campus, and certainly in a blue district of a blue state, away from a lot of what is conventionally recognized as political activity,” Starobin said. “But I think that’s all the more reason that it’s so crucial that Wesleyan students make an intentional effort to get involved. Democracy demands engagement, and democracy demands discourse. If we don’t push ourselves to earnestly engage in that discourse, and to earnestly engage in democracy, then I think we’re doing a disservice to ourselves, to our country and to each other.”

D’Agruma, too, stressed that the University community ought to step out of its progressive bubble and act on their shared commitment to key national issues like reproductive rights, labor, and climate justice.

“Wesleyan has a rich tradition of social justice and activism, but oftentimes … we might not feel the effects of decisions made by Republican politicians, because we’re living in a blue state with a blue mayor and a blue governor,” D’Agruma said. “But who’s in power actually matters, and it affects people. In reality, people are suffering all across the country. They’re having miscarriages in parking lots outside of hospitals. They’re being exploited by their boss[es], and they don’t have labor rights. People are suffering from polluters and getting asthma and all kinds of conditions because of political corruption and that.”

Saada Saar concurred.

“A couple hundred years ago, our ancestors couldn’t vote, and the fact that now we have the opportunity to elect, or at least vote for, the first Black woman president is such a huge privilege,” Saada Saar said. “I think people [need] to recognize that their power actually is in voting and not in having [an] ‘I’m too good for this’ attitude.”

Even if students do not find themselves agreeing with all of Harris’s policies, the coalition urges everyone to join forces with Harris.

“I appreciate people who I hear who are feeling hesitant about voting at all, or who are feeling like they want to vote for a third party candidate,” Starobin said. “Especially when people are rightfully frustrated at the choices in front of them, or rightfully passionate about really important policy issues that don’t necessarily reflect what they’d like to see enacted. I think that democracy is a very complicated system, but to engage most effectively in the building of the world that we want to see for ourselves and for our communities requires that we engage really earnestly in the electoral process. And considering which candidates right now are potentially viable to win…it’s really one or the other.”

Matthews warned against abstaining from voting or voting for a third-party candidate, which she believed would spoil the ballot.

“People abstaining…is really just giving a vote to Trump,” Matthews said. “[If] they’re voting for a third party, it’s throwing away their vote. I don’t think there’s ever going to be one presidential candidate that perfectly aligns all of their values with every person in their party.”

Wesleyan for Harris organizers also believe that, of the two major party candidates, only Harris could move the country forward on specific policy issues that concern voters at the University, such as the ongoing Israel/Hamas war.

“I think I’m more progressive than Kamala Harris,” D’Agruma said. “But she’s trying to represent all of America. America is a very complex country. I think Kamala Harris should listen to the concerns of people concerned about the war in Gaza, for instance. We have to respect those concerns, but also acknowledge the really terrible implications of Donald Trump coming back into the White House. [We should] recognize the potential of a Kamala Harris presidency, and what that opens up for reproductive rights, for healthcare, for childcare, and a whole host of issues that young people deeply care about. Politics can seem very broken and backwards and conservative and regressive, but it’s up to us to change that, and this is just one step along the way to a better, progressive, humane future.”

The coalition’s efforts are not limited to presidential politics. They are also working to engage students in close down-ballot races that could be decided by just a handful of votes and have significant implications at the national and state level.

“Even just in the district just north of us, Connecticut State Senate District 8, there’s a senator who is running for election who lost against the same opponent by 124 votes in 2022.” Starobin said. “124 votes—that’s just about as many people as Wes for Harris. That is a number that is very attainable. Beyond the presidential election, elections like that really prove how much of an impact even small grassroots organizers can magnify a real possibility for change.”

One other competitive race in the November elections is the U.S. House seat in Connecticut’s 5th District, where Rep. Jahana Hayes (D) is in a close contest for re-election.

“District 5 is just northwest of Middletown,” Starobin said. “It’s very close by, and this is a race that we really want to have an impact on. We’re planning on taking a trip to the district to engage in canvassing efforts for her constituents, on behalf of her campaign.”

Moving forward, Wesleyan for Harris is leveraging an active network of existing student clubs, including The Wesleyan Democrats, Sunrise Wesleyan, and Citizens’ Climate Lobby. They are looking to engage the student population by tabling, phone banking, canvassing, fundraising, and conducting community outreach.

“We’re just here for people to get involved in the capacity that they’re able to and that they want to,” Saada Saar said. “We get that people are really pressed for time, and so we want to try to make things as low-commitment as possible. So their involvement could literally just be like hanging up posters that direct students with QR codes to make voting plans to register to vote. We’re eventually going to make voter manuals. Our goal is to have [voting manuals] under every student’s dorm or house door.”

In a neck-and-neck election cycle, the coalition is also looking to involve communities on a bigger scale.

“We are a coalition of people,” Starobin said. “These aren’t quite set in stone yet, but we’re trying to plan some bigger events as well, like some canvassing efforts out of state in Pennsylvania. We would really love to connect with parents and alumni, so that this effort can be even more influential via the work of even broader members of our community who aren’t currently on this campus. So, if there are any alumni reading this story, we’d love to get in touch.”

As the Wesleyan for Harris organizers repeatedly emphasized, essential to their initiatives is the power of collective action.

“We invite other progressive-minded people, other young people, to join us,” D’Agruma said. “There’s 50 days, and then there’s going to be the rest of our lifetimes after that.”

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Eligible voters should visit vote.gov to register to vote or update their registration information in order to participate in national, state, and local elections.

Sida Chu can be reached at schu@wesleyan.edu.