A student leads the processional at a recent campus convocation. Photo illustration by Peter Bailley

In their courses as well as their extracurricular activities, Knox College students are engaging with political interests, in the run-up to the November general election. 

• Election 2012!
  Students in a special team-taught course, coordinated by assistant professor Andrew Civettini, are gaining political insights from a wide spectrum of experts. Over the ten week term, students will engage with Knox faculty from seven academic departments, along with guest speakers, with a focus on the  Presidential election cycle. The class will hold an election-night party on November 6, and review the results of this year's elections in the last two weeks of the course.
  


• Do campaigns make a difference?
  Jonathan Day, assistant professor of political science at Western Illinois University, gives a campus lecture on whether presidential campaigns influence election outcomes -- or whether competing slogans simply 'cancel each other out.' Day was one of the guest speakers for the course Election 2012!
  


• Election 2012! The Blog
  A group of students from the Election 2012! course offer their thoughts on the political process and reflections of material covered in class. After a lecture by economist Carol Scotton, an expert in health care economics, one of the student-bloggers, Firas Suqi of Chicago, wrote: "Professor Scotton figuratively put each of us in the Oval Office by providing us with the interactive capabilities to design our own budget, making us realize how difficult the decision-making process could be, especially when each decision affects the lives of over 300 million people."
  


• Journalism students survey local voters
  Knox students are taking the measure of public opinion in Galesburg, in a pre-election poll conducted in cooperation with the Galesburg Register-Mail newspaper. Students in the Newswriting and Reporting course, taught by veteran newspaper editor Susan Schlaufman Deans, worked out of the Register-Mail newsroom in September to call registered voters in Galesburg.
  


• Knox students debate the issues at famous debate site
  Following in the tradition of the famous 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate at Knox College, students will engage in a series of debates on the economy and other current issues. The debates will be held at Knox's Old Main, a National Historic Landmark and the only original building that remains from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.


• Students join politically-focused national theatre festival
  Knox is one of 44 theatres, and one of just six in Illinois, chosen to participate in a nationwide, election-year theatre festival, "Plays for Presidents 2012," in the months leading up to the November election. Knox and the other selected participating theatres will each contribute one scene from their production to a video compilation that will be released after the conclusion of the series.


• FastFact about Knox: In 2011, Knox was named one of the top ten Most Politically Active colleges in the nation by the Unigo website.