By Tdohasan Sunray
Iliana Barnes Diaz (‘25) and the University of Puget Sound’s Civic Engagement Team have been working to create a campus community that remains informed on civic matters. And Barnes Diaz’s hard work shows, as she was recently recognized by the Washington Secretary of State as a recipient of the John Lewis Youth Leadership Award. According to the Secretary of State website, only two youths throughout the state are awarded this honor on an annual basis that acknowledges “the next generation of civil leaders who uphold the principles of justice, inclusion and democratic participation.”
Barnes Diaz got her start with civic engagement sooner than most activists typically do: the beginning of her freshman year of college. She was matched with the Civic Engagement Team through the work-study program and has previously been involved in other community work, too. “I had worked on a school board campaign in high school, and I had done some organizing around equity in education,” she said.
The ultimate goal of the Civic Engagement Team is laid out by Barnes Diaz with the hopes of getting “students civically involved in their communities, at Puget Sound, in the Tacoma community and wherever it is they call home.” The team enacts programming and opportunities that allow students to interact with and be a part of the democratic process at the local, state and national levels. Educational opportunities that the team offers include information on how to register, vote, file for absentee ballots and research candidates. These efforts require a lot of face-to-face interaction from the team. Barnes Diaz explained the energetic day-to-day activity, “So with voting, for example, we’re pretty frequent tablers on vendors row, and we’ll be politely yelling at people about if they’re registered to vote or if they know that there’s an upcoming election.”
The team seeks to do more than just get students to vote, however. The manner in which this outreach is done is of great — if not even greater — importance to the team. Barnes Diaz explained, “We offer non-partisan support to people. That is part of our mission. So we’re not trying to tell you how you should vote or anything like that. But we’re just trying to make it as easy as possible for you to get your voice heard through voting.”
For the Civic Engagement Team, making students aware of these sorts of opportunities is as much a necessary endeavor as it is a difficult one. Although “Engagement” is in the team’s name, (and much of the same is true with other campus outreach programs) student engagement is routinely one of the hardest initiatives to drive home. “That can be challenging when it comes to voting in more local elections or getting involved in things that aren’t voting in a presidential election,” Barnes Diaz said. “Every year, there’s a new class of students, and every four years, a whole group of people that have been there for a long time leave. Offices get restructured and people get moved around. And then it can be really hard, I think, to have that continuity if you’re not intentional about it. So, I’ve been really lucky to step into this program that was kept alive,” she added. The recognized need for civic engagement services for University of Puget Sound students has enabled programs such as the Civic Engagement Team to persist.
In addition to spreading awareness and education related to voting, Barnes Diaz and the team have been involved in spearheading a project that translates the graduation ceremony into Spanish, which is the campus’s second most spoken language. The team also works on the Campus Engagement Historical Journey “which highlights student advocacy and activism on campus throughout the years,” Barnes Diaz wrote. Low-barrier access is central to the Civic Engagement Team’s plans.
Barnes Diaz isn’t totally sure where her work with the Civic Engagement Team will lead her. “Yeah, honestly, I’m not 100% sure exactly where I’m going to end up right now in terms of a career, but I think that my values and what I’ve learned from my family is that you kind of have a responsibility to your community and to be involved in your community,” she said. “I would love to continue to do work around voting and getting people more access to voting,” Barnes Diaz added.
It is rare for productive community to be built without a host of challenges, and it’s all the more unattainable without a contingent of people who are willing to tackle those sorts of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. “Not everyone wants to do this work, and so when you get people on this team, it’s people who are interested in doing this kind of work,” Barnes Diaz mentioned.
While Barnes Diaz alone was recognized for the John Lewis Youth Leadership Award, she feels that everyone on the team played a part and is equally deserving of the award. “When I’m thinking about this award that I got, I’m so so grateful to be honored, to be recognized for this kind of work. But it’s also like, I’m one person on a team of people, right? I couldn’t have done this, any of this, without all of them too,” she said.
Despite the fact that it takes a team to foster collective campus engagement in civic matters, Barnes Diaz has played a major role in creating a sense of continuity that encourages participation from the student body. The legacy of student engagement, after all, is invented and sustained by its students. Barnes Diaz is one part of a larger movement of student civic activism here at the University of Puget Sound.