Insights from Professor Jennifer Victor Shed Light on the Shifting Landscape of Democracy at Mason

By: Saahiti Kiran Chamala, Mason Votes Managing Editor

On Tuesday, November 11th, Mason Votes sat down with Professor Jennifer Nicoll Victor, associate professor of political science in the Schar School, to explore the implications of Virginia’s recent gubernatorial election for Mason students. Drawing from her research in American political institutions and her hands-on work supporting student voting initiatives, Professor Victor offered insight into how elections intersect with the practical realities of university life.

Professor Victor has spent much of her academic career studying American political institutions, particularly Congress. Her involvement in student voting began when she served as the faculty director of Mason’s Democracy Lab, a first-year learning community built around civic exploration.

“A few years ago, I got interested in student voting. At the time, I was serving as the faculty director for the Schar first year learning community known as Democracy Lab and I leaned into the lab part of the democracy lab and created a curriculum for those students that took advantage of the fact that every year in Virginia, we have an election and used that election as an opportunity to learn about political behavior for that group of students.”

Her work with the Democracy Lab highlighted how students encounter voting differently from the general population. These findings shaped her more recent role as a Faculty Fellow with University Life, where she collaborated with Mason Votes, CECIL, and the League of Women Voters to support Mason Voting Ambassadors.

Professor Victor shared that the planning began months before students returned to campus.

“We started in early summer, like May… And I’ve worked really closely with Kristen Wright, who is the director of the Community Engagement and Civic Learning Office (CECiL) and Alissa Karton, who is the director of special projects and assistant to Vice President of University Life Rose Pascarell. Our off-campus partner has been the League of Women Voters, specifically Arina van Breda, who is their assistant director of voter registration. The four of us have been sort of a team of principals, and one of the first things that we did was recruit students… At the end of the day, we wound up with around 60 or so students that signed up.”

Those ambassadors later became the foundation of this year’s outreach efforts, guiding peers through voting rules, deadlines, and the often-confusing logistics of registering or voting from multiple locations. According to Professor Victor, the transitional nature of college life makes voting uniquely challenging for young adults.

As she explained, “College students are a very particular kind of young human…Some of them live at home and commute to campus, but a lot of students come from other places in Virginia, other states, other countries. Like they come from all over. Some people maintain more than one address… And all of those realities about our college students’ lives create complications for voting because it creates ambiguities.”

Professor Victor noted that this year’s gubernatorial election is especially significant for public universities across the state. Over the past year, Mason, as well as many institutions nationwide, has faced heightened scrutiny related to university governance, policies, and administrative oversight.

“Higher education has become politicized in ways that it hadn’t been previously. George Mason University, over the course of the last year, has been the target of more than a half dozen sort of attacks from the federal government, the House Judiciary Committee, The Department of Education, [and] The Department of Justice. They have made investigations and found conclusions about illegal behavior related to hiring practices and discrimination. And there’s this real political conflict going on.”

She emphasized that these dynamics reflect broader historical patterns in the United States.

“History tells us that almost every point in U.S. history, where we have progress on racial justice, we have backlash that follows it. And so we’re in the backlash part right now. And what’s going on at George Mason and the political attacks it’s experienced are all a part of that just to put it into a broader political context.”

Looking forward, Professor Victor said she is interested in how Virginia’s new administration may approach public university governance. She referenced that the new governor-elect, Abigail Spanberger (D), has spoken about making higher education governance less influenced by political processes.

“She’s not a firebrand liberal. She does seem to have like true kind of Democratic Party ID, but it’s a much more moderate flavor. But one of the things she has talked about a lot is wanting to depoliticize higher education.”

Professor Victor added that the specifics of these efforts remain to be seen but that any shift in governance norms would be significant for institutions like Mason.

One of the clearest trends from this year’s election cycle, Professor Victor observed, was an unusually high level of student engagement. Turnout among Mason’s eligible on-campus voters was even higher than during the 2020 presidential election, a rare occurrence for an off-year contest.

She said, “Well, it’s just hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison. So I was just looking at the students who vote on campus. Right. 
So there was a polling place on campus in Merton Hall. But basically the only people who can vote there are people who live on campus who have changed their voter registration to be their campus address. Right. 
So it’s a little bit unfair to compare a presidential election to a statewide election because then a presidential election, lots of people can vote in other places and whatnot. But in a way that makes the differential that we saw, even that much more impressive. Like, we just had a lot more student engagement in voting locally and getting engaged locally than we did, even when Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were on the ballot.. 
And so that’s pretty remarkable.”

Professor Victor explained that the increased participation did not appear to be driven by a single issue but rather a broader motivation to engage.

“My sort of broader political understanding of this election is that it was not particularly issues-driven. That people who engaged and voted did so out of some sort of like deep-seated concern about what’s going on in democracy or an expression of dissatisfaction with things. A vote for change is kind of the basic vibe that we’ve been getting over the last several election cycles, not just this one. And so that’s not about one specific issue or one specific topic that people are going for. It’s almost just like a broader, generalized concern.”

A major contributor to that engagement, she said, was student-led communication on social media. The Mason Votes Instagram, run largely by students, became a central hub for civic information.

“Students took control in a big way and showed a lot of leadership in creativity on the Mason Votes social media platforms… They got super creative, they created a whole plan, they were making content all the time. And they were methodical about it and relentless. And it made a huge difference.”

Looking to future elections, including upcoming local races, Professor Victor hopes students begin treating voting logistics as part of the routine responsibilities of adulthood.

“I hope that between all the outreach and presentations and everything else, that students are figuring out what they need to do to get ready to vote, and that, there are certain things on your personal checklist that you have to do every year like whether it’s oil change or haircut or dentist or like these lame life things that we have to do to be functional and human in society… Updating your voter registration every year and checking it… that just needs to be routine.”

To students who want to be more civically involved, her advice centers on consistency rather than perfection.

“The magic is to just show up.”

She acknowledged that not every initiative succeeds, but emphasized that participation itself builds confidence and leadership.

“Sometimes it didn’t work out… Not everything we did was a hit… But being able to put yourself out there and to come up to bat all those times is part of what it’s about.”

And ultimately, Professor Victor underscored the broader significance of participation for students and communities alike.

“You can’t have democracy without elections… And the reason we want democracy is because even though it’s messy and flawed and sometimes ridiculous, it’s the only system of governance that humans have ever invented that provides the most freedoms and the most prosperity to the most people. If we want to live in a world where freedom and prosperity are as broadly distributed as possible, then we have to engage. We have to show up and do the work of democracy.”

As Mason Votes continues its work this year and beyond, the hope is that the momentum built through outreach, conversation, and student leadership will continue to empower students to recognize both the impact of their vote and their role in shaping the future of their communities.

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Slider Photo by: Cristian Torres/Strategic Communications/George Mason University

Inside Photo by: Creative Services/George Mason University