Shultz

For four hours on Tuesday, a table set up in the Ram’s Den gave students a chance to stop by and write a letter, with help from staff at Shepherd University. According to a study by YouGov, only 31 percent of adults have written and sent a letter within the past year, with 15 percent saying they have never done it.

The program was a collaboration between three groups at Shepherd University, including the Shepherd Writing Project, Common Reading program and TRIO Student Services Support program. It stemmed from a conversation about this year’s Common Reading book, “Democracy Awakening.”

“We were wondering how we can get students thinking about that book, those issues and writing together,” said Heidi Hanrahan, a professor of English at Shepherd.

In addition to writing, students were also encouraged to call their representatives office, as well as use other methods of communication for more urgent issues.

Hanrahan

“I think that we timed this event well with administration,” said Hannah Williams-McNamee, who oversees the Common Reading program. “There’s a lot happening, and we wanted to make sure students felt like they had the opportunity to learn more about the issues that affect them.”

While the program is new for the English and Common Reading programs, TRIO has been encouraging students to write to their representatives for some time now. TRIO is a federally funded program through the Department of Education that focuses on offering support to first-generation college students, as well as students with a documented disability.

“We’ve encouraged students to write to representatives and worked to teach them how,” said Andrew Shultz, academic retention specialist for TRIO. “That way, they know how to for anything that they want to stand for. We’ve done it through student leadership conferences that we’ve held with other TRIO programs, but this is the first time that we’ve done it with everybody here on campus.”

Shultz, Hanrahan and Williams-McNamee all said they hope to continue the program, especially following the day’s success in interest and the positive feedback they’ve heard from students who stopped by to write letters.

“We hope they realize that their voices matter,” Hanrahan said. “We’re not interested at all in telling them what to write. We’re not interested at all in who specifically they’re reaching out to. We’re as nonpartisan as we can be in this, but we just want them to know that they have a voice in their ability to write and reach out.”

Williams-McNamee