With election year approaching, the Office of Active Citizenship and Service designed a committee to organize campus events surrounding the upcoming presidential election.

Mark Dalhouse, director of OACS, had the idea for the committee in the spring after talking and listening to students who were interested in current events and the election process.

Dalhouse and Program Coordinator Lilly Massa have worked to make this idea a reality since Massa joined OACS in June.

While Dalhouse and Massa will be advisers for the committee, they are searching for students to lead it and play important roles in the decision-making processes about events and activities.

“Students get to put in a lot of their own ideas for these events,” Massa said.

Some possible events for the Election Year Steering Committee include a voter-registration wave across campus, citizenship seminars similar to last year’s Freedom Ride, a Super Tuesday party in February and student participation in the November presidential debates.

The committee hopes to involve the Vanderbilt community in November by interviewing students about questions they have for the presidential candidates. These questions could possibly be asked to the candidates when they take part in the Nov. 28 YouTube debates.

“The overall goal of the Election Year Steering Committee is to get the campus more informed and more engaged in the election as 2008 approaches,” Massa said.