The Annual New York State College Democrats Convention

Every year the members of NYS College Democrats federation gets together one time to talk politics and for college students to have an amazing time. The NYS College Democrats federation is comprised of college students on campuses across the country who are involved with their college democrat chapter. At the NYS College Democrat convention, every active chapter comes together, involving more than 100 students who look forward to that one weekend every year when they can get together with their peers who love politics and the Democratic Party as much as they do.

This past year the NYS College Democrats convention was held at Cornell University and the previous year the convention was held at Columbia University. So how, might you ask, is the location of the NYS College Democrats convention chosen every year? Well every year the location of the convention changes and every year the chapters in NY which want to host the convention submit a nomination packet detailing how much money they would be able to give to the convention, their housing capabilities, the amount of active members they have, and what events they plan on doing. Then the state executive board votes on which chapter they think should host the convention.

At the convention, there is usually 2 or 3 candidates who make speeches to the college students in the audience. The speech is usually targeted to the students to get them to work on their campaign or why the candidate believes he or she can make a difference. Sometimes, the candidates talk about campaign strategy or the effectiveness of Get Out the Vote Drives (GOTV).

There are also breakout sessions which take place in which the college democrat members go to different seminars in which something new is taught to them like creating a Political Action Committee, publicizing and planning events on campuses, working on campaigns, etc. Some sessions are categorized by what position a person holds in their chapter organization. For example, in one particular breakout session, all of the chapter presidents will get together to discuss the state of their chapter and what it has accomplished in the past year.

The convention is also a fun time for the college democrat members as restaurants will be reserved for dinner or lunch, free stuff will be given out, and parties will be held for members to get to know each other better and talk about politics.

The host chapter for the convention has to do a lot of planning for the weekend long convention which usually starts on a Friday night when students from across the state arrive on that college campus and leave Sunday afternoon. Planning that goes into the event includes registration, collecting registration fees, arranging for transportation, being in charge of food and restaurant reservations, planning events, etc.