For the third consecutive year, the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge has awarded a Connecticut College Camel with a place on its Voting Honor Roll. This year’s honoree is Eliza Macaluso ’27, an environmental studies major and government and anthropology double minor from Ellicott City, Maryland. She joins 231 other students from throughout the United States in receiving recognition for their “commitment to nonpartisan democratic engagement and their contributions to their local communities.”

The Challenge, which began in 2016, seeks to encourage democratic engagement, “especially nonpartisan college student voter registration, education and participation.” In reaction to 20% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 and just 19% of college students voting in the 2014 midterm elections, the organization focused its energies on increasing involvement and participation at colleges and universities. Nine years later, ALL IN has nearly a thousand participating colleges and universities.

“It felt amazing to receive the honor. I had been working so hard for so long,” Macaluso said.

When Macaluso says hard work, she isn’t exaggerating. On election day, she spent hours driving students back and forth to their New London polling location, not stopping until the polls had closed. Before the election, she and her fellow members of Camels Vote—an initiative of Connecticut College’s Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy dedicated to nonpartisan voter registration—worked diligently to get their fellow students involved in the electoral process.

“We lead tabling sessions several times a week all year leading up to election day, pestering students nonstop to register to vote, request absentee ballots and make a plan for voting,” she said.

Those efforts didn’t stay relegated to campus either.

“I went live on Fox 61 and WTNH news to talk about Camels Vote and our efforts to get our peers ready to vote,” Macaluso recalled. “I boosted Instagram engagement by 212%—completely transforming our brand and outreach methods to reach a wider audience.”

Macaluso has no intention of calling it quits. She’s already identifying goals for the 2025-2026 year.

“Moving forward, I am leaning more into advocacy,” she says. “We recently held a digital canvassing event for the SAVE Act, where we supplied information about the act and helped students email their representatives.

“We are also hoping to get students more connected with local New London politics, so we can all be informed, involved citizens on all levels.”