Sarah Glisson ‘27 makes 2025 ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll for mobilizing Roadrunners to vote

April 11, 2025

by Lauren Ferguson

Political Science major Sarah Glisson ‘27 landed a prestigious civic engagement internship before even starting her first class at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Glisson was on campus during the summer before her first semester for a first-year student leadership experience called Leaders in Service when she was introduced to the Andrew Goodman Foundation – a national organization that supports youth leadership development, voting accessibility, and social justice initiatives at colleges across the country. During the five-day leadership experience, she was offered an ambassador position with the foundation.

She immediately started tabling on Ramapo’s Mahwah campus to help students register to vote and connect them with voting resources.

Glisson ’27, serving as Student Trustee during the February 2025 RCNJ Board of Trustees meeting

“I always say that getting involved with voter registration was a hidden passion,” said Glisson, 19, of Cinnaminson, NJ. “And being able to come to college, getting that internship early, completely changed the trajectory of my four-year experience.” She was eventually offered a staff position at the college’s Civic Community Engagement Center, and was then invited to come back as the student manager. She also became Student Trustee on the college’s Board of Trustees, and started an internship with NJ State Senator Holly Schepisi (R-39).

Now Glisson, a sophomore with a public policy minor, is being honored for going above and beyond to advance nonpartisan student voter registration, education and turnout efforts. She was named to the 2025 ALL IN Student Voting Honor Roll by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. Glisson is one of 232 students nationwide recognized for mobilizing fellow students to make their voices heard in the historic 2024 election cycle.

“Whether they hosted nonpartisan voter registration drives or early voting celebrations, the students honored today made sure their peers did not sleep in on Election Day,” said Jen Domagal-Goldman, Executive Director of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. “With 100,000 local elections happening across the country in 2025, ALL IN students continue to ensure that everyone on their campuses has the information they need to cast their ballot. The 232 Student Voting Honor Roll honorees lead by example, making nonpartisan voter participation a lifelong habit for themselves and their peers.” 

Eddie Seavers, associate director of student involvement at Ramapo, has witnessed Glisson’s top-level performance shine through in all she does on campus.

“Sarah is heavily involved in the nonpartisan voting initiatives, ranging from voter registration to letting people know how they can actually vote beyond just in person on election day. The work she has done over the past year is incredible,” said Seavers, who also oversees the team that leads the college’s Civic Community Engagement Center and advises the Andrew Goodman Foundation Ambassadors.

Sydney Mattea and Sarah Glisson organized the Freedom Summer exhibit on campus in April 2024

Seavers said part of the reason Glisson is being honored is for her role in creating the Freedom Summer exhibit, a museum-style exhibit delving into the 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of Black voters in Mississippi. The exhibit – displayed at Ramapo and then Princeton University as part of the NJ Votes Campus Summit – paid tribute to Andrew Goodman, who at the peak of the Civil Rights movement joined the Freedom Summer campaign to register African-Americans to vote. On his first day, the Ku Klux Klan murdered Goodman and two other civil rights workers. 

Now Glisson and fellow Andrew Goodman Foundation Ambassadors are carrying out Goodman’s legacy of bringing down voting barriers and helping to register young people.

Glisson said a majority of Ramapo students are already registered to vote, and she often works to connect with the first-generation student population. She hands out pamphlets in different languages and starts conversations with students to hear their stories and provide them with voting resources.

“A lot of students on this campus tend to be engaged. I have yet to meet a student who was opposed to ever registering to vote,” Glisson said. “So honestly, the culture at Ramapo makes the work that I do really easy.”

Many students major in political science to go into law, but that is not the only goal according to Glisson. “You can get involved in politics, and you can have an impact even as a teenager,” she said.

As for Glisson, the confidence she has gained from her experiences at Ramapo has emboldened her to dream big.

“I used to tell people, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do in law,’ but it really has changed to like, ‘I know I want to be in politics. I know I want to run for office,’” she said. “I think when you look at Congress it looks really ambitious, but then you’re doing this type of work and you have a lot of passion, you are like, ‘well, I am ambitious,’ so, we’ll see.”