Every player on Kent State’s men’s basketball team is now registered to vote.  

“The National Association of Basketball Coaches put together an initiative called the ALL IN Challenge to get every one of the players to register to vote,” coach Rob Senderoff said. “When the guys came back to campus, in our first team meeting we made sure that everybody had the forms necessary to register to vote.”

Senderoff participated in a phone call with the Undergraduate Student Government about the initiative. 

“I’m going to try to have our team attempt to be part of a university initiative to get all students on campus registered to vote,” Senderoff said.

The goal of the initiative is to get 100 percent of Division I men’s basketball players registered to vote.

“With this being a national presidential election year it magnifies the importance and visibility of voting,” Senderoff said. “There’s initiatives across the NBA with voter registration and some of the things with social injustice have brought to light that the power that everyone has as a citizen is the right to vote and we want to make sure our players use their voice in that manner.”

Student-athletes represent the university and they have the ability to use that platform to promote this initiative.

“It’s important to be involved on campus beyond just being student-athletes and being student-athletes is an important responsibility because of their visibility,” Senderoff said. “They represent the university in a way that everyone can see and having them get involved with our student registration process is important too because it’s encouraging others to get involved as well and express their voice.”

The team created a video with the University of Akron men’s basketball team to promote social change and the voting initiative.

“I thought it was really meaningful (to do this with a rival),” Senderoff said. “For us to come together for something like that really shows the significance of this to everyone in college.” 

Kathryn is a sports reporter. Contact her at [email protected].

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Hi, I’m Lauren Sasala, a senior journalism student from Toledo. I’m also the editor in chief of The Kent Stater and KentWired this semester. My staff and I are committed to bringing you the most important news about Kent State and the Kent community. We are full-time students and hard-working journalists. While we get support from the student media fee and earned revenue such as advertising, both of those continue to decline. Your generous gift of any amount will help enhance our student experience as we grow into working professionals. Please go here to donate.