By Kelly Glista

Just about any college student who has ever been assigned to a group project can testify to the difficulties involved in organizing and figuring out times to work together.

With different scheduling conflicts to juggle, varying degrees of motivation and finding a good meeting place, it can be nearly impossible. And usually this is only for four or five students.

But this year, the Energy Action Coalition, an association of 48 organizations united in support of youth environmental activism, is attempting to organize a staggering one million student voters into a force for change in the country’s environmental policies.

The campaign is called Power Vote and its goal is to mobilize 18 to 25-year-old voters for clean energy, global climate awareness, halting coal usage and the creation of “green” jobs. Power Vote campaigns at college and university campuses all over the country have begun collecting student pledges, stating that when November comes they will vote with clean energy and other environmental concerns as the main issue.

Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director for Energy Action, said in a teleconference last week that the Power Vote campaign stemmed from the coalition’s desire to do more in regards to this year’s election. It is not just a project for so-called tree-huggers or those who would consider environmentally conscious thinking popular and trendy, she said.

“It’s because issues that affect our lives and futures are at stake in this election,” Ms. Cotter said.

Laura Comer, a junior political science major, is heading up the Power Vote campaign on the University’s campus. Also president of the campus group Students for a Greener Hofstra, Comer said that colleges and universities are absolutely the way to begin this sort of campaign. They are a kind of microcosm of the world, she said.

“If you can make a campus green, why can’t you make a city green?” Comer said.

So far the Hofstra Power Vote campaign has made its presence known at the Welcome Back clubs fair-where Comer said they handed out about 200 postcards-and by keeping a pledge table in the Student Center about once a week. Their Facebook group has just under 100 members, and Comer said that she has approximately 35 student volunteers helping her with campaign efforts around campus.

Comer got involved in Power Vote this summer while interning with the Greenpeace organization in Washington, D. C. Greenpeace is one of the leading independent campaign organizations for global environmental issues. She got the chance to train in being a grassroots campaign organizer and was thrilled to spend a summer with people of the same ideals.

The idea of just returning to school in the fall, however, was not necessarily as thrilling.”I kept thinking, ‘I shouldn’t be at school this semester, there’s so much more I could do,'” Comer said. Bringing the Power Vote campaign to the University was a chance to continue making a difference right up to and after the election in November. Of course, there was an added incentive to being on campus this semester that Comer said her internship leader was eager to point out.

“She said, ‘You have the debates! Stay right where you are!'” Comer said, laughing.

The third presidential debate being hosted at the University is a chance that Hofstra’s Power Vote group plans to take advantage of. Comer hopes to have some sort of campaign event going on for students not able to be at the actual debate, and maybe even draw more attention to the environmental issues facing the next president.

But the real push, she said, needs to continue after the election into the first few weeks of the presidency. That is when the most important legislation is made. We have the influence and the resources to push for clean energy, Comer said.

“All we need is the political willpower,” she said.

The Power Vote Web site boasts over 102,000 students already pledging to vote for clean energy and has been featured on CNN, “Hardball with Chris Matthews” a well-known environmental news and commentary blog. With new pledges every day, the Energy Action Coalition is confident in the power of this student movement.

“We’re only going to see this moving forward,” Ms. Cotter said.

The numbers for change are there, Comer said, noting that there are about 44 million students in the U.S. under the age of 25.

Although organizing one million college students may seem like a lofty goal, Power Vote and the Energy Action Coalition can really consider this a starting point.

“With those numbers we can push the election,” Comer said.