Winona State University is home to almost 200 clubs ranging from academics to sports to everything in-between.

One of the many clubs on campus is the Winona State University College Democrats, a club full of students interested in politics and wanting to learn more.

Clara Kuerschner, a sophomore mathematics education major, social studies and history education at Winona State, is the secretary of College Democrats.

Kuerschner’s role in College Democrats is making posters, public relations and advertising for the club to make sure students on campus are informed on what the club is doing.

Kuerschner also runs the club’s Twitter and Facebook accounts and communicates closely with the university’s mass communications department to get club information out.

With the upcoming vote, College Democrats has been busy making sure students are informed and registered to vote.

“Every Thursday we do tabling to get people registered to vote. We spend a lot of time making sure students are registered and aware of the upcoming vote,” Kuerschner said. “We also work with the county democratic farmer labor party, the democratic party for Minnesota; through that we do door knocking in the community and in the resident halls.”

College Democrats stays busy year-round, not just during voting season.

“As a club, we work closely with members running for the school board and other democrats running in elections in the Winona area. We do a lot of outreach and promotion for people running in the democratic farmer labor party in Winona,” Kuerschner said.

Although College Democrats is a democratic-based club, Kuerscher emphasized that they are welcoming to any and all political affiliations.

“We accept everyone. We encourage people of other political affiliations to join our meetings because we have good discussions and like to hear other perspectives on the topics we discuss,” Kuerscher said. “We talk about a lot of current events and just make sure we are all up-to-date on what’s happening in politics.”

With such a variety of political affiliations on campus, College Democrats ensures everyone feels welcome at their meetings no matter their affiliation.

“Because we get to have discussion about what is currently happening in the world we are always open to talk about or debate anything that people come to the meetings wanting to talk about,” Kuerscher said. “We have had people from different political affiliations come to the meetings with topics they want to talk about and we happily discuss any topics brought to us. We are very open and are always encouraging people to show up.”

This year for homecoming, College Democrats hoped to have Amy Klobuchar, senior United States Senator from Minnesota, walk in the parade with them during homecoming weekend.

Jack Smyth, a senior at Winona State and a political science and public administration major, spoke about Amy Klobuchar’s unfortunate absence for homecoming.

“Amy Klobuchar wanted to come, but with the Brett Kavanaugh hearings being unpredictable and highly time-sensitive, she was unable to come here on Saturday,” Smyth said.

Although the absence of Amy Klobuchar put a damper on the homecoming festivities College Democrats had planned for homecoming, the club is still working hard to register students to vote and continue to have weekly meetings discussing world news.       

“Meetings are on Tuesdays in Minné 110 7 p.m.,” Kuerschner said. “Everyone is welcome, we will never turn anyone away. Please come, we would love to have you.”