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No apathetic young people here at Rutgers-Newark.  What else can you conclude when a voter registration drive signs up 1,500 new voters on the campus, exceeding its target goal by 100?

The 1,500 new voters surpasses the numbers in the 2008 and the 2004 drives by NJPIRG, which began its non-partisan efforts to register young people , and turn them out on Election Day, since it helped launch the first drive in 1984.; Since then PIRG has helped to register over 1.7 million young people to vote nationwide. One change from 1984: In this digital age, NJPIRG used websites and social media to reach students.

NJPIRG is delighted by the results but isn’t ready to rest on its laurels. “With youth civic engagement on the rise in the last two elections, it’s up to us to make sure that the trend keeps moving in the same direction all the way through Election Day,” says Constanza Iribarne, campus organizer, NJPIRG Student Chapters. “NJPIRG students will be making sure that every student on campus knows when Election Day is and how to get to their polling place.”

So expect to see NJPIRG volunteers on campus using not only social media but more traditional methods, such as in-class announcements, talking to students face to face, and phone calls to “every student who registered to vote with us,” as well as asking them to sign a national on-line pledge to vote.

NJPIRG registered some 6,200 students at all Rutgers campuses this fall.