Max Lubin Won’t Stop Until Students Have Voting Access and Free Tuition

By Emma Sarran Webster 


The current state of student cash advance debt In America is bleak. Even worse: While tuitions rise, budgets for public schools are getting slashed. It’s a scary blend and was enough to inspire the former University of California, Berkeley student Max Lubin, 29, to take action.


Two years back, he — and also Emelia Martinez, a student at the University of California, Riverside, and Courtney Yamagiwa, a student at California State University, Long Beach— co-founded Rise, a business in California and Michigan committed to fighting for free college, led by student organizers. The order runs campaigns to influence policy changes that will make college more affordable, with the ultimate objective of free public higher education for all students. “When we look at states cutting billions of dollars from higher education budgets, and tuition doubling over a generation, and $1.6 trillion in student cash advance debt, and half of students experiencing food insecurity, and one-in-six experiencing homelessness, that’s a reflection of the fact that students don’t have the kinds of advocates fighting for them that they need,” Lubin tells MTV News.


Although there really is beneficial news: In the two years since Rise launched, they’ve experienced several wins. The sort has petitioned, visited the California state capitol, and worked with partner agencies — all actions that have helped lead to first-year free community college in California, a end to tuition hikes for certain public universities, and even a slight tuition reduce at one school.


These campaigns can only be segment of the equation; in sort for students to move the needle, they have the ability to vote for elected officials who can support their mission. So Rise is also fighting for increased voting access for college students — in part through a brand new voter initiative launching on National Voter Registration Day in partnership with MTV: Run With It. As piece of the initiative, Lubin says Rise will award grants of up to $1,500 for students around the nation who have “innovative ideas” to prepare voting in 2020 easier and more exhilarating. “Our objective isn't just to help support student voting...But also identify some really efficient new practices that we can scale up in the November 2020 election,” he says.


Throughout a phone interview with MTV News, Lubin shared more about his work, his objectives for campus voting access, and why students are uniquely positioned to prepare real change.


MTV News: What inspired you to get into activism? 


Max Lubin: I had the possibility to earn an education without having to worry about the cost or knowing that I would struggle to get it. I was recruited to college to play sports, plus it wasn’t really up until I got there that I saw how much students were struggling, not just to get into college, nevertheless to actually afford it. From there on, [and from] having the possibility to work on a different political and advocacy campaigns, I’ve attempted to bring those skills and experiences...To other students who are fighting on the correct side of the issues and just require some added resources or skills or knowledge to put what they’re already doing into practice in the most efficient way.


MTV News: What does Rise’s work look like on a daily basis? 


Lubin: [Our] student organizing fellows make $15 a hour and work around 20 hours per week, and so they help integrate [everything], whether that’s petition collection, or organizing events, or sharing student stories on Rise’s Instagram and social media streams. We share stories about what college students are experiencing, how hard it is to juggle numerous part-time jobs while a student, [and] how [they] have to often drop out or take time away from school just to save more cash to re-enroll.


We [also] partner with student groups and student governments. Let’s mention students at campus X desire to go lobby around a provide, and so they require $500 to rent a van and purchase snacks for the people who are going. Whichever trip bills are regarding that, Rise can support them pay for that.


MTV News: How is the mission of free education directly tied to voting rights? 


Lubin: Students can often accused of being lazy or apathetic, and that that's why they don’t vote as much as other groups; once the truth is that the structural barriers to student voting are much higher than for any other sort. Students — by nature of being students — change their address much more regularly than other groups, and most state laws make it so that they have to re-register to vote every time they do that. Students can typically juggling numerous jobs, and we know that it's easier for folks to vote once they're more affluent.


That being mentioned, the reason it's so key for us to engage students and young people in voting rights is because we might would be the world's best advocates at Rise; although if students don't show up to vote in almost every election, we plan to don't get lawmakers to invest in us the way that we need them to. Even as soon as elected officials hope to do the correct thing, the bottom line is that if they desire to get re-elected, they require to respond to the people who are voting for them. So up until they know that students will be voting for them in each and every election, it will be much harder for us to create that case.


MTV News: What needs to happen to increase voting among college students? 


Lubin: First and foremost is ballot access. While you look at campuses that have the highest rates of student civic engagement, it's because they have polling places on campus and make it easy for their students to register and vote. In the event you're a student and also you should drive a mile to vote in between classes and there's a line, that's a pretty daunting proposition. And if your professor is going to fail you for missing class or you're not going to do as well on an exam, that can be as powerful a motivator as anything else.


Often times what you visualize is college leadership being afraid that promoting voting and civic engagement is going to be interpreted as being partisan and will become a liability to them. Although that couldn't be further from the truth. Colleges and universities would make their students' civic engagement and voting rights a point of pride. Election days should be a non-instructional holiday on campuses so that not only can students have an easier time voting, however [they also] can volunteer with corporations in the community that are getting out the vote. Colleges and universities should host forums about the core issues in the election. [They] should send reminders to students about election day and why they can vote. And colleges and universities should build automatic voter registration systems that let students to register to vote with little effort through their course enrollment site.


MTV News: How is Rise working to prepare these things happen?


Lubin: One of my main go to parts of my job is I get to meet and work with students who are rightfully pissed off about a problem — like complicated voting, or campuses hiking tuition, or not having enough healthy food on campus, or needing to create a food pantry. They build real grassroots efforts on their campuses to lead change...And our placement at Rise is to be a platform and, in some ways, an accelerator for those initiatives, recognizing that oftentimes the hugest barriers to students solving those problems are relatively small. A $1,000 grant, or a little bit opinions or support, or knowing someone has their back — those small things can make an enormous difference.


We awarded grants to students at universities last year and saw major increases in student voting and civic engagement. We built our own online platform that made it easy for students to organize their companions to commit to vote and get out the vote. And this year we, in partnership with MTV, are about to launch [the Run With It] program. And this is very much in the spirit of what we're talking about, which is in the event if you've an idea to help mobilize student voters on your campus, or you have an idea to increase students' civic engagement on your campus, we want you to run with it.


MTV News: How are young people and college students uniquely positioned to make change? 


Lubin: Young people, and students in particular, have routinely have routinely been at the forefront of social change in this nation, whether you're talking about the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s...Or ACT UP in the 1980s, to March For Our Lives; to the Sunrise Movement. The through-line between all of those movements is that students have played a key role in building support and using the fact that they’re grounded in educational institutions that aren’t just about learning, although also imagining how you could make the world a higher end place, and then building that idea into something actionable.


DSo much of the rhetoric that we hear — [like] lazy millennials, they're poor because they eat avocado toast...Or we’re not doing real activism, we’re just doing Twitter activism; or we’re sensitive snowflakes that need trigger warnings or are ruining the tradition of free speech on campus — is bullsh*t, and is by and large designed to prevent and hold us back from accomplishing what we’re capable of — which is profound social change.


MTV News: What has been the greatest challenge you’ve faced in your advocacy work? 


Lubin: One of the things that's really key to acknowledge is while the last two years have been personally grueling for me; a couple of my companions who are in similar positions in terms of building agencies or campaigns, who are females or people of color, often face much greater challenges than I do any time it comes attempting to fundraise and flourish their firms in a way that is just grossly unfair. So as soon as we talk about the change that needs to happen, a significant quantity of that change has to come from groups that are attempting to do good to even the playing field.


attempting to build something new that doesn't exist requires a mindset shift among the people who can make things happen for you. Any time we began Rise, I didn't know prosperous donors who I may go ask to support our work or to believe in me. I would converse with folks about what we were attempting to do, [and] it was very complicated to get their buy-in. The most tough thing is learning about how to do that, and attempting to make that shift among folks who can visualize the vision of what we're attempting to build and believe in it.


MTV News: What are you most delighted of once it comes to your work? 


Lubin: The thing that I’m most overjoyed of is the ways that Rise has been a platform for students to grow and accomplish what they set out to do. And, for me personally, working with and supporting students who grow so much over the time that they're working with us is really inspiring.


MTV News: in the event you can give others who wish to get into activism one segment of suggestions, what would it be? 


Lubin: For students who have never done any advocacy or organizing work before, the reaction is, “Wait, are you serious? You want me to go approach students on my campus who I don't know and ask them to support free community college or stopping the tuition hike?” That idea of talking to and engaging with people around a supply seems scary or foreign because that almost never happens in your typical life outdoor of this work. Overcoming that beginning fear and just getting began is so essential because that's how you'll find a public of people who will assist what you're doing.


really there is lots in our politics that we can’t control; and that if we may control, would look much different. However recognizing our own power in shaping how politics looks on our campuses and communities is foundational to any of this work. We applied for MTVs Leaders for Change program because we recognized that it's insufficient to fight and stop the bad stuff from happening. We have to be proactive about not just expanding ballot access, although making civic engagement and voting something that we celebrate and aspire to do, rather than something that feels like an obligation. That's what motivates me — this recognition that by looking at and doing things in a new way, we can reshape our politics in a way that reflects what we care about as students and young people.


This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.


Leaders for Change is a MTV grant program that invests in young people doing extraordinary work at the local level to advance voting access. From getting polling places on college campuses across Michigan to registering voters in Chicago jails to allocating rides to the polls in Georgia, these young leaders are breaking down the barriers that make it hard to vote in their communities.