Co-Op High School | Culture & Community | Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | New Haven Public Schools
Senior Carizma Buonome, who is studying theater, after casting her mock vote Monday. “I’m so sad I can’t vote this year,” she said. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Carizma Buonome leaned over a long table at one end of Co-Op’s cacophonous cafeteria, a marked “ballot” filled out neatly beneath one hand. Heading for a ballot box, she cast a vote—for democracy, for reproductive health care, and for victims of gun violence, including her brother Jericho.
Monday morning, Buonome brought that message to Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, as dozens of students cast their ballots in a mock election meant to teach them about voting, engagement, and civic participation. Held during the school’s three lunch waves, the event brought in over 200 student votes, with 174 for Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and 21 for former President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.
Three students cast votes for Green Party candidates Jill Stein and running mate Butch Ware; one student voted for Libertarian Chase Oliver, and seven students wrote in their history teachers for president. In the race for U.S. Senate, Democratic incumbent Chris Murphy took 141 votes while Republican Matthew Corey took 17 votes and Green Party candidate Justin Paglino took seven.
Top: Freshman Lillian Delgado with history teachers Ryan Boroski and Dana Adimando. Bottom: Assistant Principal Talima Andrews-Harris and history teacher Zania Collier. The "T" in her "V-O-T-E" sweatshirt was a uterus.
It is the brainchild of the school’s history department, which last held a mock election at the school in 2016 (any best-laid plans for 2020 were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept New Haven schools remote through April 2021). Monday, both teachers and students seemed excited to have it back. For a voter guide to Tuesday’s real-life election, click here.
“I think it inspires students to see the workings of our government, and it gives them practice,” said Zania Collier, who teaches modern world history, women’s studies and civics. “They see the effects—that these votes count, on both local and state levels.”
Monday, several students weighed in on the election, with concerns that ranged from reproductive health care and LGBTQ+ rights to gun violence to the cost of living in New Haven. As they got up from a sun-soaked table, seniors Jalen Edwards and Jordan Oliver both named human rights and the economy as significant factors in their choice to vote—even if it was symbolic.
At home, both have gotten an earful on the election from their parents—especially around inflation. Oliver agrees with her parents most of the time, she said; Edwards considers himself "more open-minded," particularly on LGBTQ+ issues. Both ultimately cast a mock ballot for Harris and Walz.
“I put in a lot of my own research,” said Oliver, who added that abortion and reproductive healthcare are at the top of her list of priorities. While “human rights, civil rights” also remain at the front of her mind, she said she’s also thinking critically about the economy, which has taken center stage in the last weeks and months of election season. “Life is not affordable anymore and that’s crazy.”
Top: Seniors Jordan Oliver and Jalen Edwards, both of whom are studying theater. Bottom: Student Jeremiah Serrano goes to fill out his ballot. He said he mock voted for Harris-Walz because his mom voted for them.
Behind them, a stack of mock ballots waited quietly on a long table, teachers at the ready to help students parse through the options. Plush, caricature-esque Trump and Harris dolls sat nearby, as if they were keeping watch. Along the room’s back wall, two cardboard boxes waited for the mock ballots, their outsides festooned with stickers and student artwork. Educator Ryan Boroski, who is teaching a new elective on African American and Latinx studies, talked Jeremiah Serrano through the options for president and U.S. Senate.
As she buzzed through a sea of her peers, senior Carizma Buonome checked in to see if people were casting their ballots, so smiley it seemed at times that she was emitting light. While she isn’t yet old enough to vote, she said, she wants to affect change where she can—including in the classroom and in the city that raised her. She’s been vocal this election cycle, and hopes that New Haveners who can raise their voices do so on election day.
For her, gun control and reproductive rights have become the most important issues in her life, often intertwined when she thinks about her own future, her family and the kids she hopes to one day bring into this world. Nine years ago, her older brother, Jericho Scott, was killed in a drive-by shooting on Exchange Street in the city’s Fair Haven neighborhood. At the time, she was just a kid, and it turned her entire world upside down.
“It’s made me who I am today,” she said. “I look for someone who will try to have stronger background checks. I know that the Second Amendment is important, but people need to be more sensitive.”
It’s not only Jericho’s life she thinks of, she added. Three years before her brother was killed, Buonome was the same age as many of the students who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “They were babies,” she said. For the first time this year, survivors of that shooting—now college students—will cast their first presidential votes. She, like many of them, wants to see stricter gun reform, particularly around the use of semiautomatic weapons.
“I’m so sad I can’t vote this year,” she said. She added that she’s hoping for a Harris-Walz victory to ensure access to reproductive rights—both for patients currently seeking treatments like IVF and safe termination, and for a future family she hopes to have herself.
“Men don’t have to fight for their healthcare!” she exclaimed. Why should she?
Top: Freshman Menolly Chevalier and Lillian Delgado. Bottom: Juniors Hazel Rivera and Sanaa Murphy. Rivera said that she ultimately would not cast a ballot, because it was too stressful. Murphy disagreed: she mock voted for the Harris-Walz ticket.
That resonated for freshman Menolly Chevalier, who also cast a mock ballot for Harris-Walz. Sitting with her friend Lillian Delgado, she said that she’s alarmed by the number of women who see Trump as a viable option. Delgado, who is also a freshman, said that she had cast a mock ballot in favor of Harris-Walz because she wants to see "everyone being equal and having equal rights."
That discussion has been more nuanced for many of the teachers, several of them said. Boroski, who teaches American history, kicked off the year with an essay prompt asking students who they would tell undecided voters to cast a ballot for on Nov. 5. He focused on a number of issues: tax policy, abortion, gun control, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, immigration and the Southern border, and Democracy itself.
About eight percent of his students—all young men, reflecting a larger national trend—suggested that undecideds should swing for Trump (in two hours at the school, none of the students that this reporter approached had cast a mock ballot for Trump).
And yet, his students managed to respect each other when they were talking it out. “I’ve noticed that in the debates I’ve had in my classes, some of them have varying views and they are more respectful in my classroom than what we see from Congress,” he said.
For Collier, it’s a chance to make change in a country where it is increasingly hard to do so. Born and raised in Waterbury, she grew up attending the polls with her mom each election day, excited to vote when she turned 18. She hasn’t missed an election since. In her own life, the issues that are most central to her include access to reproductive care, as well as the rights of women, people of color, and immigrants (who often live at two or more of those intersections).
She added that it’s important to her to be able “to teach accurate history,” against which there have been legislative efforts in several U.S. states.
“I just think it’s terrible how we turn our noses up at people who come here for a better life,” she said. In her classes, students learn how migration—both voluntary and forced—is central to the story of America itself. As a voter and an educator, “I want for us to get back to a place of unification,” she said. “This rhetoric of unspeakable hate, I don’t like it,” she said. Not only is it divisive for adults: she can see it teaching children not to respect or value each other’s differences.
This year, she added, she’s seen how the election cycle resonates with many of her students. In her classes, it has come up in recent lessons about women’s suffrage, the 19th Amendment, and the break with colonial rule that launched the American Revolution. Often—and despite hundreds of years in between—that discussion can feel incredibly close to home.
Monday, she wore a purple sweatshirt emblazoned with the letters V-O-T-E. On the back, a central message—”Like Your Life Depends On It”—sprouted ten more reasons to vote, from LGBTQ+ family members to unsafe drinking water to believing survivors of sexual assault.
Top: Twins Alijah and Aaron Steed. Bottom: Principal Paul Camarco.
Back in the central office, twins Aaron and Alijah Steed said they’d been excited to cast their votes for both Harris-Walz and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy—even if the results of the mock election never traveled beyond College Street. At 17, both are seniors at the school, and won’t be eligible to vote until next year.
And yet, they've been following politics avidly, in part because they can't vote on policies that will directly affect them. For them, a Harris victory would feel not only historic, but hugely exciting: they want to believe that the country is ready for a Black woman in office.
“Kamala has a track record of making history,” Alijah said.
As they chatted, Principal Paul Camarco poked his head out of his office to say hello. As a school administrator and a former social studies teacher, he’s seen students do better when they get politically engaged, he said. Prior to his time at Co-Op, Truman School and James Hillhouse High School, he spent almost a decade teaching civics at New Light High School, which closed its doors in 2018.
“We know that civic involvement is key to success later in life,” he said. “It [voting] influences everything from your Board of Education to street sweeping to trash pickup.”
He added that he’s a “traditionalist:” he likes voting on the day of the election, even though early voting is now an option in the state, in his hometown of North Branford. Monday, he remained tight-lipped about who he would be casting a ballot for, although he said that people can probably guess his preference as an educator.
“I think it’s a process that is totally private,” he said.