2005 College graduate and former Vice President Kamala Harris’s deputy chief of staff Erin Wilson spoke at a Wharton Undergraduates in Public Policy event on election night.
At the event, which was moderated by political science professor Loren Goldman and sponsored by the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy, Wilson spoke about her experiences as deputy chief of staff, a Democratic National Committee regional political director, and National Political Director for the 2020 Biden campaign. She also spoke to the audience of around 50 about her years at Penn and the importance of voting in elections.
When reflecting on her time at Penn, Wilson highlighted her passion for civics and how she pushed forward the idea to include voter registration as a part of New Student Orientation programming, detailing how she went to the Penn Office of Government and Community Affairs to help her turn the idea into reality.
“One of the things that Penn gave me was access to resources,” Willson said at the event. “I wanted to make sure I communicated with you guys. … If there is not a space that exists for you in the work that you want to do, you can make it for yourself and others.”
In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, WUPP Vice President of External and Wharton sophomore Daniel Banstetter explained that he wanted to plan a "flagship" event featuring a "higher profile person."
"[Wilson] was incredibly supportive and agreed pretty quickly to do this, and then from there [the Andrea Mitchell Center] sponsored all of it and we were good to go," Banstetter said.
When asked about the failure of the Harris campaign, Wilson said that, if she could narrow down why the campaign lost, she would attribute it to “not being able to adapt the campaign to her as a candidate as well as we otherwise could" given the short timeline of 107 days.
“It was great to see members in WUPP, but also members of the larger community,” WUPP co-President and College and Wharton senior Corey He said. “We're constantly looking for events to engage not only our membership, but also other students who may not be in our organization, but also want that exposure. We're trying to center ourselves as the touch point for all things public policy on campus.”
The event occurred as the polls across the country neared their close.
“[WUPP was] tremendously lucky to be able to hear from her, especially on election night,” He said. “A lot of her talk really manifested in real time, where we were able to see that when we come together as a collective and are civically engaged, we can accomplish great things.”
On Tuesday, the Penn community voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates as the party made gains in elections nationwide. 2,126 ballots were cast across four primary polling locations on Penn’s campus.
