Young People & Students

Vote for education. Vote for President Obama.

Actor Justin Long grew up in a middle-class Connecticut home, the son of two teachers who instilled in him a belief and a faith in education. But when he went off to college, student loan debt became overwhelming, and he had to drop out of school after two years. "I ended up lucky," he says, "because I became an actor. But that's a one in a billion shot that I took. We need strong education—we need someone who's concerned about the middle class."

"I'm proud of what President Obama has done on education," Long says. "I'm proud of him for doubling Pell Grants. I'm proud of student loan reform. I believe in that man. I don't believe in a man who, in order to make a $5 trillion tax cut, is going to gut education. So I'm voting for the future. I'm voting for education. I'm voting on behalf of 100 percent of Americans."

Gotta Vote

Ngozi is a freshman at Hampton University in Virginia. While most of her classmates will cast their first ballots in this year's election, Ngozi can't: She's just 17 years old. But her age isn't stopping her from making sure President Obama gets a second term—she's been dorm-storming all semester, registering students to vote ahead of Monday's registration deadline. "It's so important to me that I want to help anyway," she says. "I canvassed in 2008, and this year, even though I can't vote, I want to help by doing all that I can—and that means registering people to vote." Today, she and fellow student Ambur are registering voters outside the football stadium as the Hampton Pirates take on Norfolk State.

Before Hill Harper was an award-winning actor on CSI: New York, he was Barack Obama's classmate and basketball buddy at Harvard Law. Harper joined the Gotta Vote bus tour in Madison, Wisconsin, today, to fire up University of Wisconsin students and tell them about the man he knew 20 years ago.