When Ellery Biddle traveled to Cuba in the spring of 2004 for a study abroad program, she hoped to learn more about the culture and polish her Spanish speaking skills. But it was a different kind of speech that left a profound mark on the 21-year-old Kenyon senior, who is majoring in English and Spanish.

"When Cubans can speak out on an issue, they do, and it's very powerful," Biddle says. She returned to the United States in early summer to the realization that here, where every four years all citizens are given the right to speak their minds with a trip to the voting polls, many remain silent. "We do have a voice here. We just don't fully use it."

It gnawed at her, and when she came back to Kenyon for her final year, Biddle vowed to do something about it. She joined forces with other students and developed a voter registration drive on campus. Early in September, she and a group of volunteers visited all the residence-hall floor meetings for first-year students to hand out voter registration forms. They followed that up with an information table and a steady stream of e-mail messages urging students to register. By Election Day, the great majority of Kenyon students had registered--indeed, some reports indicated that close to 100 percent of Kenyon students voted in November.

"It's so important to be engaged on a civic level," says Biddle, who registered to vote at 18 in her hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The 2004 presidential election was the first for which she was eligible to vote, and it's a right she says she won't ever take for granted.