Passionate about voting rights and leadership, Hummer has found her place at Rose Hill. (Courtesy of Becket Hummer for The Fordham Ram)

Becket Hummer, FCRH ’27, is a political science major from Maryland who finds her passion in music, social media and voter registration. She spent her summer at the Maryland Statehouse and the Democratic National Convention (DNC), finding ways to help people, whether that be through legislation or giving out bandaids to delegates.

Hummer’s political aspirations began when she was a child, as her mother is a local politician in county government in Maryland.

“When I was a kid, she would literally have us knocking on doors with her in diapers,” said Hummer. “Once I was in middle school, I realized I liked talking to people and being out in the community.” 

Hummer was involved in student government in middle and high school. When she started college, she worked in government affairs at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, helping host big groups like SpaceForce.

“[It] was amazing to feel connected to the city,” said Hummer. “But my full-time job as an 18-year-old was talking about 9/11 every day, and I was like I need to smile at work again and feel joy again and get people involved with being excited about their democracy.”

This led Hummer to start her summer at the Maryland State House and end at the DNC. At the DNC, Hummer worked in crisis management, keeping an eye on “persons of interest” in the convention center.

“I was following the MyPillow guy. I have so many pictures of him that I sent to our group chat, like ‘he’s on the move,’” she said. “We dealt with every possible issue.”

Hummer was also involved with social media and how the DNC was being portrayed.

“We had this big TV screen just scrolling through social media accounts,” she said. “We had 400 creators who had credentialed press passes, and we had secret accounts following all of them so we could track what they were posting as credentialed creators.”

Hummer got the job from an old friend of her mother, who wanted to bring more young people onto the team.

“He said he needed a teenager, someone who actually understands social media,” she said. “I was willing to help, and they flew me out to Chicago for the week. We were live every day from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., but we were there every day from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m..”

Her experience at the DNC led Hummer to want to be more involved in politics in a personal way.

“[I thought] I need to be talking to people again; it’s two months before the election I can’t stop now,” she said. “So I applied to HeadCount.”

HeadCount is an organization that helps people register to vote at events like concerts and music festivals.

“I like what HeadCount does — we meet people where they are, and that’s so important. Because so often democracy feels out of reach, political activism feels out of reach for people and like something that they can’t really participate in,” Hummer said. “I’m at a Sabrina Carpenter concert, or I’m at a Clairo concert and I’m registering an 18-year-old [new voter] for the first time, and they get to remember for the rest of their life that they got registered at their favorite artist’s concert. This is such an important memory for them, and this is gonna change how they think about democracy and voting and political action because it’s such a positive memory associated with it.”

During this election cycle, HeadCount has registered 250,000 people. They sponsor giveaways and raffles for people who register with them or check their registration.

“My job when I go into the office every week is dealing with all the thousands of paper registrations we do from our hundreds of events across the country,” said Hummer. “Being on the ground, you can feel like ‘we are actually doing something, we are making change.’”

Hummer doesn’t know what her future career holds, but she hopes to remain politically active and involved with people.

“Every since I was little, I’ve just wanted to help people every day, in some sort of capacity
I really thought it was going to be more so legislation and government-wise, but I really enjoy on-the-ground, grassroots, community-based work as well,” she said.

On campus, Hummer is a tour guide and the secretary of Fordham’s Leading Women of Tomorrow club. She aspires to continue bringing hope and joy into democracy.

“Being able to participate in democracy is one of the things we get to do as an American citizen that is so exciting, and we take it for granted for sure,” said Hummer. “They make it hard for a reason because they don’t want people to do it, so it’s important to make it as easy as possible and as accessible as possible so it is enjoyable for people.”