When you think of goat yoga, you probably imagine goats crawling over you as you slide into downward-facing dog.
Not this time.
Students in St. Petersburg College's Project Citizen Fellows club with the Center for Civic Learning and Community Engagement held a voter registration event called Goat to Vote on Monday.
Only problem: the goats weren't allowed inside the downtown campus, where the yoga class was taking place.
Carmine and Greta, the voter-support goats, as organizers called them, drew in a crowd.
SPC student Harrison Maxwell said that was the point: to get people to stop by the table and check if they're registered.
He said the target demographic was fellow students.
"The older you get, the more aware you get. You really start to feel the pain of policy," Maxwell said. "I think young people also feel it as well, but they don't realize what's happening until, perhaps, they get a little older."
Maxwell just finished six years in the U.S. Marines and is back at SPC to finish his associate's degree.
"I think Goat to Vote is a great attention grabber," he said. "I think these young people, it’s very important for them to see this process can be fun. It’s not just old people in suits greedily deciding how to destroy your future. We can make a difference.”
A few dozen students stopped by the table to grab snacks and pet the goat duo, who were decked out in scarves that said "Vote."
Junior Tamarcus Daise stopped to check out the goats, grab a snack and register to vote.
“This is a really good opportunity for us to, like, really get into knowing about voting and getting ready for us to vote,” he said.
This will be his first time voting.
Organizers had nonpartisan voter guides ready for students to take and a huge poster board with a QR code that helped people register to vote or check whether they were already in the system.
Sabrina Wasilewski is a student and member of Project Citizen Fellows, the group that organized the event on the final day to register to vote for the Nov. 3 general election.
"We just wanted a friendly and fun way to draw in attention (and) also give away free treats to get people really excited," Wasilewski said.
The club has another event scheduled ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. It's a free taco lunch to discuss democracy, at noon Oct. 13 in the downtown campus student lounge. The goats will stay on the farm for that one.
