To vote or not to vote? That is the question facing many Penn State students as the Pennsylvania primary approaches.

Represent Penn State, a non-partisan organization, is empowering students to answer "yes" to that question and vote because April 22 may finally be an important date for the Keystone State.

"We are attacking the general idea out there that students don't want to care about what is going on in the world," said Matt Popek, Represent vice president.

"This primary cycle is one-of-a-kind so far," he said.

To date, Represent has already registered 611 students on campus this semester alone.

Its new focus involves working as an "umbrella organization" to provide other student organizations with the training and voter registration forms that they need, Popek said.

Although the 2008 general election is the first presidential race Represent will be involved with, it registered more than 1,200 students to vote and increased on-campus turnout by 118 percent during the 2006 Pennsylvania elections, according to the Represent Web site, representpennstate.org.

In total, Represent has registered more than 2,000 new voters since its creation in April 2006 by Trey Thomas (senior-political science) after he saw a need to register and promote young voters.

"We are a student district, so when raising turnout numbers come in ... that is sent back to Harrisburg and Washington," Popek said.

College Libertarians President Alex Weller said his organization participates with Represent because "we both share the same mission: to increase student voting."

Represent's recent events included helping the Penn State chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People during their weeklong voter registration drive, which resulted in 455 new registration forms.

It also manned a table that brought in more than 100 forms at the President's Day Rock the Vote event.

"This is the first time the Pa. primary is really going to matter ... A lot of exciting things could happen, and this is going to get people geared up to participate," said Samantha Miller, the spokeswoman for the Penn State College Democrats.

She added that because Represent is a nonpartisan organization, the College Democrats work with it often.

According to votespa.com, the voter registration site for Pennsylvania, students can still register to vote in the Pennsylvania primary as long as their registration form is approved by March 24.

The Penn State College Republicans could not be reached by press time yesterday.