Aside from the standard campaigning by the HRC and the Dems, another collection of students emerged in opposition to an issue on the Massachusetts ballot this election.

Students involved with the successful “Vote No on 2” Campaign spent the past few weeks working to convince Massachusetts voters not to pass Massachusetts State Ballot Question 2, an initiative that would repeal the state’s Affordable Housing Law. Voters followed the student’s advice and voted no.

“For me, I feel like it might be an imperfect law, but it has done a lot and we shouldn’t just throw it out without having something else to offer,” said second-semester junior Lucy Claire Curran, who was involved with the campaign.

Maya S. Sugarman ’12 said she felt especially drawn to the campaign given the strong impact that homelessness had on her family. She remembered driving around with her mother as a young girl, in search of her homeless uncle. Whenever the pair spotted a homeless individual, Sugarman’s mother would say, “Maybe that’s him.”

“But it never was,” Sugarman said. The experience taught her that anyone can fall on hard times and that “everybody deserves a safe, comfortable place to live,” she said.

The “Vote No on 2” Campaign primarily worked to draw attention to the initiative. One of the main problems, Sugarman said, is that voters were not well-informed about the different ballot initiatives. Although this was a state-wide issue, the Harvard branch of the campaign stayed mainly in Boston.

“It is hard to build that excitement and urgency on campus,” Sugarman said, noting that the campaign primarily handed out flyers and held signs by T stops, grocery stores, and other places frequented by locals.

Curran said she enjoyed the experience of campaigning to block the initiative.

“It was democracy at work,” she said.

—Staff writer Monika L.S. Robbins can be reached at mrobbins@college.harvard.edu.