Though Samantha Korff ’26 is involved in many areas of campus, she is most committed to reproductive rights at the College of William and Mary. Majoring in government with a minor in Latin American studies, she participates in the Global Scholars Program at the Global Research Institute, Pi Beta Phi and data work for the U.S. Democratic Erosion Event Dataset. On top of that, she is president of Vox: Planned Parenthood Generation Action club, which has remained an important pillar of her time at the College.
As the current president of Vox, she and her executive team advocate for sexual health information. Korff outlined the club’s efforts to promote this information in the community.
“Vox does fundraising, education and electoral work to advance reproductive justice, an advocacy framework focused on our collective rights to have children, not have children and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities,” she said. “We do a lot of programming around abortion access and comprehensive sexual health education, but this work is also about immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, affordable living, criminal justice reform and pretty much every other issue that helps people lead free and dignified lives.”
She continued by placing the club’s efforts in a national political context.
“Given recent federal policy rollbacks around reproductive healthcare, increasing pregnancy criminalization across the U.S. and widening inequities in health outcomes, this sort of intersectional activism is now more important than ever,” Korff said.
Vox was established at the College as an advocacy group for reproductive justice, but Korff detailed how it has grown into more than that.
“On campus, we fundraise for organizations like the Hampton Roads Reproductive Justice
League, our local abortion fund, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice and the
Black Mamas Matter Alliance,” she said. “We meet weekly to talk about different facets of reproductive justice; our last few meetings have covered global sex ed, gender politics and STI myths. We also just wrapped up a busy election cycle, so we spent much of this semester helping elect pro-reproductive rights candidates up and down the ballot in Virginia.”
While highlighting the group’s work, she underscored her own responsibilities as their leader.
“As club president, I oversee our exec board, organize our larger-scale advocacy events and coordinate with our liaisons at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia,” she said. “More importantly, though, my role is to delegate. I have to make space for others to take on responsibility, learn through trial and error and develop in their positions so that when I graduate, the organization can continue to grow.”
Korff advocated for the community that Vox has fostered as an organization, and what she enjoys within the group.
“What I love about Vox is the people it brings together,” she said. “Our members are curious, funny and deeply committed to the communities they belong to. I feel incredibly lucky to spend my Monday nights with them. Some of my favorite memories at W&M come from tabling with friends, playing reproductive justice trivia and hosting a pro-contraceptives rally on Sunken with a 20-foot IUD and free Plan Bs.”
Korff continued to recognize the impact that this club has had on her.
“Vox has easily been the most fulfilling part of my college career,” she said. “I’m exceedingly grateful for the time I’ve spent here and for the people I’ve met: in particular, the exec members who came before me and pushed me to delegate more, ask for help when I need it and not take myself too seriously.”
Korff has also worked as a research assistant with the U.S. Democratic Erosion Event Dataset for the past year. She highlighted her efforts within the job, contextualizing the work within an American political landscape.
“The project feels especially important now, given renewed public attention on the quality and stability of American democracy,” she said. “But what’s often missing from conversations about backsliding in the American context is recognition that political elites have been weakening democratic accountability mechanisms long before 2016, and not just at the national level. Voter suppression, attacks on the judiciary and repression of civil society have been happening at the state and local levels for decades now, and their effects have disproportionately undermined the political power of communities that had little to begin with. So much of it has flown under the radar.”
The project works to engage both scholars and the public by pulling data and making it accessible to a wide audience. Korff continued to explain the greater meaning behind the work she does at U.S. DEED.
“This project aims to fill part of that knowledge gap for both scholars and the public,” she said. “We’re generating an event-based dataset tracking instances of democratic erosion at the state and local levels from 2008 onward. We catalogue every time a public official engages in corruption, a court raises barriers to voting, a legislature politicizes the education system and a host of other actions that threaten the people, groups and systems meant to hold power to account.”
Korff ended on a proud note, discussing work that she has done and is currently working on, creating a sense of appreciation for the project as a whole.
“Last semester, I helped code erosion events in Texas,” she said. “That was a lot; there’s been aggressive gerrymandering, attacks on the authority of localities and state-conducted violence against protesters. Over the summer, I led a research team coding events in Wisconsin, which has been a national leader in undermining its civil service. That felt really relevant given the ongoing hollowing out of the federal workforce. Now, I’m working on data quality and validation, helping ensure the dataset is as accurate and robust as it can be. It’s been a great experience to be so involved in research as an undergraduate.”
