Election 2016: Arcadia Chooses

Disclaimer: This post does not represent the views of Arcadia University. It is an opinion piece with unscientific data collected from events.

Finally, the end is near, so to speak – the end of the presidential election, freakish and frightful enough to retire Halloween. In case you tuned out the mayhem a long time ago — and who could blame you? — let me remind you who the two main candidates are in this bizarrely contentious fight, as if you don’t already know. In the blue corner, for the Democrats, it’s notoriously unlikable former Secretary of State and admitted serial email deleter, Hillary Clinton. And in the red corner, for the Republicans, which is a bit of a contested statement in itself, it’s xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, sexist, and any other like adjective you could think of, Donald Trump. There are also the third-party candidates Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, whom I will avoid discussing at the risk of causing a debate about protest votes.

So, of these prime cuts of the political and non-political elites, who does Arcadia want to run the country for at least the next four years? 

The short answer: Hillary Clinton.

The long answer: Clinton, but not without some dissent.

On October 25, Arcadia held Election Fest, a gathering of all things election put together by a collection of First-Year Seminars. We saw slides of presidential pets and selfies of the candidates from the primaries until now. And there were presentations on millennials in the election (by my First-Year Seminar America 2016: People, Power, and Politics), voter fraud and suppression, and media bias. But the big event was the vote-by-Post-It board, which collected ballots for the presidential race. In the end, Clinton was the clear winner with 60 percent, Trump at about 20 percent and Stein and Johnson with the remainder at 10-10 tie. While I expected a Clinton majority, I was very surprised to see Trump garnering such support from people on campus.

There is also the ongoing debate in my Historical and Political Studies’ hall on the infamous question board. As it’s been for the past couple weeks, the question stands: “There are fewer than 30 days to the election and we’ve seen and heard a lot. What do you think?” And let me tell you, the people of Arcadia think. Many are disheartened, angry, and downright confused at what has evolved in front of us over the past year. The Presidential election, for many of my peers and the underclassmen, the first we will vote in, is a bit of a circus. But instead of two funny clowns throwing pies and juggling bowling pins, it’s two of those nighttime forest-lurking scary clowns, playing with our country’s future. Overall, I gather that the majority of Arcadians are voting for Clinton because they feel that Trump winning would be detrimental to the country’s future, not because of anything she’s done. That’s the sad truth of this election for many.

I think my favorite thing from the board is: “Clinton and Trump are 2 divorced parents and we’re the kid who kind of just wants to live at grandma’s.”

That said, this blogger is still a Bernie boy through and through.