On Thursday night students, faculty and staff at Bloomfield College gathered for a discussion of the issues and the candidates in the current campaign. I have to admit I missed it. I was in the midst of becoming rather ill and in need of horizontal collapse.
I do have to admit that Edwards and Giulliani dropping out on Wednesday ticked off the students who were preparing the event for Thursday. Students always hate it when work they’ve done becomes irrelevant. But at least those students were able to participate in the issues discussion.
This event and other events are the brainchildren of a collaboration between the political science, history disciplines and women’s studies disciplines and Student Government. The candidate event kicks off Black History month for us.
Originally posted as part of Teacher’s Lounge
On Monday we will vote. All faculty, staff, and students will be able to cast their ballots either online through BlackBoard or in person at a couple of voting stations. Results of the voting will be announced on Wednesday, after the state of New Jersey votes on Tuesday. Results will be delayed until Wednesday so as to avoid influencing the voting patterns of people also participating in the New Jersey primaries.
The objective, of course, is to compare the campus numbers with the New Jersey numbers. That is a bit problematical, since the groups of voters will definitely not coincide. A large portion of our students are not eligible to vote in the primary since they are not US citizens (in one class a year ago, my eight students were born in eight different countries…three of them were American citizens, eligible to vote). Some of them have never registered to vote. A registration drive is also taking place.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I suspect the fact that Obama is a son of a foreign national will have a huge impact in his favor. Given that our student population is approximately 65% women, gender will also have an impact. Our two largest groups on campus are African Americans and Latinos. It might be interesting to see breakdowns of the vote like that which is offered in exit polling, but I believe that is not planned here.
We shall see what we shall see.
And no, I am still not revealing how I am going to vote. I am uncommitted from one viewpoint. Truth be known, I’m an ABAR voter: anyone but a republican.
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…before going to bed last night. So I spent a couple of the darkest hours dealing with a brand new, very unwelcome symptom.
It sounds interesting to me. I would hope that the students will vote by issues, instead of other factors, but I think most people voting go by other things.
some of the university of delaware students i hang with were interning for biden, getting serious experience, and even the opportunity to travel to a couple of the debates and meet the other candidates and their staffs.
they were crushed when he dropped out….even though most of them werent going to vote for joe anyway. they were just psyched about the experience they were getting!!