First chance to make a choice

Jada Hutchinson, a senior at Lehman College, manned the voter registration table at the Music Building on campus. She was one of the volunteers who had joined a campus-wide effort to register voters by the Oct. 14 deadline for next month’s election.

“I was watching the debates and thought this is ridiculous. I need to tell more people to vote,” said Ms. Hutchinson, who registered to vote three weeks ago.
The Press spoke with six college students in the Riverdale area to get a glimpse of what some of them think of the candidates, the issues and the campaigns. All of them will be voting for the first time in a presidential election.

With her, sort of

“Trump is a fool, stupid idiot. Not something I would want our country to be run by,” said Taylor Rae Cooper, a sophomore at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. “I feel like [Hillary Clinton is] putting on a front right now, but I would have more hope in her than I would Donald.”

Ms. Cooper said the campaign felt more like an argument between the candidates than a discussion about the issues.

Ms. Hutchinson said she believed that Mr. Trump was only running for the sake of publicity, adding she was surprised that he made it this far. “Trump makes me laugh,” she said.

She registered to vote after watching the presidential debates, which called “ridiculous.”

“I’m trying to not make him win,” said Ms. Hutchinson of her vote for Hillary Clinton. She called it the better choice of her choices.

Team Trump, but...

“Just because you are a Trump supporter doesn’t mean you are a racist. It doesn’t mean you are Islamophobic,” said Manhattan College senior Kaitlyn Greiner, who said her political views are not the majority opinion at her school. She is also the president of the school’s Government Club, which has held more than 10 voter registration drives on campus during the spring and fall 2016 semesters.

“Trump isn’t my favorite person to represent my party, but he’s running as the Republican nominee and I will support him,” said Ms. Greiner.

Following the recently released audio of Mr. Trump’s vulgar conversation about women with then Access Hollywood co-host Billy Bush, Ms. Greiner said in a telephone interview that she stands by the GOP nominee.
“You look at the things Trump has said and you look at the things Bill Clinton has done. It doesn’t really bother me what he said. I don’t think it’s great for a presidential candidate to be saying those things. I think that Donald Trump needs to tone it down… one thing he needs to do is get off Twitter,” Ms. Greiner said.

The Manhattan College senior said that her top issues are national security, the refugee crisis, the economy and bringing jobs back to the United States. She added that she stays away from the socially conservative policies of the GOP and focuses on the party’s plans for the economy.

Thomas Plamenco, who said his aunt was killed during 9/11, said one of the reasons he supports Mr. Trump is that he plans to stop ISIS.

“I feel like he can protect us from what’s going on in the world,” Mr. Plamenco said. He did not think Ms. Clinton could accomplish the job and added that he does not trust her.

Mr. Plamenco is a sophomore at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. He added that his family helped to influence his decision to vote for Mr. Trump. He said that economically, he would benefit in the long run under his leadership. He added that does not agree with Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about women, people of color and those with disabilities.

Undecided

“I don’t know if it’s worth it to really vote for either of these people,” said Medin Kandin, who named international relations and the economy as his major concerns. Mr. Kandin, a freshman at College of Mount Saint Vincent, said the election season was “kind of a show” and lacked discussion of the issues.

Avoiding fights

“It’s a highly charged election, and to some extent, people are trying to avoid getting into fights about it, which I also think is true in the general population,” said Margaret Groarke, a professor of government at Manhattan College.

Student organizations such as the Politics and Government Club, where Ms. Groarke is a faculty advisor, are keeping the focus on getting students engaged and excited about the election no matter their political views.

Communication professor Vincent Fitzgerald from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, who has taught there for more than 20 years, said students at the school are highly interested in the election. He added that the last time he saw students this energized was 2008.

“This campaign, because both candidates are so unpopular, has focused on their personal qualities,” said Mr. Fitzgerald in an email. He has studied television coverage of presidential campaigns since 1968.

But at nearby Lehman College, Suzette Ramsundar, the associate director of the school's Office of Campus Life said, “The students who tabled expressed that for the majority of students who registered, there was not an excitement about the elections on campus.”

Through its voter registration efforts, which involved the college president’s office, student leaders and volunteers, the school signed up more than 400 people through registration ballots and another 200 people online and gave out 800 voter registration forms.

According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, the voting rate among young people age 18 to 24 for all elections dropped to 38 percent in last presidential campaign from 50.9 percent in 1964. In every election since 1964, this age group has shown the lowest voter-participation rate than any other age groups, according to Census Bureau figures.