VOTE 2016
This year’s extraordinary presidential election has made voters across the country anxious and angry. At Willamette, professors and classes help students navigate through the confusion and understand why their informed vote is important. By Sarah Evans
Quinlyn Manfull, a whip-smart Willamette University sophomore from Anchorage, Alaska, first started knocking on doors and calling potential voters for the Democratic Party as a 16-year-old high school student. In fact, she knocked on more doors for the November 2014 election than any other Democratic volunteer in the entire state. But when Election Day came, the student with a passion for politics was too young to cast her ballot — something she describes as “heartbreaking.” Now 18, the politics and economics double major is campaigning hard for her favorite presidential candidate: Hillary Clinton. Last spring, she called Alaskan voters from her dorm room in Salem, and during spring break, she volunteered at and voted in the Alaska Democratic Caucus. Come November, Manfull ’19 might be one of the most eager students on campus to vote in her first presidential election. Her enthusiasm, however, is coupled with unease. “I’m scared, to say the least,” Manfull says. “And I really wish I weren’t, because in another circumstance, I would be extremely excited because I think Hillary Clinton will be a phenomenal president. But I am scared because of the whole Donald Trump situation and a lot of the vitriol he has created and promoted.”
Manfull is not alone in feeling apprehensive. Ask students and political scholars across campus for their thoughts about the presidential election, and words like “anxious,” “disappointed,” “unprecedented” and “unusual” come up frequently — and they’re talking about both Trump and Clinton. Nationwide, many voters are scratching their heads at how we came to this point with these two major candidates: a Republican outsider with no experience in office, whose controversial actions have led more than 100 leaders in his own party to say they won’t vote for him; and a Democratic insider who battled a potential indictment as well as a tough opponent whose die-hard supporters fought long and hard against her and the system she represents. A Gallup poll in mid-July showed that one in four Americans disliked both candidates. “I think it is unfortunate that the first election I will be able to vote in is one in which I’m not necessarily going to be proud to cast a vote in either direction,” says Tyler Harris ’17, who is president of Willamette’s College Republicans but does not support either major candidate. “This is a massively disappointing circumstance and really a concerning thing for many people in our country and around the world.”
WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY
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