By Kate House / somerville@wickedlocal.com

Days after Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States, students at Tufts University are still absorbing last the results. For many living on the campus, President-elect Trump’s victory came as a surprise.

“The day after the election, everyone was on their phone, probably to their moms,” sophomore Rainie Toll said. “It was a bad day. It was rough.”

Other students interviewed on campus shared similar reactions to Trump’s election, including junior Janki Shingala.

“I think it was definitely a surprise for a lot of us. On Wednesday, there was definitely a weird energy around campus,” Shingala said. “Waking up and finding out all of that was just disappointing. It was sad.”

Shingala said her multiple identities as a woman, person of color, child of immigrants, and friend of many in the LGBTQ community made the election of Trump seem like an “attack” on her personally. Yet she says the she and others surprised by the election are already beginning to come to terms with what happened.

“I’ve had a lot of good, open discussion with people around campus who feel similar ways, so I feel like there’s progress being made,” Shingala continued. “People are understanding one another.”

Freshman Madeline Schwartz suggested that many Americans may have put too much trust in the constant polls before the election. She shared that one of her political science professors told students that fundamental models had long indicated that a Republican would win the 2016 presidential election, based on President Barack Obama’s approval ratings and recent performance of the economy.

“The polls ignored that,” Schwartz said of polls’ inconsistency with these models. “I guess everyone was taken off guard, and I think part of that has to do with that the media was so certain that [Hillary] Clinton was going to win.”

Jeffrey Berry, a professor of political science at Tufts, also pointed out the power and possible fallacies of polls.

“There is going to be a lot discussion within my discipline on why we were so confident about election surveys,” Berry said.

Berry witnessed students’ shock in the classroom last week.

“The students in my courses were surprised at the outcome. As political science students, they probably have more faith in polls than the public in general,” Berry said.

On the evening following the election, Tufts students Pedro Lazo-Rivera, Eleana Tworek, and Lily Pisano held “A Light on the Hill,” a gathering meant to help students express their feelings about election results. More than 100 students attended the event on the campus’ Academic Quad.

“People needed a space to work through their feelings,” Lazo-Rivera said of the event, which was conceived and organized in a period of hours solely through social media.

“Initially, there was a mood of mourning. But then there was a marked shift in tone, moving from ‘Yes, we feel this way now’ to ‘We are going to overcome this to defend our rights if this administration begins to threaten them in any way.’”

“Everyone sat in a circle and talked about how we were feeling and where we should go from here. We’re all enormously upset,” freshman attendee Sasha Didkovsky said.

Didkovsky said the gathering helped him and other students put things in perspective and to think beyond the election.

“The kind of consensus was that the key now is communication and compassion,” Didkovsky stated.

Fellow freshman Charlie Billings also attended “A Light on the Hill.” He agreed with Didkovsky’s statements, but said that being displeased with Trump’s election to the presidency was a reasonable reaction.

“I feel that it’s valid to be upset,” Billings said.

Billings expressed his opinion that steps now need to be taken to anticipate societal changes that might occur during Trump’s presidency. He suggested “mass citizenship” ceremonies, to give those noncitizens with longtime residency status a quicker path to citizenship.

“Now that we know the results [of the election], we need to take constructive measures to prepare for the inevitable,” Billings said.

Didkovsky and Billings also admitted that their status as students at a historically liberal northeastern university gives them what might be a relatively insular point of view.

“Because we live on such a liberal campus, there’s not a whole lot of communication between us and people who support Trump. All of my friends are liberal. Everyone’s opinions are staying around the people who agree with them,” Didkovsky said.

Emails to members of the Tufts Republicans seeking comment on Trump’s election were not returned by press time.

Professor Berry believes his students will adjust and learn from the election, whatever their personal political views. He said students have already started dissecting results, particularly the strong showing of white working-class voters for Trump.

“My students are an impressive group and they believe in the democratic process even when it goes against their own preferences,” Berry said.

Perhaps the cyclical tendencies of the democratic process need a fresh set of eyes, Didkovsky suggested.

“We spent eight of the most formative years of our life under Obama, and during those eight years, there were people who felt like we feel about Trump,” Didvosky said. “I feel like this happens every four years, and every four years, it feels like the world’s going to end. We have to stop feeling like the world’s going to end and we have to start talking to each other.”

http://medford.wickedlocal.com/news/20161115/tufts-students-react-to-election-of-donald-trump

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3434937&forum_id=2#31949585)

LOL, just LOL

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3434937&forum_id=2#31949630)