By Emily Losito
News Editor
With the presidential election in about a month, St. Bonaventure’s College Democrats club is gearing up.
College Democrats has held mock debates in the past. This involved students acting as then-presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. College Republicans joined in the debate too and got to advocate for their potential candidates.
On Oct. 4 and Oct. 5, they changed it up and gave students the opportunity to participate in a mock vote. Clinton, Trump, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson were the four options on the slip of paper handed to students.
Jenna Maxwell, junior political science major, is president of College Democrats. She said she hopes the mock election will increase student awareness.
“There are a wide array of opinions on campus,” she said. “It’ll be interesting to see the results.”
College Democrats has never held a mock election before. The club planned the event within a week.
“We had a lot of members sign up right away to man the table [in the Hickey Dining Hall], so we didn’t have to reach out to College Republicans for help,” she said.
She added College Republicans thought the mock election was a good idea.
Prior to the finalization of the election results, The Bona Venture staff conducted a small survey, asking students and faculty who they thought would win the most votes within the college community. Out of 81 people polled on campus, 45 thought Bona’s will vote for Trump, 34 thought Clinton and 2 thought Johnson.
Jacob Starowicz, sophomore management major, agreed it would be interesting to see who Bonaventure would vote for. He said if he could guess, the campus would be in favor of Clinton.
Maxwell thought the turnout was pretty good and people seemed receptive to the idea, but she hoped more students would have participated.
“Out of the totaled 127 votes, it was determined that Hillary Clinton won. She obtained 52 percent of the total votes,” Maxwell said.
“The results show that while our campus is believed to be overwhelmingly conservative, we still have a strong Democratic swing or viewpoint when it comes to our future president,” she said.
She added College Democrats might do something similar to this event in the future. Maxwell said she hopes the vote will attract people’s interest to go to the club meetings or join the club. There are upcoming plans for a mock debate on Oct. 19.
lositoek14@bonaventure.edu
