{"id":12220,"date":"2020-10-01T20:49:58","date_gmt":"2020-10-02T01:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=12220"},"modified":"2020-10-01T20:49:59","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T01:49:59","slug":"mcu-hosts-debate-watch-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/12220","title":{"rendered":"MCU hosts debate watch party"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Kassidy Hart–<\/strong>The Morningside Civic Union (MCU) and The Colonel Bud Day Center for Civic Engagement hosted the first debate watch party of the 2020 Presidential Election Tuesday (9.29). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students across campus were invited to join the debate watch party either in person in Weikert Auditorium or via Zoom. About 30 people attended in-person and 18 attended online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor the most part, students are only informed about specific issues they are interested in and through social media bashing and advertisements. This event allows for students to learn more about the candidates and creates more educated voting,\u201d sophomore Garrett Arbuckle said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the students were looking forward to the event because it offered an opprtunitity to learn more about President Donald Trump\u2019s and Vice President Joe Biden\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI already know about Trump, but I\u2019m hoping to learn more about Biden,\u201d sophomore Micki Twedell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a lot of student voters, it is their first time being eligible to vote. To ensure voter participation, MCU set up a table and handed out forms to get students registered to vote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cBy doing this, we make the option to register to vote easily accessible for everyone. We\u2019ve done it during normal class times already but having it during after-school hours allows for students to fit it into their schedule. Plus, students may even be inspired by the debates to register,\u201d Arbuckle said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And though there were many students attending to jump-start their political knowledge or add on to it, students experienced with politics were also present. They were there to soak in the atmosphere and enjoy the debate with friends<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a part of MCU and am also a political science major so I find debates interesting. And I\u2019m here with my roommates who I brought to watch with me,\u201d senior Madison Legrand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of these experienced students, senior Pascal Kutschera, came to the event just to hear what his peers thought about the debate afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m German so I can\u2019t vote but I do enjoy politics and am interested in others\u2019 thoughts. I also don\u2019t think that the debates are the main thing voters should go off of because they are not very accurate. People should do more research,\u201d Kutschera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the debate, hearing others\u2019 opinions on the debate became even more important for students, especially those who were watching on Zoom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a lot of mixed feelings as the debate went on and that\u2019s why I was wondering how others were feeling. In my opinion, it is always good to hear varying opinions and reactions. I, myself, was very overwhelmed in the first 15 minutes,\u201d senior Kalynn Manker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the debate wrapped up, MCU students took a poll on who the students in-person thought won the debate and the results were mixed, with many not raising their hands at all. Out of about two dozen students, only five voted that Vice President Biden won and five voted that President Trump won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think students here just had mixed feelings overall. Many of them expressed their disappointment in the lack of civility from both parties,\u201d Director of The Colonel Bud Day Center for Civic Engagement and Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Valerie Hennings said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though the debate left many students feeling a sort of uncertainty, MCU saw a large turnout for the event, both in-person and online, and could count this event as a win for the Morningside community involvement. They were able to encourage political activity and share the importance of voting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kassidy Hart–The Morningside Civic Union (MCU) and The Colonel Bud Day Center for Civic Engagement hosted the first debate watch party of the 2020 Presidential Election Tuesday (9.29). Students across campus were invited to join the debate watch party either in person in Weikert Auditorium or via Zoom. About 30 people attended in-person and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":12222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[46941,46933,46880],"class_list":["post-12220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-morningside-college-2","tag-morningsidemustangs","tag-msidelife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12224,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12220\/revisions\/12224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}