Regina Guest woke up on Nov. 6 to a lock screen full of texts from concerned friends and family. She knew who had won before she even opened her phone.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 6, headlines announced that Former President Donald Trump had surpassed 270 electoral votes and beat Vice President Kamala Harris. In the following days and weeks, the Republicans retained the House and took back the Senate and President-elect Trump began naming a host of right-leaning cabinet picks.
“I wish I could say I was surprised, but I wasn’t,” said Guest, an immigrant from Ireland who is now a senior in the School of International Studies.
American University, often named as one of the nation's most liberal colleges, fell quiet the day after the election with many students afraid of what the future may hold.
In 2016, hundreds of students gathered to protest Trump’s win outside of the Mary Graydon Center, some burning the American flag and confronting a small group of counter-protesters with “Make America Great Again” hats.
For Josue Duron-Padilla, a junior in the Kogod School of Business, the outcome of this election is personal.
“My parents are immigrants and under Trump, they could be directly affected,” Duron-Padilla said.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to use his powers to declare a national emergency and deploy troops to remove undocumented immigrants, leaving more than 11.5 million people in danger of being removed from the U.S. Along with stricter immigration policies, Trump has said he will cut environmental regulations, slash federal budgets, defund the Department of Education and repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Matthew Vigneau, a junior in the School of Public Affairs, and president of AU’s College Democrats said that he hopes to turn the club into a community space where people can come together and resist Trump’s potential policies.
“We're committed to continuing to do the work of protecting democracy,” Vigneau said. “And working to make sure that we have leaders that share our values to protect the most vulnerable people in our society rather than attacking them.”
Leading up to the election, AU College Democrats held door-knocking, letter-writing and phone banking events for its members, even busing students down to North Carolina the week before the election to campaign.
“We know the key to resisting backsliding and the erosion of our democratic institutions is strong civil society,” Vigneau said. “I think that clubs on a college campus are a part of that civil society.”
The AU College Republicans Club did not respond to The Eagle’s request for comment.
Professor Matthew Foster, who teaches classes in SPA and a class on elections, said he has encouraged students to find hope in what civil society can do in the next four years.
“There's going to be so much organizational growth, fundraising and preparation for the midterms,” Foster said.
Foster said he also thinks that this loss may help the Democratic Party reflect on its strategy and platform, as they “have to realize where the gains are without sacrificing the base.”
Throughout the election season, the Harris-Walz team had 107 days to campaign for a Democratic win. During the record-short presidential campaign, some strategies, including the use of Former Vice President Dick Cheney and Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney to court moderate Republican voters, have come under criticism with 49 percent of registered Democrats expressing pessimism in the party’s future after the election, according to the Pew Research Center.
Susan Glover, an associate professor in SPA who specializes in comparative politics, said she thinks many people “voted against their own interests” by voting for Trump as they “chose him for reasons of perception rather than reality.”
But hope remains.
Glover said that her classroom was filled with despair and sadness the Thursday after the election. But in the past weeks, her students have begun to come into class with more optimism.
“I think it's very hard to feel hopeful but one thing I really have learned… is that people are incredibly resilient, and if we continue thinking of ourselves as agents of change, we are able to do amazing things,” Glover said.
This article was edited by Samantha Skolnick, Tyler Davis and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks and Ari Kavoossi.
