Written By: Kendra Martinez
America has decided on Joe Biden as our president-elect, and the highly anticipated election demonstrated a tight race for the candidates. Three Brooklyn College students shared their reaction to the result of the election.
Adrianne Gonzalez, felt as though the media played a significant role in the election. “I think the campaign period is too long, for the sake of our political integrity and democratic integrity. I think it runs too much as a way for the media to get ratings in one thing, and spread misinformation. It kind of goes back to it threatening political and democratic integrity,” said Gonzalez. She adds that Trump’s claims about voting fraud is also affecting the democratic foundation. “The narrative about illegal votes and it being rigged is so dangerous to our democracy because it creates this distrust – as if the Democrats cheat. And that’s going to make the next four years more difficult,” she said.
Senior students Oba Cantine and Alondra Jimenez expressed their anxiety during election week. Both students stayed away from the media during the election. “It was hard to stay away from the media because everyone’s talking about it on Instagram and it’s just everywhere,” said Jimenez, who says this was the first presidential election she was able to vote in. For Cantine, it was his second time voting for president. “You never knew who was going to win at any point. It was just the uncertainty that made me really anxious not knowing what our future will hold in this country,” Jimenez said while awaiting the election results. Cantine also said that he received updates from his mom.
Jimenez said that when President Trump was elected, she was only a senior in high school, concerned about any policies that might affect her education at Brooklyn College. Now, in her last year of college, she is paying close attention to how Biden will play in the next four years as she starts her career. She hopes that Biden can keep his promises once he steps into office, which are one of the concerns she expressed. “I feel like just because he is president, doesn’t mean that I’m relieved, because I feel like we still need to hold him accountable for everything he promised- he actually lives up to,” she said. Cantine mentioned that he is not necessarily content with our president-elect, but glad that Trump was voted out of office.
Gonzalez is apprehensive about the Biden-Harris administration, but she has more faith in the vice president-elect than the president-elect. She is mindful about Biden’s concerning history in this country, and in Harris’ career as a prosecutor, but is hopeful that this administration will be a better one than Trump’s. “We know the shadiness that comes from Biden’s history in terms of wars and racism. And Kamala Harris’s career as a prosecutor. So it’s like, ‘Alright, I’m going to bear that in mind so I won’t be disappointed by them.’ But I do believe it’ll be a better administration than the past four years,” said Gonzalez. Policies that Gonzalez cares about include affordable healthcare, police reform, and monetary stimulus during the pandemic. “I do believe in the competency within the new administration, and it has to do more with Kamala than it has to do with Biden,” she said.
President-elect Joe Biden will take office on Jan. 20, 2021. As of now, President Donald Trump along with his administration and supporters have refused to concede, having filed lawsuits in several states in an attempt to challenge and discount the ballot counts.
These students have shown some type of hope for America in the upcoming years under a new administration. However, they are still weary of what that administration would look like, a concern that many people have shared across the nation.