Crowded into a dark lecture hall on Monday night, nearly 300 political science students watched as presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debated some of America’s most pressing issues.
The required meeting for PSC 113 students was used to gather their opinions and voting preferences both before and after the debate. During the debate, students also had the option of posting questions, sharing their thoughts of candidate remarks, or even providing real time fact checking over #Slack.
Professor Danielle Dirocco said polling students and starting conversations on which candidate they think is most qualified, most even-tempered, or truthful is something that helps engage students in the class.
“We’re trying to get a sense of what people are feeling when they walk in the door, and how that can shift over time,” Dirocco said. “Especially after hearing from the candidate directly.”
The exiting poll of the evening didn’t bode well for shifts, however, with the majority of students from both sections reporting that that their stance did not change at all, or that they were still undecided.
Young voters are traditionally more liberal and likely to vote Democrat, according to Dirocco, but support was seen in strong numbers for both parties on Monday night. The student poll reflected the current national polls, with Trump and Clinton neck-and-neck.
First-year architecture student Nick Marotta reported that he was happy with these trends. “For the first time now in many major polls he’s actually winning, as opposed to losing as he was, against Clinton,” Marotta said.
Marotta was seen holding a Trump sign in one of the front rows of the lecture hall, and even sporting a Trump T-shirt and socks. In terms of Trump’s performance in the debate, Marotta said he thought the night went well.
“I thought it was a relatively weak performance for what he normally does, but I think he did a good job at exposing her corruption, which is proven time and time again,” Marotta said.
Clinton supporters were not seen in as strong of convictions, but the polls revealed that most students believe that she’s going to win the election.
Of the students not in favor of Trump, senior mathematics major Riley O’Brian said that the GOP nominee appeared to not have prepared for the debate at all, and even compared her to former vice president candidate Sarah Palin. O’Brian, who’s planning to support Clinton in November, shared negative views of Trump’s performance with many other students.
“Even when he was proven wrong with facts from the moderator, he would just blurt out these inappropriate comments of ‘wrong,’ ‘that’s not what I said,’ but the facts speak otherwise,” senior political science major Aaron Cabral said. “I don’t know if I’m voting for Clinton, but I’m definitely not voting for Trump.”
With Rhode Island being a Blue State, Cabral is conflicted over whether or not to vote third party, since his vote may not “count” in the greater scheme of things.
Dirocco did not disclose which way she plans to vote in November, mostly because she does not believe it’s appropriate to take a stance in front of her students.
“My job is to teach them how to parse through this the best that I can,” Dirocco said. “My personal opinion doesn’t belong in the classroom.”
Following Monday night’s debate, social media was flooded with shared videos, memes, and comments, thanks to a record-breaking number of Americans who tuned in. According to Nielsen Company, an average of 84 million people watched the debate from home on Monday night, across 13 television channels.
Before Monday night, the most watched presidential debate in US history went down between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980 with 80 million viewers.
What the Nielsen couldn’t measure, however, were the number of people watching live stream over the web, on C-SPAN, or in groups, like the several hundred PSC 113 students that gathered in Chafee.