Humans of La Salle: Students React Strongly to Trump’s Win

Bao Huynh, Assistant Editor

In a stunning and unexpected win, Donald Trump became the nation’s president-elect on Tuesday night. Less than 24 hours later, we asked La Salle students for their reaction to this historic and controversial election. Here are their responses.

***

Isabella Griffiths, sophomore

img_6918

“America is in need of a strong leader that will be able to build our country and continue to value what our Founding Fathers stood for. Mr. Donald Trump may have his imperfections, as do all human beings, but I believe that he will be able to shift our country’s path in a positive direction. My hope is that America will remain one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

***

Christian Gomez, junior

img_6903

“Well, basically the thing is [that] as long as he does well, I don’t really care. I mean, everybody’s freaking out right now about how he got elected and [saying that] he’s trash, but so far there’s nothing against him that will make him a bad president, and he could do well, and if he does bad then we’ll learn from it.”

***

Corwyn Bradeen, senior

img_6904

“I didn’t like both candidates, but I was settling for Hillary because I didn’t agree with Trump’s stance on interacting with other people, so I feel pretty neutral about this election, because I didn’t really want any of them to win. I just hope that we can have peaceful relations with other countries.”

***

Jack Arp, junior

img_6916

“Well, honestly, I don’t think it was a great outcome… I didn’t like the candidates either way. I thought anyone who had any good traits was eliminated pretty early on in the primaries.”

***

Jason Nasser-Marsh, sophomore

img_6911

“So if our system was actually a democracy, without the electoral college, Clinton would have won. But, the way the electoral college works with all the delegates and electoral votes, Trump won, and it’s an unfair system. Also, I think it showed that uneducated white men rule more than we think they did, and all the progress we made as a nation is going to reverse now, so this is not a good sign for anyone.

***

Katie Quines, senior

img_6915

“I am very unhappy about it, and the problem isn’t that I’m upset that my candidate didn’t win, but more the fact that I think the major problem with this election is the fact that both candidates were so terrible that we were forced to chose the lesser of two evils. Both candidates are corrupt, and I’m disappointed in the fact that America decided to desert the fact that Donald Trump has dismissed basically all of human life, the idea that sexual assault is a joke at best, and [that] he had possibly committed crimes. [This] is a problem to me because the issue with this candidacy isn’t the fact that it’s Republican versus Democrat but it’s people who aren’t voting with a moral conscience.”

***

Harry Nguyen, junior

img_6907

“The Trump win was kind of unexpected, and a lot of people thought from the polls that Hillary was going to win, and nobody really, after all the scandals and stuff, [were] expecting it to come out like that, but at the very end all the people who really supported Trump just passively sat around until voting day. It all just came together and destroyed the polls.”

***

Madeline Capps, freshman

img_6926

“I don’t really know how he won because all of the other Republicans were against him too… kind of a surprise.”

***

Matthew Werner, junior

img_6914

“We have a democracy in the United States of America that our Founding Fathers set up 200 years ago, and if this is what the democracy shows then that’s what everyone should support and that’s why the vote turned out the way it did.”

***

Brendan LeFranc, junior

img_6909

“At first I was really angry that we as a country let this happen, but I realized I was more disappointed. It makes sense that after having our first African-American president who made a lot of change and progress at once, that I feel like a lot of people who voted for Trump just wanted to… I don’t know, gain some power back or something. And I know a lot of people hated Hillary. I didn’t really like her much myself, but… I’m just stunned.”

***

Carolina Stahly-Dronkowski, sophomore

img_6922

“I know there are a lot of people who think it’s a good thing, but I feel like it’ll make our country more unstable… just from him being elected, it’s caused a lot of problems.”

***

Owen Tunstill, freshman

img_6912

“It makes me concerned as an American and ashamed that we elected a racist president.”

***

Karla Romero, junior

img_6925

“I think that it’s going to cause a lot of hatred in the country towards people who are different or minorities. It’s going to [make it so that] people from the Ku Klux Klan feel a lot freer to do the things that they see as right. I feel like it’s going to be a hard time.”

***

Alex Pereira, junior

img_6917

“I’m afraid of how the country will end up. Both candidates have divided the country and will continue to. They’ve both divided minorities… Trump encouraged hate towards Muslims during a vulnerable time. These next years may be tough, but let’s hope Trump does a good job.”`

***

Maren Sheahan, sophomore

img_6924

“I respect everyone’s beliefs, but I’m worried for the people he’s spoken out against… I just hope that everyone is at peace and that he won’t mess things up too much.”

***

What do you think about Donald Trump’s victory? Let us know in the comments below.