Political tensions and discussions of last night’s election ran rampant at McLean today, as students either mourned or celebrated the Presidential and local election results. Highlanders were fiery in their opinions of America’s choice of president, and assertions of the repercussions of this monumental election on our country’s future differed widely. This election has made evident just how divided America is, with McLean serving as a microcosm of our country as a whole and the intense contest between the two candidates.

Many Hillary supporters said they were upset about Donald Trump’s victory due to the current racial, gender, and class divisions existing in our country, and Trump’s clear support system based in disillusioned middle-class white voters.

“Its upsetting because we’ve spent the past eight years creating social reform and progress and now with the election of Donald Trump we’re going to erase all of those years and go back into the world of white supremacy,” senior Sami Lawrence said.

“I’m extremely disappointed that so many Americans chose to support a candidate that engages in active racism, bigotry, and misogyny,” senior Julia Hunter said. “Although I already disagree with much of the Republican platform, I’m concerned that his presidency will usher in a new era of intolerance and hatred that further persecutes fellow Americans and divides our society.”

Meanwhile, Trump supporters rejoiced as their candidate became President-elect.

“Trump has always been a winner, he’s still a winner,”senior Alex Bruner said. “We’re gonna reform Washington, we’re gonna make America great again, the economy is going to be fixed, everything is going to be good for the next four years.”

“He’s going to repeal and replace Obamacare with a more effective system that doesn’t just take money out of the pockets of Americans.” sophomore Duncan Andrews said. “We’re going to have more strict immigration which will keep America secure. We’re going to turn the economy around. Barack Obama doubled our national debt during his presidency, and we’re going to turn that around. I’m not surprised [that he won], because I knew that he could do it all along. He represents what the majority of Americans want in a president.”

Many students who chose to volunteer and participate in rallies for the party they identify with, such as senior Fatima Shahbaz, were deeply affected by the results.

“The Democratic party failed to support its political base. As a political party that is supposed to be for the people, we failed to rally the middle class,” Shahbaz said. “The main issue here isn’t that Trump won. It’s that Hillary lost. We didn’t fight hard enough.”

Shahbaz said she was also upset by the election of Trump in relation to her own experience with issues in minority communities in the U.S.

“Yesterday I went to volunteer at Stanton elementary school in Anacostia. We worked with an inner city school that has a 100% black population and 17% of those children are homeless,” Shahbaz said.

“We went around to 5th grade classrooms and asked the kids ‘what would you do if you were President’ and every single one of them said that first, they would try to combat homelessness in their community, because that’s an issue that impacts them directly. Then they talked about police brutality, they talked about how black children and black adults are being killed at every corner and how that’s something that’s impacting them that they want to change. A few of them said that they would imprison Donald Trump so that he couldn’t be President. Last night, America failed them. America failed the thousands of people of color or minorities in our country.”

Other students focused their attention less on the divisive issues being debated and more on the morality of the candidates, an element of this election that was highly emphasized throughout.

“I look at this election as a moral election and I feel like whether it’s republican or democratic policies that this election wasn’t about that,” senior and Hillary Clinton supporter Neeki Souri said. “It was about which candidate is fit as a human being to run our country. The president is the face of the United States. Do we want a person who is viewed as a racist and sexist to be the face of America?”

Still, other students saw Hillary’s victory in the popular vote, with her 47.7% lead in the American public’s vote to Trump’s 47.5%, compared to Trump’s electoral college sweep of 278 predicted electoral votes as evidence that the electoral college system itself is broken. This split of the electoral vote and popular vote may seem like deja-vu of the election of 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college due to Bush’s victory in Florida.

“I think that this shows a major flaw in the Electoral college system,” senior Molly O’hare said. “I mean we knew it was kind of messed up after the 2000 election, but this is a call out to Alexander Hamilton and all the Federalists for thinking the electoral college was a good idea, because this is a representative democracy but not a very good representative democracy if the popular vote really doesn’t count for anything.”

Regardless of political orientation or opinion on the outcome of the election, students should remember that American democracy is continuous in nature; this election does not limit anyone’s ability to voice their political beliefs and make progress toward the issues they find most pressing. 

“It’s not time to give up on America, It’s not time to be like ‘I’m moving to Canada’,” Shahbaz said, in regards to her fellow disappointed Hillary supporters. “It’s time to be disappointed in ourselves and work harder to be better for the future. It’s our job as Americans to fight for our rights.”

The freedom to be politically active and have the ability to stand up for your beliefs and rights is a freedom guaranteed by our country, so Highlanders should keep the fire in their stomachs blazing and continue to express themselves.