On November 10, I attended the final Democracy Café of the semester with my club, Model United Nations.  The final café focused on the election results and people’s reactions to it.  After discussing the actual numbers and figures, there was an open dialogue where people to voice their opinions and concerns.  Political science Professor Claire Abernathy led the discussion.

When we went over the results, we discussed not only the overall results but the states and demographics.  We also compared them to the 2012 election, primarily comparing Clinton’s voter turnout with the turnout for Barack Obama that year during his reelection campaign versus Mitt Romney.  This year there was a significantly lower voter turnout among most demographics, which I didn’t find too surprising considering most people were unhappy with their choice in candidates; Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the two most unfavorable presidential candidates in US history.  Clinton won big in most categories, especially with women and millennials, but Trump’s victories with males, whites, and the uneducated was able to overpower Clinton’s other victories “bigly.”

After we discussed the results, we discussed mainly policy before getting into personal concerns.  Most people agreed that Donald Trump’s actual policy probably would not pass Congress as he does not have much support from the Republican establishment (or the Democrats, obviously) who now run the Senate and the House of Representatives.  The Republicans will, more than likely, be able to pass their agenda though, and Donald Trump will most likely sign anything the Republicans send his way.  This might include repealing Obamacare, overturning Roe v. Wade, increasing Military and Defense spending, and destroying women’s health care and taking away their reproductive rights.

I spoke up a few times during the final portion of the café when we discussed our concerns.  My concerns were very similar to most of the students; minorities are going to be terrorized.  Not even specifically by Donald Trump or the Republicans, but by the radical supporters who got Trump into the White House, like the KKK.    Someone brought up the point that we should try to look beyond personal opinions and whatnot and focus on policy, but I, like several others, do not think that’s possible.  We agreed that considering the majority of Trump’s campaign was based on very personal attacks, it would be nearly impossible to just focus on policy, and even if you could look to Trump’s policy, you can’t look past the personal attacks his supporters who now feel validated are making.

Overall, I would say the café was certainly a success and it was very nice to have a controlled yet open dialogue about everything.  I was totally devastated when I found out Clinton conceded to Trump and the results had been difficult for me to talk about, but the café helped me to talk about it, and seeing that I was surrounded by who people agreed with me and disagreed with Trump made me feel a lot better about the future for this country.

This Saturday (October 22, 2016) I volunteered with Stockton’s Model United Nations to help organize a simulation for Atlantic City High School students.  Stockton’s Model UN paired up with the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority to help introduce high school students to the Model UN experience, as well as learn about diplomacy and the actual United Nations.  October 24 is Model UN’s birthday, so the event was also to help celebrate the organization.

I was rather nervous for the event because I had only been in a simulation once before during Model UN club so I was still quite unfamiliar with how simulations run and what to do.  The volunteers were supposed to team up with one or two high school students to help them become acquainted with Model UN, so I doubted I would be much of a help for them.  Thankfully for me (though unfortunate for the event itself), only one person from Atlantic City High School showed up.  Apparently, there had been multiple events offered to the Atlantic City HS students during the same time as the Model UN Simulation, and none of the students chose our program.  Despite this, we decided to complete the simulation ourselves for practice, since many of the volunteers, like myself, didn’t have very much experience in Model UN.  We had two simulations ready to go, one on Global Development and Sustainability and another on Combatting Racism, and we decided on the Combatting Racism one.

I represented France, whose primary problems with racism included xenophobia, due to the large amounts of illegal Syrian and Pakistani immigrants in France, and was facing prison overcrowding because of that.  In my opening speech, I explained the problems France was facing and asked the other delegations for money to help fund educational programs so that the French public could understand what the immigrants were going through, help with prison overcrowding, as well as for countries who were not accepting many Syrian Refugees (like the United States) to start to.

Many other countries also felt as though education could help combat the racism in their country, as well as that the racist political rhetoric many politicians spread encourage citizens to take violent actions against minorities.  There were eight countries, including France, that sponsored and wrote a resolution on Education and Political Reform.  The resolution stipulated that .07% of UN countries GDP would go toward a fund to create educational programs that would focus on language, cultural differences, and world issues, and the programs would be monitored by UN officials.  In addition, the Political Reform part of the resolution was modeled off a Kenyan law which forbids hate speech from politicians, elected officers, and others in positions of state and government office.  The resolution passed almost unanimously, which was a proud moment for myself and the other co-sponsors of the bill.  We even got Russia on board, and they were originally against helping solve any other country’s racism.  Despite a rough start, the simulation ended up being quite successful.

Alexis Franklin

On September 10, I participated in Stockton’s annual Day of Service.  I signed up over the summer because I figured I would need community service projects for the Honors Program, and I was more or less dreading spending all day volunteering.  My dread had lied in the fact that I expected to be cleaning up trash all day or doing something dull, however the different activities were actually really entertaining, and I had a lot of fun!  I did four different events; Text, Talk, Vote; Circle K’s program, where I made cards and project templates for sick children; Green Dot Bystander training; and Stop Hunger Now’s program, where I helped to make a total of 48,000 meals!  My two favorite were definitely the Text, Talk, Vote and the Stop Hunger Now events.

The Text, Talk, Vote program was meant to encourage everyone to vote, especially in the upcoming November presidential election.  I love politics, so this event was right up my alley.  I got to sit around with my friends and discuss how we felt about the different issues and candidates.  Even though the rest of my friends aren’t into politics as much as I am, it was still really fun.  It was, however, upsetting to see that most of the people participating in the program either didn’t really care about the outcome in November or had pretty much lost hope and weren’t planning on voting in the election this year.  I could go on for hours about my own opinions and the candidate I support, but I would definitely prefer for someone to vote for the candidate opposing my own than not vote at all.  I hope the Text, Talk, Vote program really changed people’s minds and encouraged them to vote, because the importance of voting is often undersold.

The Stop Hunger Now program was surprisingly fun and energizing, and even though the actual work I was doing wasn’t very complicated or all that exciting (I just poured dried veggies into a funnel), I really enjoyed it.  The big group I was with danced our way to making 12,000 meals, so in total Stockton made 48,000 meals in one day, which is really impressive.  Normally I wouldn’t have volunteered for an organization like Stop Hunger Now, but I’m glad I was kind of “forced” to try out new things at the Day of Service.  I also was in with a group of people I hadn’t met before, so in addition to making meals for the hungry, I got to meet new people and make new friends too, which was great!

The Day of Service was definitely not what I was expecting it to be, but I’m really happy I participated.  Not only did I get to help people, but I got pushed out of my comfort zone and found new things that I enjoy doing.  I even got a selfie with Trump and Clinton cutouts.  Overall, it was a great day and I’m looking forward to the next Day of Service!