With the upcoming 2024 presidential election, Lasell’s student body is looking at the future of the country, and what might happen as we become adults and graduate. The faceoff between the Democratic, Republican, and third-party candidates was representative of the millions of diverse voices that got to vote in this election as well as highlighting the different standpoints regarding the ongoing issues in our country. With this in mind, Lasell students voting this year faced the question of “Who should I vote for?”
When asked, Lasell students from the dining hall gave us some answers about what they feel are the most important issues to them during this election, with the majority saying that the most important policies are abortion rights, women’s rights, and women’s rights to control their bodies. Some students expressed their fear of Trump being elected with Project 2025, which is a plan written by the Heritage Foundation with a right-leaning agenda.
Although Trump has repeatedly stated that Project 2025 does not fully reflect his presidential plans, people have noticed an overlap in the ideas presented by both the former President and the Project.
First-year student Keira Hart-Bonville stated how “[she] did not like how the country was run when Trump was president, so I do not want to risk that again, and I know there is a lot at stake for his 2025 plan.”
An anonymous senior mentioned the “fear of losing all the rights that have been worked on for so long including abortion rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and Trans rights, especially [with] what is happening in Florida,” as some of the issues they care about.
Not all voters are focused on abortion rights, however. Some students we spoke to talked about the Second Amendment and the potential issues they have with it. Students are concerned about what will happen with the Second Amendment; will it be modified under gun control, or will it stand as it has for the past 235 years?
“I think a lot of students care about their Second Amendment rights and also gun control, there’s both, there’s a lot of people who care very strongly on both sides of the argument,” said first-year
communications major Caitlin Callahan.
“I am in favor of gun control, people should have to take a test before getting gun ownership, and not everybody can just get a gun as soon as they turn 18,”
stated Lea Moon, a first-year forensic science major.
With the tumultuous political landscape during the 2024 election, who knows what will happen with the issues that students care about? It is hard to think of a future where issues that our entire country faces might remain as problems, but it’s important to have hope that the future of America will be beneficial to everybody who lives here.
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