Students Prepare For Trump Visit

Scores of students are expected to miss classes today to attend the presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally in the Exeter Town Hall, five days before voting begins in the New Hampshire primary. Among the students attending are supporters, neutral observers and protesters of Trump and his campaign.Student protesters are using Trump’s appearance in Exeter as an opportunity to show their opposition against his controversial stances on race, religion and the political process. Other students are attending because they feel Trump’s campaign has had historical impact and would like to experience his speech firsthand.According to Dean of Students Melissa Mischke, about 40 students were granted permission to miss class before Monday night when they stopped approving petitions for the event. Students continued to request. While Mischke realized students are particularly interested in this event, for the school it is still “business as usual; teachers are not supposed to cancel classes and students are not supposed to miss classes.”

“I believe in challenging my own beliefs and confronting people I don’t agree with.”

Despite this, some teachers have cancelled their classes because so many of their students were planning on skipping anyway, or because they believed the event has historical importance.Islam discussion group Baraka co-head and senior Tan Nazer will be skipping all of her morning classes to protest outside of the town hall and then attend the event inside. Nazar said because Trump has shown much hate toward Islam and Muslims, he poses a threat to herself and the greater Muslim community in America.She said she “felt obligated to make [her] voice heard and to make [Trump] know he is not welcome, his hate is not welcome and his bigotry is not welcome.”Others such as senior Lucy Weiler, who will also be protesting outside the rally, hope to convey that young voters do not tolerate how he is running his campaign. Weiler said the campaign “has turned less from the policies that he’s advertising and more into a debate about political correctness, who deserves to be in the United States and who doesn’t.”“I want people to know that the young generation of Americans, the new generation of Americans, who can vote in this upcoming election and the one after that don’t want someone like [Trump] to be an option,” Weiler said.Some students and faculty question the ethics and effectiveness of protesting Trump’s rally. Exeter Political Union co-head senior Sean Taylor, who has attended six presidential candidates’ rallies in Exeter this far, said he treats Trump’s rally “no differently than any other political rally that's been held here.” While Taylor doesn’t oppose students protesting Trump peacefully, he wasn’t sure how effective the protests would be as they “happen at every single one of Trump’s events” and seem to “fuel his ego.”“I think people see him in a celebrity sort of light. They see him as the reality TV show star,” Taylor said. “But people need to remember that at the end of the day he’s not running for celebrity apprentice; he’s running for President of the United States of America.”History instructor Aykut Kilinc agreed that students seemed to be interested in Trump’s rally for the reality show, entertainment aspect of Trump rather than for interest in politics. The last few days, students have been talking about Trump’s visit “as if the circus is coming to town,” Kilinc said. He said he was disappointed that the focus was on this rather than discourse, politics and “doing the right thing for the American people.”The best thing to do, Kilinc said, was to “normalize” Trump, because if “we bring [Trump] down to a politician, what he’s saying is rather rudimentary and simple.” Science instructor Townley Chisholm agreed. “The most thoughtful thing to do would be to ignore him,” he said. “[I don’t like] the fact that people are getting permission from the deans to miss my lab.”Postgraduate Mathias Valenta, who similar to Taylor, is actively political on campus and has attended rallies as an observer, found it “anti-intellectual” and “very un-Exonian,” that some students were protesting Trump’s general presence in Exeter because “students should challenge their own views.”“I believe in challenging my own beliefs and confronting people I don’t agree with, and I’m horrified so many at Exeter don’t feel the same way,” Valenta said.Weiler, who held poster making sessions on Wednesday, has helped incite some interest among students in protesting the rally. She worked with Dean of Multicultural Affairs Rosanna Salcedo and Multicultural Affairs Intern Danielle Lucero to ensure that the protests were kept safe. Lucero, who was involved with many protests in college, went around to Weiler’s poster making meetings as well as other meetings such as the one held on Monday by Baraka.During Monday’s meeting, Lucero read the students their rights, so that in the case of protests getting to the point of police intervention, they knew how to handle themselves. Lucero said that while she wanted students to be prepared, she was doubtful it would escalate that far. Some students of color felt that they didn’t want to risk going anyway. ALES co-head and upper Gwendolyn Wallace said she had seen videos online of Trump rallies getting particularly violent and “as a black person, I feel that it could potentially dangerous situation [for me].”ALES member and upper Genesis Contreras agreed. She said that she would feel unsafe attending the rally being “a person of color [who] also opposes Trump,” because “there’s already this resentment toward people of color in these sort of places.”“I’m not necessarily afraid of Trump or what he might do or say,” Contreras said, “but I’m scared that if I say something outwardly opposing Trump, the people who support him or have the same beliefs as him might act upon those racist ideas.”Contreras said while she was making a “big generalization,” her first instinct would be to stay away from the the event. Lower Charlotte Polk, on the other hand, said she would be attending the rally wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt and wanted to “make a statement that [she won’t] stand for hatred and bigotry in politics.”“The way he speaks about minorities makes me think that he thinks that we're subhuman or fundamentally unlike him. Policies aside, saying some of the things he says are unacceptable,” Polk said.