Academy Responds to Biden, Trump Race
By Moksha Akil, Indrani Basu, Ella Brady, Leela Gandhi, Lily Hagge, Tina Huang, Andrea Luo and Hansi Zhu
After several years of campaigning, debates and a round of primary elections, the winner of the 2020 Presidential Election remains undetermined as of 11:59p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. According to the Associated Press and Fox News at 9p.m. Eastern, incumbent Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have secured 214 and 264 electoral votes, respectively.
Americans will monitor Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania in the days following the election, during which undecided states will count mail-in ballots that have yet to be accounted for.
In Exeter, New Hampshire, Biden won a substantial two-thirds-plus majority of the town’s votes. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Representative Chris Pappas were re-elected to represent New Hampshire. Republican Governor Chris Sununu was re-elected over State Senator Dan Feltes by less than 800 votes.
To prepare for the election and its aftermath, the Academy cancelled the H Format synchronous block on Nov. 3 and a, B, and C Formats the morning after.
Phillips Church opened as a space for prayer and reflection on Tuesday, accommodating up to twenty students, according to Director of Spiritual Life Rev. Bonnie Jeanne-Casey. “We wanted to offer students a place to go that would be a ‘politics-free zone’ on election night so that they could find a few moments of stillness among the tumult,” Jeanne-Casey said.
The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) offered ice cream, cookies and hot chocolate and drop-ins on Zoom for remote students.
“The thinking behind the programming [was] so that the students know that we’re thinking about [the election] and that we care about them very much,” Dean of Multicultural Affairs Sherry Hernández said. “Despite the outcome of the election...we just wanted an opportunity for people to come out [and] not be in isolation.”
The electoral vote as it stood at 9pm Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press and Fox News.
The OMA programming was also a politics-free zone. However, conversations surrounding the election were not completely prohibited either, according to Hernández. “There are a lot of big emotions about the election… it has also been so meaningful from my perspectivethat we were able to accomplish our goal, which was to bring members of our community together, for those who wanted and able to join.”
The Academy’s choice to offer discussion spaces and schoolwide decision to reduce classes on Wednesday follows previous experience from the 2016 Presidential Election, when many Academy instructors recounted feeling unequipped to moderate political discussions in their classrooms. Mathematics Instructor Diana Davis described deciding how to proceed the day after Trump’s 2016 victory as “a disaster” when she was a math professor at Williams College.
“It was a mess to have to deal with it individually and to feel like holding class was a political statement, not holding classes [was] a political statement, [and] if I held class, I should make it a therapy session,” Davis said. “I’m glad that I didn’t have to do that this time because [the decision to cancel classes] was campus-wide… It might be an overreaction, though that’s an easy judgement to make in retrospect, but we’re creating space so that teachers don’t unilaterally have to decide what kind of political statement to make by simply doing their job or not doing their job.”
Despite the burden of discussion off their shoulders, some teachers did not believe cancelling classes was necessary. “Classes are far too precious to be given up for an election,” Science Instructor Townley Chisholm said. “I think a big majority of our students would have been happy to have class on Wednesday. I wish the administration valued class meetings more highly.”
Davis added that the cancellation of the evening H-block on Tuesday night presented challenges to the academic curriculum that teachers had prepared at the start of the term. “From eight to nine [during H block] on election night, I felt personally able to teach since the only results released at that point were states like New York, which are always blue. I think the disruption to H was likely not considered as much as I may have liked. [My H-format class] went eight days without having a synchronous class,” Davis said.
Other teachers defended the policy, citing the necessity of observing national events. “The election and its attendant complexities are very important,” English Instructor Christina Breen said. “I would argue more important than any academic class on this day.”
“It was totally reasonable to have a delayed start to classes,” Science Instructor A.J. Cosgrove said. “Given that we are in a pandemic, and that most students and faculty wanted to stay up late to watch election results, it made total sense to allow people to catch up on their sleep and stay physically and emotionally healthy.”
Others also expressed mixed feelings about the abnormal schedule. “I had a synchronous format canceled and while I miss seeing my students, I am not concerned about missing class time leading to a deficit in course content or skills,” English Instructor Alex Myers said. “[However,] I do think that for some students, especially remote ones, synchronous classes provide community that they are missing and might particularly enjoy on a day like today.”
Many students supported cancelling classes due to the election’s impact on marginalized groups. Upper Janessa Vargas noted the relief cancelled classes provided. “I appreciated it and my friends appreciated it, and a lot of us are leaders of student groups and BIPOC students, so I appreciated the extra space in the morning, not having to wake up early and immediately have to start dealing with the aftermath and the process,” she said.
Upper Kaylee Bennett called for even more Academy support for students. “The next few days are going to be much tougher than today, so I wish that we had more support the rest of this week,” Bennett said. “We could have had more facilitated discussions.”
Other students believed the programming further removed students from views outside the Exeter community. “I’m a liberal myself, but although I think it is important to grow up in a comforting environment, Exeter’s enforcement and political sensitivity around views creates an extreme polarization which is not realistic in the real world, outside of the Exeter bubble that is,” Grace Gantt said.
As the presidential race wound down, students responded to the current electoral college results. Senior Oliver Hess said that he was “disappointed but not surprised” by his home state Florida’s vote for Trump. “I often think back to the people that I used to go to school with and, even in a private high school, it was clear that there was a divide,” Hess said. “The county that I’m from voted blue... It is rather disappointing that the democratic momentum in my county did not scale to the entirety of the state.”
Pennsylvania resident and upper Lila Busser noted the detachment she felt from the high division of the undecided battleground state. “Last night on the news, there were a lot of protests going on [in Philadelphia],” she said. “It was just weird for me to see, because I don’t really talk to friends from home a lot, so I don’t totally know what’s going on in terms of the way that people are feeling, but I know if I were there right now, I would go to protests or I would be more engaged in what’s going on in Philadelphia. I was super politically involved all summer, so it was weird for me to not be involved in what seems to be a final surge toward what we were working towards.”
At Exeter, elections can feel different than at home. Upper Thomas Yun finds it more difficult to share his views on campus. “I don’t necessarily feel more comfortable, especially with [sharing] my opinions, but it’s less of an echochamber,” Yun said. “There’s more diversity of opinions especially compared to my household, and I have more political discussions on campus than at home.”
Hess, on the other hand, feels it is easier to share his opinions. “While I’m at home, I’m subject to a bit more political scrutiny when expressing my opinions because of the neighborhood I live in… But certainly when I’m here [at Exeter] I know there is a general blue consensus, so I feel like it’s not only a very good learning opportunity but also a lower pressure environment to be politically expressive,” he said.
Reflecting on the election and Exeter, upper Alana Reale celebrated the Academy. “Exeter is supposed to be rigorous, yes, but it doesn’t need to make a stressful time more difficult,” Reale said. “It’s important to remember that not everyone will be affected the same by the election, and it seems a little insensitive not to listen to people’s needs just because you’re not as impacted by the circumstances.”