This year’s presidential election brought red and blue to a purple campus.
Members of the university and surrounding community took their opinions to the polls and showed their interest and concern by casting their ballots.
Some students seemed to agree on the importance of voicing individual opinions.
“I think it’s a political platform that everybody has individually and I think it’s very important that you express your feelings,” senior Wynton Brown said.
Graduate student Derek Gilmour agreed.
“I think it’s really important for everybody to vote… having a political opinion, no matter what it is, is extremely important,” Gilmour said.
For students like Brown, placing her ballot is more than just choosing who she thinks is the best candidate for president.
“For me, being African American and a female, a lot of people had to go through the struggle to get me to be able to say ‘I want to say this is my political person’,” Brown said. “To know that at one point that as an American, I couldn’t vote, is heartening.”
Both Brown and Gilmour expressed the importance of this particular election because of the economic slump our country is currently in. And both are ready for change.
“Our country needs a different mindset. A mindset of reality,” Gilmour said.
“I think this election will be the one that says either I have four more years to do it better or try to make it better," Brown said. "Or, I have four years to ride on someone else’s shirt-tail and say that I did it."
Early voting ended Friday, Nov. 2 and some students began making predictions of who would win the presidential election.
“I believe that most people are for Obama,” Gilmour said. “They just want to give him another chance. It’s sort of been the way for the past three presidents, they always get elected for another four years, so it’s probably going to be Obama.”
Despite predictions, Brown said that no president can make everyone happy.
“We all have difference in opinions and I don’t think that any one president can handle everybody’s issues, but I do think a president can support the country,” Brown said.