In the aftermath of the presidential election, the Register Forum interviewed many CRLS students, hoping to gauge how they were feeling, and how the results impacted them. Below are the stories of some of the students interviewed.
For senior Jacques Marsh, the election was devastating. “I was just immediately depressed. I couldn’t do anything for the next two days,” he said. “It’s just affecting everything that I do.”
When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Marsh had a severe depressive episode. “I’m transgender,” he said, “and I was so terrified.” Now, Marsh feels “numb to everything” but terrified all the same. “I’m scared that I’m not going to be able to continue with hormone therapy. I’m really scared that my friends’ families are going to be affected,” he told the Register Forum. Marsh is equally anxious about the Project 2025 plan to dismantle the Department of Education. “If I can’t get financial aid, I definitely won’t be able to go to college, which I really want to do,” he said. “I’m so scared for myself and all the people around me.”
Freshman Damir Arman is more ambivalent about Trump’s victory, explaining, “I don’t like all his policies but I like some of them.”
“Trump is really relatable. He’s Christian like me, that’s why I like him,” Arman said. “While Trump was president, it was a peaceful time in the world,” he added. “He doesn’t want wars in other countries. That’s why I like him. I’m standing for peace.”
Lio, who preferred not to share his last name for privacy reasons, also feels ambivalent, but for different reasons. “I generally just don’t have the capacity to process it at the moment,” he said. “I don’t think I can mentally comprehend it.”
“A lot of people are very upset — to the point where they’re crying — and a lot of them are excited. I’m not as upset as they are. I think a lot of people are really, really scared,” Lio added. “One of my very close friends is undocumented,” he told the Register Forum, and “it’s definitely really scary for them because they’re more at risk of getting deported now.”
On his hands, Lio wears colorful rings on each finger, twisted from strips of lab tape. He has Canadian citizenship, and his friends made the rings so that they’d be “married” to Lio and would be able to go and run away to Canada with him. “It’s sort of a joke, but it’s really not, because a lot of people are just scared living here, especially those who have marginalized identities,” he said.
For Calvin Lewis ’25, the election has changed his future — he is now applying to many colleges outside of the United States because of the results. “I know for me, as a person of color, as an LGBTQ person, that my rights to exist are under threat because of Donald Trump’s presidency,” he told the Register Forum.
With that said, “one thing that I’m reminding myself, reminding my friends, is that this is not the end. This is far from over, right? We’re really just at the beginning,” Lewis noted. “Regardless of whether one supports Republican, Democrat, or Independent parties or politicians, our democracy can make it past these next four years, and we can have the opportunity to continue the great American democracy as we know it.”
This article also appears in our November 2024 print edition.
