Pre-Election Lessons Prepare Seniors

For a self-professed political junkie, nothing is more exciting than teaching during a presidential election. Upper school history teacher Colleen Roche says there has been a lot of challenging ground to cover. 

“The rise in voter suppression, disinformation and the deep partisan divide all make it difficult to convey the promise of the system to my students. But I believe strongly that we cannot change the system unless we are informed, and I am counting on my students to change it someday!” 
  
Roche assigned a project for her Political Science class this semester about weaknesses in the electoral system. “The Weaknesses project has shown me that the determinant of the election — the democratic process — is in grave danger, and will undoubtedly be severely impacted by the pandemic, like mail-in voting, etc.,” said Andrew Hack ’21.

Whatever the outcome, these seniors understand the importance of it all too well. “For me, this election will determine how we handle the pandemic, the environment and health care moving forward,” said Russell Wohl ’21. Added Hack, “A Trump win would mean his impact would be cemented into our country for the foreseeable future, and a Biden win would see the reversal of many of Trump’s policies and the implementation of a fairly progressive agenda.”

Through it all Roche has managed to squeeze in some Election Day fun. At the suggestion of Junhe (Jackie) Yao ’21, she is running a friendly class competition to see who can predict the presidential winner, not just the Electoral College total but the state-by-state results as well. Henry Schatz ’21 said, “I plan on spending part of the weekend researching battleground states and hopefully I will win the contest!"

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