Donald Trump claimed victory in the 2024 election and will become the 47th U.S. President — a result that has garnered mixed reactions from Ball State students. Some have expressed happiness while others are scared.
First-year finance major Elijah Conderman said he feels excited that Trump won, though he was initially shocked. However, Conderman described the way he feels about the future of America in just one word: worried.
“There is a mindset in this country that if this person votes differently from you, [then] they are a horrible person and you shouldn't interact with them. It is driving our country further apart, to the point where I am worried about a civil war,” Conderman said.
Conderman compared his reaction to Trump’s win to what he felt after his previous win in the 2016 presidential election. Back then, Conderman said he was ‘much younger’ and didn’t understand politics as well as he does now. Even so, Conderman saw Trump as “rude and unprofessional” but acknowledged he has since “done good to help the country.”
Emlyn Vo, a second-year public health and nursing student, said she was following live updates on her phone during election night.
“I woke up at 3 a.m., checked my phone and saw [the called race]. I felt the hope drain from my body,” Vo said. “ I closed [my phone] and went back to sleep. I’m just numb.”
Vo, who identifies as a queer person of color, was shocked Harris did not clench the victory.
“[Harris] was so qualified with her history in the government, law school and over a billion dollars of funding, I was sure she had it in the bag,” Vo said.
First-year architecture and planning student Haley Ayres was less shocked about the election outcome than her peers.
“[Harris] had four years to campaign as a comprehensive leader with the few positions she headed — she didn’t,” Ayres said.
She also said that even after Trump was declared the projected president-elect, her opinion of him hasn’t changed that much.
“… Even though he’s a terrible, horrible man, you find me someone more capable to get in the headspace of a high steaks role and I’ll vote for them. I’m glad he can’t run again,” Ayres said
Vivian Bostick, a first-year media student, was watching the live results come in over the newscast on election night.
“It felt like we were going backward. My family texted me apologies, but apologies can't change the election. Those Googling, ‘What is a tariff?’ and ‘How can I change my vote?’ can't change their vote. I felt depressed, however, that's a feeling I'm used to when it comes to politics, from both parties,” Bostick said.
Second-year pre-vet student Alex Ardizzone said he has stayed “very excited” for Trump’s second term, citing the economic improvements Trump enforced during his first term that make him feel “very hopeful for our future.”
Gabriel Simons, a second-year pre-engineering major, shared Arfizzone’s excitement for a second Trump presidency.
“[Trump] is a good leader and [has] shown he can do the right things to improve the country. People just believe the wildest propaganda I’ve ever seen,” Simons said, adding that political propaganda through the years has repeatedly distorted and “blown out of proportion” the power of the president.
“I’ve never seen [a country] so divided, and it had to be the most dramatic election in history,” he said.
According to April 2024 data from the Pew Research Center, voters are roughly evenly split between both Republican and Democrat political affiliations: 48 to 49 percent.
In the wake of drastic political division and opposition, Conderman has a solution.
“I think everybody just needs to be loved, whether you are a Republican, Democrat, man, woman, gay or trans[gender]. We may very well disagree on things, but at the end of the day we are all Americans, and we all deserve love from one another,” he said.
Contact Shelby Anderson via email at sanderson9@bsu.edu.
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