Election day is over. Former president Donald Trump is the 2025 president-elect. Many students at WCU are feeling a variety of emotions.
“Some people have really strong emotions, either one way or another about it and then other people are just totally fine,” said Ellie Little, a studio art major.
Max Poku-Kankam, a fellow reporter for The Western Carolinian and a communication major said after Election Day you could tell who people voted for based on how they looked.
“I do find it sad that so many people have taken it so personally,” said Jacob Nottingham, a construction management major. “I don’t think an election loss for the candidate you vote for should be taken as a personal defeat.”
Feelings after the election were different for every student, but nearly all students’ main concern was the increase of sexist, homophobic and racist comments on social media.
Little posted a TikTok video on Nov. 6. Shortly after posting, she received objectifying and sexist comments. The comments were immediately deleted. She noticed throughout the day other women receiving similar comments on their posts.
Grace Oliver, an anthropology major, said she’s seen physical threats and hateful comments spread on social media towards women as well as members of the Latinx and LGBTQ+ communities.
Nottingham said that while he had not seen these comments, he does believe it’s a childish thing to do.
“I do have some conservative policies that I favor but in no way do I think that anyone should be told to get back in the kitchen like they’re a servant,” Nottingham said. “I think that kind of behavior is beyond childish.”
Hateful messages extended beyond social media. On Nov. 6, Black voters across the U.S. that registered with the Democratic party received a racist text message. Poku-Kankam was one of the voters who received the text.
“I never expected to get a text like that ever in my life. I’ve never gotten a text like that before, and I didn’t think I would get one that day,” said Poku-Kankam.
Students on campus feel that behaviors like sending those texts are disrespectful and lead society to take steps back instead of forward.
“It’s incredibly alarming that we have just gotten so bold with the amount of prejudice that we’re allowed to spew just because we have incredibly conservative people in our government and that this is almost becoming normalized in a way,” said Henry Andrade Fuentes, a commercial music and audio production major.
Despite growing hostility over social media, some WCU students still feel safe on campus.
“I still feel safe on campus—I don’t feel like I’ll ever be harmed here,” said Oliver.
Others said they no longer feel safe on campus.
“The way that we’ve seen students treated who are more radical, it makes me feel more unsafe on college campuses, especially this one that is more moderate. I feel unsafe as a queer person and as someone who comes from a family of immigrants as well,” said Fuentes.
If a student is ever in a situation where they are feeling unsafe on campus, call University Police at 828-227-7301 (non-emergency) or 828-227-8911 (emergency).
