College Columnists Weigh in on Hillary's Tears, Early Results

The primary season has kicked into full gear, and with the early results from Iowa and New Hampshire pointing to increased turnout among college-aged voters, it's worth looking to the op/ed sections of college newspapers to see what this voting bloc is thinking about the election and the candidates.

During the early part of the election cycle, I read way too many columns crediting candidates with qualities they didn't actually have -- nothing quite clouds the eyes like that first bloom of intellectual inquiry. Now that there is actual news on the campaign scene to report, college opinion writers are showing more of their mettle.

One topic that college opinion writers have honed in on (and the mainstream media has ignored in favor of covering the horserace) is the importance everyone has placed on these early contests. It's not perfectly efficient -- indeed, it might be a little silly -- to put so much stock in what tiny states like Iowa and New Hampshire think just because their election days come earlier on in the process. Young writers are confused by this, and in more than a few cases outraged. "It is safe to assume that the interests of the farming industry and of European Americans will continue to be overrepresented as long as Iowa and New Hampshire maintain their current tone-setting status," writes Matias Ramos of The Daily Bruin at UCLA. Not only does the primary process undermine democracy, but it also wastes money, says a Michigan Daily editorial: "The front-loaded primary schedule makes it so that legitimate contenders must launch their campaigns months in advance. While this continuous campaign is exhausting and trivial, it's also expensive."

It's for others to debate whether the candidates would really start campaigning any later were the first primaries to be moved back, but the really sharp student writers realize that maintaining proper perspective is the first (and maybe the only needed) step in reforming the process. Taking too much stock in results from Iowa and New Hampshire is foolish, but simply tuning out the election process altogether isn't the answer either. Engagement in American democracy requires being aware of the wrinkles of the system. These little tiny states are indeed wielding undue influence if voters in larger states blindly select their candidate based on whom was first past the post in the earlier votes. "The voters should not simply fall in line with what the voters in another state choose to do, despite how easy it may be to do so," says a Central Florida Future staff editorial.

It's the voice of the college journalist reminding us how few electoral votes Iowa and New Hampshire really merit that helps us in part to keep track of the news from the first few primaries while remembering to make our own decisions in our own. One writer, Kai Stinchcombe of the Stanford Daily, is even willing to take the unpopular stance that the "triathlon primary" is the best available system: "The retail politics running race isn't the deciding contest, so candidates can also compete on TV, through fund-raising, building endorsements, and competing for coverage. Retail-politics states like Iowa are still relevant, but no longer decisive, and big-media-buy states like California are now relevant -- not instead, but as well."

Given how Hillary Clinton has struggled to gain much momentum in young voter circles, I was curious to see what college pundits thought of the New York Senator's crying jag incident before the New Hampshire primary. There were three ways to go with Clinton's tears, I felt -- you could believe that they were genuine with a noble motivation, genuine with a selfish motivation ("No FAIR! It's my TURN to be president!"), or completely false and politically calculated. Given the flights of Machiavellian genius that college political columnists habitually credit George W. Bush for, I expected more skepticism. Perhaps it's just that some schools still remain on winter break this early in the year, but support for Senator Clinton was pretty universal. "It appeared genuine.... Voters saw her passion, and in a manner many rank-and-file voters could have only connected with, Hillary's role seemed reversed to that of an underdog battling against a media establishment favorite," wrote Zach Han of the California Aggie. Others saw it as a reminder of lost American ideals: "Under the present system, a show of emotion amounts to a crack in the gleaming, vapid exterior to reveal the hopes, worries, and humanity that underlie it.... Politics should be dynamic and complex, honest, and irreducible to simple stereotypes. The same thing goes for our next president." (Jessica A. Sequeira, The Harvard Crimson)

It's good to be reminded that I can't always anticipate what college kids will have to say about the latest election news. I am a little disappointed, though... after weeks of dreamy writing about no-hopers (mostly Ron Paul), I've been anxiously awaiting the point where the kids would start getting their knives out for the front-runners. I hope I'm not wrong in imagining that it won't be much longer of a wait.