This year’s election season has been dramatic and tumultuous, but a quick glance at election cycles of yore reveal that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Stute archives reveal a long history of political engagement at Castle Point. In the spirit of the theme of this week’s edition, this piece takes a look at past campus reporting on elections and what it says about the university’s relationship with the broader arc of American history.
Strong negativity regarding the major candidates is not a new development, according to past news and opinion pieces. Shortly following the 1980 election, a prominent article entitled “Political Commentary” despaired over the quality of the two major candidates, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and justified the writer’s choice to vote for the independent John Anderson, who enjoyed particular support among college students that year. Before the election, one writer said that anyone thinking of voting to reelect President Carter “should get his head examined,” and simultaneously noted that he disagreed with Reagan on almost every issue.
To what extent does the student body align with the American public at large? A front-page piece on October 20, 1972 called on Stevens students to side with George McGovern for his antiwar position, noting “For anyone wishing to help, the McGovern Headquarters in Hoboken is located at 11 Washington Street.” McGovern would go on to lose in a landslide to incumbent Richard Nixon. Similarly popular among American students was antiwar Democrat Eugene McCarthy in 1968, whose visit to Seton Hall was reported on with great gusto that April. That reporting marked a quick transformation in Stevens student opinion, which had previously been largely conservative. The top headline preceding the 1964 Presidential Election noted that “Stutemen” favored Republican candidate Barry Goldwater by a margin of 74% to 26%. Goldwater ultimately lost to President Lyndon Johnson by an enormous margin.
Prominent campus visits included then-House Minority Leader and future U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1968, who told Stevens students that “our generation’s record is not as good as we would like it to be, now it is up to your generation.” The next year, Kennedy advisor Theodore Sorenson gave a packed-house lecture to Ducks decrying the state of American politics at the time, citing the violence and division that convulsed the country in 1968.
While most students perceive Stevens as a relatively apolitical university today, the revolutionary spirit of the ‘60s can be seen in many of the front-page stories of the time. Like at most American universities, the issue of the Vietnam War permanently hovered over campus. A major antiwar demonstration was held by Stevens and faculty in the fall of 1969. The next semester, enormous sections of each edition’s paper was dedicated to reporting on the state of the environment in conjunction with the national adoption of Earth Day. Just the next month, the infamous Kent State killings triggered a wave of sit-ins and student protests. The front page of The Stute paints a picture of a campus practically brought to a standstill by unrest and continuous strikes. That fall’s first headline read “[President] Davis Decries Campus Unrest.”
In more recent history, it was reported in 2016 that a new College Democrats Club was forming in response to the results of that November’s election, with the goal of competing with the existing College Republican Club. Today, that organization is known as the College Democrats of Stevens, while the College Republican Club has been apparently inactive for several years. Other articles expressed shock at Trump’s unexpected victory over heavy favorite Hillary Clinton and speculated what the upset results portended for the future of the country.
A lot has changed in the political landscape over the past several decades, but some refrains appear perennial. This week’s edition displays the issues and events most important to the Stevens student today, continuing the university’s long tradition of notable—if relatively quiet—participation in the conflicts, catharses, and consternations of American election cycles.
