In the early hours of Wednesday, Nov. 6, national news outlets called the 2024 presidential election for former President Donald Trump. As the election finally came to a close last week, Middlebury community members’ responses ranged from disappointed and anxious to celebratory.
On election night, many students gathered in The Grille, where MiddVotes hosted a watch party with commentary from Professor of Political Science Bert Johnson. As the night progressed, tensions rose as the fate of the race became clear.
Laura McDow ’26, who volunteered for the Harris campaign and serves as communications director for MiddVotes, described her difficult experience with election night.
“I started out in The Grille just to be there… That was great, it was really fun. It was fun to be there as Vermont was called for Harris and all of those elections. As someone who is from North Carolina, I was ready to be there if things were going to go great,” she said. “As things started to not seem great, I was like: I need to leave.”
The morning after, the dismay among many students was palpable on campus, according to Noah Plummer ’28.
“You could definitely tell that something was off on campus, no one really returned my waves, and it seemed like pretty much everyone was in shock,” he said.
Norah Khan ’27, co-president of Middlebury College Democrats, articulated the sadness she felt that day, saying it felt like she had a pit in her stomach.
“When I saw that [the results], it felt surreal because I didn't want to accept it. I didn't want to think about what that was going to mean for our country, for me, for the people in the communities I'm part of,” Khan said.
Not everyone was upset about the results. Joseph Jacobsen ’27, president of Middlebury College Republicans, which had campaigned for Trump in the months leading up to the election, told The Campus that most of the club was excited about the results on a national and local level.
“It’s amazing, I think it really shows that Vermonters wanted a change,” he said, referring to Republican candidates’ wins across Vermont. “We’re excited to see what Trump can do to help fix some of the issues in the country.”
On Wednesday, several classes paused to process the intense emotions felt by the student body. School-sponsored, supportive programming began in the lead-up to the election and continued on election night and in the days that followed, emphasizing positive habits for mental health.
To many, the election results were surprising; however, for Professor of Political Science Matthew Dickinson, the Electoral College result — Trump’s 312 votes to Harris’s 226 — made sense given the political models he had been watching closely.
“We knew going into the night that it was very close, both nationally in the popular vote, and in those seven key swing states,” Dickinson said in an interview with The Campus.
Dickinson added that, while the Harris campaign’s closing argument revolved around defending democracy, he is not personally concerned about President-elect Trump’s threat to democracy.
“The Framers set up a system that made it hard to get things done without an overwhelming consensus, otherwise incremental change is about the best we can get,” Dickinson said. “It is very hard for an individual, even one with authoritarian tendencies, to suspend civil liberties, so I do not worry at all for democracy or the suspension of civil liberties.”
Yet for many students, worries about Trump’s victory go far beyond the state of democracy. Students expressed their concerns about climate change, racial equity, healthcare access, safety for undocumented workers and support for LGBTQ+ communities.
Khan told The Campus she worries that with control over all three branches of government, the Trump administration will be able to execute many of the anti-immigrant policies it advocated for during its campaign.
“A lot of the measures that his [Trump’s] administration is going to take, either mass deportations or some form of restrictions for these people in our country, that's going to have a terrible impact on pretty much every aspect of every industry,” she said.
Elio Farley ’24.5 is a community organizer whose work spans several causes, including coordinating MiddPride, a youth-centered rural pride celebration in Middlebury last month. For Farley, the results of the election reflected the fear and hopelessness that many live with daily.
“The day after the election I taught a trans kid how I cut my hair. I helped him give himself a haircut. He actually felt good with this hair. I am trying to teach the queer kids in my life to not make themselves small. People are really scared right now. I honor that. I feel that. I have been scared my whole life,” Farley wrote in an email to The Campus.
Oakley Martin ’25 is a volunteer with the Trevor Project’s crisis line, which offers around-the-clock support to LGBTQ+ youth. The night after the election, she worked a volunteer shift, during which the hotline experienced a 700% increase in contacts; the majority of people who contacted the organization attributed their concerns to the election. As an activist, Martin said that the election did raise the urgency of her work, but she also spoke to the importance of endurance — recognizing that the issues of this election span further than one presidential administration.
“I want it [my work] to be sustainable and not a one to two-month sprint right in the aftermath of the election. I want to be able to continue that across the many, many years, because even as national administrations come and go, a lot of these issues are still really present at really small levels, within families and in state politics,” Martin said.
For organizers and activists like Farley and Martin, the work of supporting communities most impacted by this election did not start on Nov. 6, and will not end no matter who the president is.
“We have the skills to keep each other safe, albeit imperfectly. We have been preparing for an acceleration of violence, especially because north of White River Junction is ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] special privilege territory,” Farley wrote, referring to ICE’s broad authority within much of the state of Vermont.
Despite resounding disappointment and demoralization, many students view the results of the election as clarifying their values and motivating their goals. For McDow, the election’s results have affirmed her career goals.
“My major is in migration, and I want to go into migration law. This is a huge impact on that field of work, it seems more necessary now than ever,” she explained.
Farley expressed how the election has invigorated him to continue being creative in his organizing efforts as a means of resistance.
“My brain has been in strategy mode: How do we get people to know their own power when they feel overwhelming fear? How do we onboard and plug folks in to the work that is already being done?” he wrote.
Middlebury President Laurie Patton addressed the election results at the faculty meeting on Friday, Nov. 8, where she echoed the importance of targeted support for the most impacted communities.
“Some of those that we need to support at a time of vulnerability: Our faculty, staff and students who are underrepresented, those who are employees of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, students who are LGBTQIA, DACA, those on an international visa. Each of those student populations — and many others, I’m just talking about the most vulnerable right now — given the agenda, we'll need it to be thought about and addressed in very specific ways. There's no one-size-fits-all here,” Patton said.
Across the spectrum of political beliefs and election reactions, students and community members spoke to a need for unity and visibility, in terms of diverse identities and political beliefs.
Helena Gu ’25 and Audrey Park ’25 emphasized the increasing importance of escaping Internet and social echo chambers to find common political understanding in the wake of the election results.
“Over the past two or three months, my social media, my TikTok, has given me all these happy videos that support Kamala… that make you feel so confident about them winning,” Gu said. “And then the election comes, and it’s like somebody blew a bubble this big for you and then popped it right on election night.”
Park said she hopes that the Democratic Party will learn from their country-wide losses and change their messaging to be more inclusive rather than angry towards Trump voters.
“I believe that this is a time where we need to actively find ways to relate to one another in order to cut out this polarization,” she said.
From a political science perspective, Dickinson said he believes the election may make Americans perceive more division than actually exists.
“The election results make us look more divided than we really are. Our choices may be divided, but our politics really aren’t. Trump supporters also have a lot more in common with Harris supporters than they might realize,” Dickinson said.
Aside from political divisions, the election will also likely impact institutions of higher education. Jacobsen, the president of Middlebury Republicans, praised Trump’s policies on cultural issues and especially the president-elect’s approach in the liberal arts.
“One part of Trump’s platform is to restore classical liberal arts education and to combat some of what the right typically perceives as wokeism or elitism in the liberal arts that is denigrating what the liberal arts should really be about,” Jacobsen said, continuing that he hopes Trump will take steps to promote free speech in liberal arts environments.
During the election, Trump outlined plans to restrict classroom discussion; under his previous administration, he proposed several billion-dollar cuts to the Department of Education.
In her address to faculty, Patton highlighted the undeniable threat that institutions like Middlebury now face in the wake of the 2024 election.
“Staying grounded in those local communities will help us humanize those with different political views at the same time, even if we disagree on issues. We have to fight like hell right now for higher education and our students,” Patton said. “There is no other option.”
Maggie Bryan '25 (she/her) is the Senior News Editor.
Maggie is a senior at Middlebury, majoring in Environmental Policy and French. She previously held roles as Senior Arts and Culture Editor, Arts and Culture Editor, and Staff. During her free time, she loves running, listening to live music, drinking coffee, and teaching spin classes. She is from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
