Students and faculty at San Diego State expressed the need to stay united in order to move forward after Donald Trump was elected president on Nov. 8, and after the recent hate crime against a Muslim woman on Nov. 9.
A community safety alert sent by SDSU Police said an SDSU student wearing a hijab was robbed by two males who made comments about Trump and the Muslim community.
The following day, a peaceful, anti-Trump protest took place on campus.
SDSU College Republicans chair Jordan Dennison, who has been vocal about disagreeing with Trump’s comments in the past, said when he heard of the hate crime, he sent an email to Muslim Student Association president Ahmed Buzeriba expressing his willingness to help.
He said he told Buzeriba he knew College Republicans and Muslim Student Association didn’t have the best relationship, but he was sorry for what had happened and wanted him to know he and SDSU College Republicans will move forward with him in anything they can do to help.
“There has to be open dialogue between opposing clubs,” Dennison said. “It goes beyond just a simple apology. It’s understanding each other’s organizations and our stances.”
The New York Times reported Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 47.8 percent, while Trump had 47.3 percent of the vote. Clinton’s lead in the popular vote is continuing to increase.
SDSU College Democrats president Divya Sriharan said they need to work with different people in order to stay united.
“We need to work with Republicans. We need to work with people who are different from us,” she said. “It was 50 percent of the country that felt so strongly about this. We need to move and work with them and help bridge the divide, and hopefully, we’ll end up in a better place in two years, four years.”
Department of Women’s Studies chair Doreen Mattingly said she was heart-sick and almost frozen when she realized Trump would be the next president.
She said people can not pick themselves up individually, but have to pick each other up and move forward.
Since Nov. 8, the night Trump won the election, anti-Trump protests erupted and are are continuing across the country.
Mattingly said she thinks protests are vital, and many changes have been brought about because of people on the streets.
“It keeps people alive because you have to have a space where you can say what you’re feeling and see that other people feel it too,” she said.
On Nov. 14, the Women’s Resource Center hosted a post-election discussion in the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union Theater to offer a space for students and faculty to talk with each other and move forward.
Members of the campus community had the opportunity to get up on stage and talk about groups they were interested in forming in order to progress.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, and what happens next is going to depend so much on our ability to form new networks,” Mattingly said. “We need to get off of Facebook and get in rooms of people.”
Liberal studies senior Elena Gutierrez said it’s people’s jobs to respect one another and make the right decisions within their community.
“I think we have to stay together as a community and realize we are all equal,” she said.
Journalism and media studies sophomore Ashley Stout said being a journalism major now is hard because the media has put journalists in a bad light, but journalists need to proceed with bringing out the positivity in media.
“You have to put yourself out in a good, positive light,” Stout said. “Talk about what needs to be done, and not from one side or the other but all around. We can’t feed to the negativity the media is giving right now.”
