As students continue to navigate through their schedules for the spring 2024 semester, a central focus emerges on the horizon for them – the 2024 Presidential Election. It is not just a distant event; it strictly demands the attention and engagement of college students and young voters who want to make a change in the new age.

Capturing the essence of a student’s perspective adds depth to the understanding of the implications of the presidential election during the college experience and underscores the urgency for active engagement in shaping the future.

“I feel like we are at a crossroad,” said junior Ty Roberts, a broadcast journalism major.  “This is a chance for America to have a younger set of candidates from each party and to take the mantle. Mind you, the two candidates have not been confirmed yet, so there are still races to be won.  However, if it comes down to Donald Trump vs. Joseph Biden people must ask themselves who do want to lead you, and who solved more problems in their four years.”

Jasmine Snell, another broadcast journalism major, agrees with Roberts about a younger presidential candidate for this generation.

“I think that it should be a age gap limit for presidential candidates, and that is because I think the world changes too quickly,” Snell said. “So, I think that we need someone (a candidate) that is in this generation that can connect with the newer generation. Honestly, the newer generations are the ones that are going to rule the world.  You want to connect to your generations, if you can not keep up with the worldly changes, that’s a problem.”

With Roberts and Snell believing like this election is an opportunity for change, there are some students like freshman Brooklyn Jones, a music education major, who believes the country is need of a younger candidate from a strategic standpoint.

“With Joe Biden’s age, I honestly do not feel like he needs to be in power,” Jones said.  “I feel as if we need somebody that’s younger that can actually understand what Americans need, not what we want to see the government do.  People would like to look at it as ‘ok, I want more money here, or I want to be able to have more food stamps or better housing,’ but we’re not pinpointing major issues within, like education, and I hope it goes in the right direction.”

Senior broadcast journalism major Deshawn Wallace, takes a look back at the 2016 Presidential Election and provides her opinion based on that election year.

“With elections in the past, especially in 2016, I feel that manipulation was the reason he (Trump) won. Allegations of voter’s suppression led people to believe that their voices were being silenced,” Wallace said.  “The government already knows who is going to win, and it creates a lack of trust for us to be voting since the most popular candidates win.”

However, some students feel nervous about the whole election this year and do not know what to make of some of the candidates this year.

“I’m not even going to lie, I’m kind of nervous because, personally, I would like for a Democrat to be our president, but President Joe Biden is up there in age and just looking at his speeches, he seems to be all over the place,” said junior legal studies major, Kymesha Thompson. “So right now, I don’t really know what to expect with this upcoming election because right now it’s looking a little scary, I’m not going to lie.”

Some students, like junior psychology major Ty’Queria Evans, shared their strong views on former President Donald Trump running for the Republican nomination for this upcoming election.

“I don’t understand why he’s running this year,” Evans said. “I thought we gave up on that, but I think more states are going to start taking him off the ballot because his reputation is not good.  A lot of states could understand that bad reputations bring bad baggage, and we don’t need that. We got a lot already. We’re already still in debt, and we don’t need to be more in debt with this man.

Freshman business management major Shanice Ware, who has similar strong views about Trump, also gives her opinion on President Joe Biden running again for the 2024 Presidential Election.

“I feel like this upcoming presidential election is going to bring a lot of chaos, especially to the states, because you have a lot of people who are for Trump. They think he’s a good businessman, but I think he’s an awful person because of all the legal stuff he’s been through, all the stuff that he’s been prosecuted for and that he’s literally been impeached. So, it’s like why would you want someone to go back to that after they’ve been impeached,” Ware said.  “At the same time, Biden is almost as old as dirt, so it seems like he’s getting to the point of being incoherent because of his age. It’s kind of like a lose-lose situation, at this point.”

With many students giving their opinions on what they want in a presidential candidate and who they do or do not want in office for 2024,  junior rehabilitation services major Landon Hale, who also serves as president of the Student Government Association, gave his thoughts on what the student body should be looking for in a candidate and as a college student in this upcoming presidential election.

“I feel as if the election will be very pivotal, something that we have to pay really close attention to considering college students have a lot of things at risk in this upcoming election like Pell Grant and things like that on the line,” Hale said. “So making sure that we do go out and vote is very essential to this upcoming election.”