Commons Coversations: Politics, Star Wars, lunch among diverse topics students discuss
By Lukas Myers
Staff Writer
SPRINGFIELD – You walk through the A.Lincoln Commons and the topics can be diverse. One group is discussing sports. Another is discussing lunch. Another politics. Another the military.
The topics are varied and conversations at times intense, but a walk through the Commons on Nov. 4 found a few topics drew quick interest: the presidential election and Star Wars.
The 2014 midterm elections saw the all-time lowest voter turnout for voters aged 18 to 29, with fewer than 20 percent casting ballots. Many political analysts have stated that this is likely a result of a “my vote doesn’t matter” mentality.
But many of students in the Commons had a strong opinion on the upcoming election.
Christian Bloome, a student at LLCC, sees the race as basically being between Clinton and Trump and said he will not be voting in the next presidential election.
“It’s gonna happen no matter what I do,” Bloome said.
On the other side of the lobby was Martha Maruna who said she would definitely be voting in the upcoming election. She said that she sees herself as part of the whole, and for the whole to work correctly, she has to take part in it.
Maruna, an art/design major, said, “The more people that vote, the more capable of making a change we are: It’s a matter of opportunity.”
Maruna is currently backing Republican presidential nominee Ben Carson, as well as looking into Carly Fiorina, who she said might be too stern but could be a good president.
On the liberal side of things, there is Solomon Tolley who follows the political field fairly closely.
Tolley is mulling between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton for whom he will vote in the upcoming election. He sees both sides of the argument: He would love to see our first woman president, but the progressive side of him finds Sanders very appealing.
“Bernie would be a great president, but I am not sure if America is ready for his ideas,” said Solomon, president of the Gay Straight Alliance at LLCC. “I am obviously very liberal, so that will be a deciding factor in who I vote for.”
Tolley believes that voting is something everyone should do, but he is troubled by the Electoral College.
“It all just comes down to that [the college] right? That’s just scary,” he said.
Despite being on different side of the political spectrum, Maruna and Tolley share concerns about the value placed on getting a “degree” in Western societies.
“You can get a degree if you want, but it doesn’t prove you’re better than anyone else,” Maruna said.
Not everyone in the lobby had an opinion on the political field, Chris Barry, LLCC’s director of retention and student success, knows already how he will be voting and has spent more of his time focusing on family and the Seahawks.
There is one thing that everyone in the lobby does seem to have an opinion on though, and that is the new Star Wars movie.
“I can feel it, like it’s something smoldering in the distance,” said Barry, who does not look forward to the movie. “The prequels just did not stand up to the old movies.”
Kevin Carman said he knows more about Star Wars than he does about the political elections.
Star Wars is entertainment, Carman said, and unfortunately, the same can be said about politics far too often.
“People like to be entertained, that’s why the wrong people get put into office,” Carman said. “I get most of my political knowledge from social media, and that is just not a reliable place for the future of our country to come from.”
To Carman, Star Wars is a simple thing and people can just go to be entertained.
In regards to the controversy over the new film’s casting a female villain and a black actor portraying a Stormtrooper, Carman said: “Who cares? Aren’t we as a society past that? So the guy’s black. And the woman, what’s the complaint, her armor is not ‘feminine enough?’ C’mon.”
Terrell Jackson, a student at LLCC, disagrees with riding off the sociopolitical implications of the new casting in the popular science fiction franchise, “I think there definitely needs to be a bigger push for diversity in Hollywood.”
Jackson has always hated Star Wars and has always thought it was boring but said he will definitely be going to see this new movie because of the controversy over a person of color in the previously whitewashed film series that featured very few or no persons of color at all.
While most people would like to see a separation between politics and entertainment, the overall truth of the matter seems closer to Jackson’s take on things: No matter how divided the two categories seem, everything, even Star Wars, is politics.
Lukas Myers can be reached at [email protected].