Students sporting political T-shirts and “I voted” stickers ate “donkephant” cake and filled the Copenbarger Presidential Dining Room Nov. 6 during the Department of History and Government’s third election night party.
Joe DiGenova, junior pre-nursing major, voted in his first election and said he was excited about attending the event.
“It’s a pretty crucial election,” DiGenova said. “I became more interested in politics with the primaries and taking a political science class and getting to discuss it with my class- mates and everything.”
Students gathered around tables adorned with chips, salsa and American flag center- pieces filled with candy as a projector streamed “America’s Election HQ” from FOX News and an electoral tally courtesy of RealClearPolitics.com.
Keeping up the social media craze seen during this campaign season, party attendees across the dining room whipped out cell phones and laptops throughout the night to tweet, post Facebook statuses and keep up with other voices on the election.
FOX News reported as the event began that tweets about the election averaged over 63,000 per minute, and a peak total of 327,452 tweets per minute was report- ed by 8:19 p.m. PDT when President Barack Obama was re-elected, according to NBC Los Angeles.
As students settled in their seats with food and drinks, an unexpected visitor, Jamie Killion, assistant professor of music and Gov. Mitt Romney doppelgänger, elicited laughter and photo requests. After several people told Killion he resembled Romney, he elected himself as the Republican presidential candidate for a Halloween Sunday school party and, later, the election party.
The election night party event began with the 2008 presidential election and continued with the 2010 general election. Each event features a cake. This year’s confectionary delight was a vanilla cake with a strawberry center layer.
“I’m obviously very happy with the turnout,” said Dr. Chris McHorney, professor of political science and chair of the Department of History and Government. “The more students we have that are interested in politics, (the better) … We will continue to work and have this event every two years to watch the election returns and see our American democracy in action.”
As for Killion, he is back to directing New Song.
