The most heated event of our first day was definitely the Hopkinton Town Hall meeting with Mitt Romney. Though we had encountered an arguably more conservative Jon Huntsman earlier, our meeting with him was much more subdued because of the way he expressed his opinions. Mitt Romney seemed to be more strategic about his answers; he didn't seem to care much about pleasing students since he knew that we weren't part of this specific voting district (or supportive of the GOP for that matter) and tried to appeal much more to the older folks, who you can see sitting in the front rows.
Of the 60-ish students on the trip, most of us shared liberal views and some of us were deeply frustrated or even offended by his strong opinions on women's choice and same-sex relationships. It was also clear from the largely conservative crowd at the meeting that some of our 'liberal' questions were not welcome. However, SGAC was able to get a bit of limelight by asking Romney so many questions on AIDS funding that they eventually were able to read him their proposition on how to fund AIDS prevention. We also had quite a few of our students ask him multiple questions on gay rights - but since the media covered the sparring between St. Michael's students and Mitt Romney, you can read all about it in the news:
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| The town hall three hours before the event |
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