NH Field Trip: Mitt Romney

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:

ABC News

CBS News

National Journal

The town hall three hours before the event

NH Field Trip: Jon Huntsman

After a two and a half hour bus ride (during which we played Clinton campaign documentary The War Room), we finally arrived in Tilton, NH to attend a Jon Huntsman townhall event. I was surprised to find that our students actually made up about 70% of the attendance! Other attendees included older locals, media crews and a smaller group of students from Harvard. The presence of many young people also played into Huntsman’s speech, in which he made some references about the previous administrations passing along unresolved issues to our generation. During the Q&A session, several SMC students were able to get their questions answered by Governer Huntsman – especially SGAC who were able to ask four questions about American foreign aid towards eradicating HIV-AIDS in Africa. Other questions addressed a pipeline in Texas that crossed Native American territory, immigration security issues, policies involving climate change and civil unions. 


And here's a Dallas News article on St. Michael's College students taking a photo with Huntsman! 

SGAC leader Nick talks to Huntsman about funding for AIDS prevention in Africa

Mary-Kaye Huntsman, Jon Huntsman's wife, chats with SMC students