Students gathered for seven hours in the Walter Cronkite School’s Theater to participate in an unprecedented partnership between Facebook and ABC, resulting in ABC’s live election town hall on Tuesday.
“There is a notion that children are disengaged,” said comedian DL Hughley, one of the featured guests of the night. “I think these young people showed that they are different.”
ABC News correspondent David Muir, with the help of Cronkite senior Natalie Podgorski, led panels and discussions on the pressing issues of the election such as immigration, health care and the legalization of medical marijuana. Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s director of marketing, added to the discussions by monitoring what Facebook users were posting about the election and by predicting the outcome of the election based on how many “likes” each candidate received on his or her Facebook page.
“Overall, I’m glad that it was a fair and balanced take, if you will,” said Joshua Egan, a second-year law student in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
Egan added that he admired the fact that Muir “crossed the aisle” multiple times during the coverage, and unlike many of the attendees Egan said he was pleased with the election results, saying that he likes it “when the balance of power shifts.”
Students from at least three of the four campuses attended the event and Veekas Shrivastava, an economics sophomore and member of the Undergraduate Student Government of the Tempe campus, attributed that to the work that the Arizona Students’ Association did to get students registered to vote.
“There’s lots of talk about less enthusiasm,” he said, “but ASA has done such a great job (getting students registered).”
Jessica Walker, a communications and political science junior, said students “really do care, and that is something that has changed.”
Contact the reporter at evie.carpenter@asu.edu
