Students, professors prepare for tense election night

According to Geoffrey Glover, a teaching professor at Pitt, the election season thus far has been “an absolute roller coaster” — which is also how people felt on Election Day.

“We’ve had a couple of very dramatic shifts in terms of the candidates and arguments and narratives,” Glover said. 

All Pitt classes, except labs, were asynchronous on Tuesday in observance of Election Day. Glover hoped that his students used their day to “actually, first and foremost, practice self-care because it is super tense.”

In lieu of meeting virtually, Glover gave his students a range of questions and discussions. He assigned these questions on Friday so they could do their work over the weekend and “clear space for Tuesday.”

“I wanted to give my students control over their schedule at the beginning of the week,” Glover said, “control of when and where they’re doing their work. And I wanted them to prioritize thinking about their own mental well-being.”

Glover describes the balance of energy as a “spoon” you start the day with. He also has a parallel theory to explain how much people can take, called the “fork theory.” 

“The idea is that every single annoyance, every small, kind of petty or not so small problems … they’re little, they’re forks — different sized forks that stick in us,” Glover said. “It may be that you can take, on one day, 40 forks and be fine. The next day you may only be able to take two before you snap, right?”

The fork theory applies to the 2024 presidential election, according to Glover. 

“There are large swaths of the population that actually feel like, you know, that their autonomy, their liberty and their personal selves are actually under attack,” Glover said. “And my goal with running classes is to preserve student energy, right? Preserve the spoons and give people time to deal with the forks.”

According to Glover, students in his classes planned to spend their Election Day watching fantasy movies, avoiding cooking, sleeping, cleaning, being with friends and so forth. They’ll be using the day to “escape the complexity of dealing with folks, family members, friends, neighbors, who aren’t going to vote the same way [they] are,” Glover said. 

Alison Randa, a junior urban planning major, planned to spend her Election Night “probably shaking in fear but also having fun with my friends.”

“It could be a last hurrah, it could be the beginning of something great. You just kind of got to party it out, I guess,” said Randa. “We’re probably going to drink some wine, watch the election coverage, probably gonna scream a lot and annoy my next-door neighbors.” 

Political groups on campus, including College Democrats at Pitt and College Republicans at Pitt, held watch parties for the election results. Jacob McWilliams, a junior political science and public policy major and the political coordinator for College Democrats at Pitt, said he is both “excited and stressed.”

“We’re going to have a watch party and stress over the polls,” McWilliams said.

According to McWilliams, he and over 30 volunteers with College Democrats at Pitt spent Election Day “covering every poll.”

“We’re going to be handing out literature, encouraging people to vote for Kamala Harris —  hopefully stop Trump once and for all,” McWilliams said. “I think it’s definitely going to come down to turnout at this point. If we can get college students to vote — which we’ve been tabling every day [for], trying to get them to vote — I think we can win it, but no guarantees.”

Kasey Brown, a junior economics and mathematics major, felt “a little nervous,” but had hope in the youth vote. 

“I’m excited because I think we’re going to win,” Brown said. “I do think that all of this hard work we’ve been doing is going to pay off. I think young people are really going to carry us over the finish line … young people definitely seem a lot more energized for this election than they ever have.” 

Brown spent her election night at the Pitt Dems watch party. She also planned to code a computer model “so that we can have estimates as results come in during Election Day.”

Andrew Orenberg, a third-year doctoral candidate, planned to watch the election night results with his partner while drinking a bottle of wine. 

“[If my party wins, I’ll be] drinking more wine,” Warnberg said. “[If not,] I’ll probably put together a really nice playlist … and listen to it in my headphones while I grasp the gravity of the situation.” 

Axel Helfand, first-year undeclared student, planned on watching the election in his dorm with friends. If the candidate Helfand voted for wins, he would like to “party,” and if his candidate loses he will “stare at a wall for a couple of hours.”

Surrounding yourself with friends is something that Glover recommends. The importance of surrounding oneself with positive people during a stressful time is “an often overlooked coping mechanism,” Glover said. 

“We’re in an environment now, especially with Pitt being so large, that you can find your tribe no matter what identifying characteristic you use,” Glover said. “And that is, I think, the strength of our school.”