The Compassion Forum at Messiah College

On Sunday night Messiah College hosted The Compassion Forum for the presidential candidates. While all the candidates were invited only Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama accepted their invitations. As the name, and the name of the host, suggests the forum dealt with faith driven issues from human rights to global warming to abortion. The event was attended by about 1000 people lucky enough to get tickets but was also broadcast live by CNN.

Being a Messiah College student myself I was quite excited about the forum and though I was unable to procure a ticket to the event I was able watch the forum from the student union (along with several hundred other students). Since I am the political programming director for 90.7 wvmm, our college radio station, before, during, and after the forum I interviewed multiple students on air to try and gauge their sentiments about the candidates, their answers to the questions, and the forum itself.

Through these interviews and other interactions I’ve had on campus, including class discussions, some things have become clear to me. Mainly this, that, despite political differences and candidate favoritism, many students actually agreed on several major issues. And while this might not seem all that surprising to those outside of the college, for me, a junior politics major, it was a bit unexpected. After all Messiah is a school in which there is a clear ideological, theological, and political divide between students, with (at least moderately) conservative evangelicals being the majority and outspoken liberals who tend to be more focused on social justice being the minority. Needless to say, on campus it is often hard to find a consensus on any issue.

Despite this it seems that students were able to agree on several things in regards to The Compassion Forum. First and foremost everyone saw the forum itself as a great way to embolden student interest in presidential campaign and politics in general. The competition for tickets and the overwhelming turn out at “student watch parties” proved that sentiment to be true. And, of course, everyone was in agreement that this was a great way to boost Messiah’s prestige. Live global coverage of the event by CNN with write ups in all the national media outlets proves that sentiment to be correct as well. But the general harmony on these positives weren’t the only agreements I noticed, there were in fact many other, more specific, ways in which most agreed.

For starters, many students thought that the candidates were both treated fairly but, at the same time, they felt that Hillary had it a little bit easier than Obama. However, they felt that difference was not due to any sort of bias but rather due to the current controversies surrounding Obama which needed to be further expounded upon.

Most students also agreed on the performance of both the candidates. The general consensus was that Hillary came off as more fluent, though somewhat disingenuous. And, conversely, they perceived Barack as more genuine but were a little hung up on several extended pauses and stumbles he made.

However, as I alluded to earlier, not everyone was in agreement on everything. In fact students were quite divided on how well they thought the candidates answered the questions. Some thought that Hillary Clinton had a strong performance especially when answering questions on suffering and climate change but others found her responses to questions about her personal faith to be non-answers and were even a bit surprised at one point when Jon Meacham seemed to all but answer a question for Hillary. Some thought that Barack Obama gave strong authentic answers particularly when he addressed questions on the latest controversies surrounding his campaign but, again, others felt Obama wholly and completely sidestepped all three of those questions. These types of disagreements are unsurprising and typical of a campus as politically diverse as Messiah College.

But the diversity of opinion on campus in no way should be taken as evidence of a heavy tension or viral animosity, as may be the case at other schools, but should rather be seen as it is seen by students, merely adding to the competition of ideas which is prevalent here at Messiah College. It’s an atmosphere that is one of the great advantages of attending this school and an atmosphere that, by all accounts, was greatly improved through The Compassion Forum and the discussions generated by it.