By Lillian Glaros and Oliver Mack
Hundreds of University of Maryland students gathered at watch parties across campus Tuesday to see Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump face off for the first time.
Students across the political spectrum held the events in dorms, academic buildings and Stamp Student Union to increase voter engagement, support a particular candidate or provide entertainment.
Several university academic departments, along with its Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and Black Girls Vote student organization, co-hosted a watch party in the Shoemaker Building to inform voters and collect student feedback on the debate.
Morgan Travers, Black Girls Vote’s vice president, said one of the club’s goals is to increase student voter engagement.
“By doing this, we’re increasing access to this and giving people a safe space to watch and connect and talk together and learn,” the senior government and politics major said.
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Members of this university’s College Republicans and Turning Point USA, an organization that encourages conservative politics in higher education, watched the debate from TerpZone. The university’s College Democrats tuned in from the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building.
Moderation bias was a contentious topic as multiple attendees at the TerpZone watch party said the debate’s moderation was biased against Trump.
“It was definitely skewed against Trump,” Connor Clayton, the president of the university’s Turning Point USA chapter and a College Republicans member, said. “They were cutting him off a lot.”
Clayton,a junior government and politics major, said the moderators were “hounding” Trump with questions about topics such as the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Questions should have focused on the future after the election rather than the past, he said.
Several students at the College Democrats event, including Jessica Johnson— a senior French and government and politics major and member of the club — supported the debate’s moderators but wished for more active fact-checking of Trump.
“I love to see the correction immediately so there’s no room for that disinformation to go elsewhere,” Logan Mitchell, a senior government and politics major and the College Democrats’ treasurer, said.
Sophomore public policy major Michael Deweaver, the club’s operations director, said he was surprised that the moderators in real time fact-checked Trump’s “egregious falsehoods.”
The moderators could have muted the mics more, Deweaver said, as Trump “forced” his way to unmute the mics at times.
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Many students at the College Democrats’ watch party were satisfied with Harris’ performance and felt “relieved” after the debate.
“[Harris’] enthusiasm has been invigorating,” Mace Viemeister, College Democrats’ co-president, said. “She always remained calm, collected, and answered the questions, which is how a debate is supposed to be. I appreciated it, and it made me excited to be able to go further this November.”
Viemeister, a sophomore public policy and American studies major, said they would have liked to see the moderators ask more questions about climate change.
Some attendees at TerpZone said they were disappointed by the debate.
“I thought that overall, it was pretty discouraging,” Hannah Vander Wall, a sophomore government and politics major,said.
Vander Wall, College Republicans’ vice president, said she thought though Trump started “pretty strong,” the former president was on the defensive and did not play to his strengths because of the moderators.
Isabel Flynn, a senior computer science major, said she thought neither candidate won the debate.
“It just kind of feels like chaos most of the time,” Flynn said.
