Red, blue and ‘I don’t care’: IU students share their visions for America

Editor’s note: This story includes mention of potentially triggering situations including abortion, sexual abuse and gun violence. 

Leading up to Election Day, the Indiana Daily Student spoke with multiple IU students as they cast their votes and learned of the results of the election. One week removed from Nov. 5, here are their stories. 

*** 

Landon Yockey was ready to make America great again. The IU sophomore drove more than an hour away from campus Nov. 1 to the early voting station in Hendricks County, a county that traditionally goes red.  

As soon he walked in the door, he saw the line stretching down the halls, twisting around corners.  

The poll worker strolling down the hall told voters that lines had been up to two hours for the last week. The 19-year-old didn’t mind waiting.  

“I was ready to lock in,” he said. 

Landon is a criminal justice major with an eye on becoming a school resource officer. 

He doesn’t like Joe Biden and considers Kamala Harris to be a continuation of the current president’s administration. He admires Donald Trump’s business acumen, how the man came from outside politics, the way he tells things like they really are, his commitment to securing the border.  

Landon thinks the economy was better when Trump was president. He also believes the former-president is against war and would promote world peace. 

“Under Trump, no new wars,” he said. “With Biden? War starts in Ukraine. War starts in Israel.” 

Landon’s Christian faith guides his vote, too. He believes God created people as either a man or a woman. And he’s strongly opposed to abortion.  

Landon's grandmother gave birth to his father when she was a young teen. She aborted at least one pregnancy before she decided to keep the baby that would become Landon’s father. Now, he is grateful for his grandmother’s decision to keep her second pregnancy. 

“If a very brave young woman who was 13 or 14 years old at the time had made a decision to get another abortion,” he said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you today.” 

He stood in line for an hour and 15 minutes before he finally entered the voting booth. 

Unsure of what he was doing, he called over poll workers a few times to doublecheck that he was filling his ballot out correctly. He chose a straight Republican ticket and then walked back outside. His ticket, he says, will likely remain red for every election for the rest of his life. 

*** 

Three weeks before the election, Kaylee sat at her desk in her Bloomington apartment. She was on the phone with her younger sister Ella in Charleston, South Carolina. Both were filling in the oval next to Harris’s name on Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot. This was their first time voting in a U.S. presidential election. 

“It’s a cool feeling,” Ella said. “Knowing we’ve only ever voted for a woman.” 

Kaylee felt a chill go down her spine. 

Growing up, IU senior Kaylee Werner understood all too well that politics could be a matter of life and death. She knew one of the students killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting. Kaylee was upset that there was nothing being done when it came to gun control policies.  

In the weeks following, she decided to put together a team of students, teachers and parents, and collected a thousand handwritten letters arguing for gun control. They traveled to Washington, D.C., to hand deliver them to Republican Congressman Keith Rothfus, representing Pittsburgh at the time. He neglected to read them right in front of her, throwing the letters to his staff and saying, “put them with the others.”  

“If anyone dies by an AR-15 in my community,” she told him, “It’s going to be your fault.” 

Several months later, 11 Jewish worshipers were killed by a gunman at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Kaylee’s grandmother belonged to the synagogue but had decided to sleep in that day. When no one could reach her for the couple of hours afterward, the family feared the worst. Kaylee remembers it as one of the scariest moments of her life. 

These experiences taught her how important it is to vote and advocate for those you want in office. This past summer, when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, Kaylee knew she wanted to support her.  

In August, she represented Pennsylvania as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She was on the convention floor cheering as the Obamas and the Clintons took their turns at the lectern and as Harris accepted the nomination. Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton were stars in her eyes, but seeing Harris made Kaylee’s jaw drop. 

She had never seen a candidate match her values as much as Harris. She appreciated Harris’ support of reproductive rights, and her ability to consider both sides and make decisions with a bipartisan mindset. When Harris talks, Kaylee feels safe. 

Kaylee’s opposition to Trump only grew in the final days before the election. His insistence that he would protect women “whether they liked it or not” confirmed all her worst assumptions about the decisions he’d make if he returns to the White House. His rally at Madison Square Garden, filled with demeaning jokes and comments about Jewish people, Puerto Rico and the sex lives of Hispanics, left her disgusted. 

“It makes me uncomfortable to see a future where the people he surrounds himself with are back in power and get to make decisions,” she said. “We cannot put that man back into office.” 

Two visions kept finding their way into her sleep. She dreamed of Harris with her hand on the Bible getting sworn into office, saw the sea of confetti falling and balloons floating at the celebrations. On other nights, she had nightmares of Trump speaking at another rally, spewing hatred and lies, defending white supremacists, and heard balloons popping.  

*** 

IU senior Aidan Diresta was standing at the corner of Walnut Street and 17th Street, waiting for a driver to pull up to the traffic light. He was shooting another video for his Instagram page called the “Stoplight Podcast.” 

A young woman stopped at the light and Aidan hurried over to her open window.   

“You’re at the ‘Stoplight One-minute Podcast,’” he said while leaning into the car. “What’s on your mind?” 

She played along and smiled at Aidan. 

“The weather,” she said. “It’s beautiful.” 

Aidan bobbed back and forth, up and down, eager to get something memorable before the light changed.  

“What else goes on?” he said. “Come on, who do we love?” 

The woman said she loved her mom and dad. 

“Who do we hate?” Aidan asked. 

“Donald Trump.”  

“And why do we hate Donald Trump?”. 

The woman’s smile faded. 

 “Because, you know, you know,” she paused. "Just everything.” 

Then the light went green, and the woman had to go and drove away. Aidan knew he had another episode of “Spotlight Podcast” ready to post on Instagram for his over 1,000 followers. This episode was different, though, because it had veered without warning into the loaded subject of former President Donald Trump.  

Aidan’s questions on the show are typically light-hearted. The 21-year-old student, who’s majoring in film and production, sees himself as an entertainer. He never asks his guests about politics or the election.  

“I just don’t care about politics,” Aidan said. “I don’t think I am ever going to vote in my life, I mean, that could change one day maybe. But I’m just not into it.”   

Aidan is from Demarest, New Jersey. His dad works in cyber security, his mom works in the mental health field. They’re not interested in politics either, he said. 

When asked about the election, Aidan had neutral feelings for the two major candidates. He finds Trump to be funny, and he thinks Harris is cool. But he doesn’t care which of them comes out on top. To him, regardless of who wins, he said, the election won’t end up mattering. He doesn’t expect it to change his life in any significant way. 

“It’ll be the topic of discussion for a couple of days, and then it’ll be gone,” he said. “It’ll just be what it is, just like the way it always has been.” 

*** 

IU junior Paige Fowler has become used to answering questions about who she is voting for every time she walks into a party. She belongs to a select group of females on campus, as she isn’t afraid to elaborate on why she voted for Trump. Her political beliefs have played a big role in deciding how people choose to treat her on Campus.  

She’s never understood why they were making such a big deal of her choice, even if they had voted the same. She doesn’t like calling attention to her conservative beliefs. Inside the blue dot of Bloomington, she has learned to keep her mouth shut when the election comes up in conversation. 

“It’s not because I love Trump,” the 20-year-old explains over and over to anyone who asks. “Please don’t make me seem like I’m some crazy MAGA lady, cause I’m not.” 

When people learn that she voted for Trump, they look at Paige like she’s crazy. Sometimes their initial reaction is to yell because of how unusual it seems. Isn’t she afraid Trump will sign a national ban on abortion? She doesn’t think he’ll take it that far. She respects that he wants to leave these questions up to the states. She believes abortion should be legal for women who’ve endured rape or incest. If she got pregnant right now, she said she’d keep the baby. 

“My parents would be disappointed,” she said. “But they would be even more disappointed if I had an abortion.” 

Paige agrees with Trump’s positions on the economy and immigration. If Harris is elected, she worries that people of her generation won’t be able to afford groceries in the future. 

A political science and journalism major, Paige avoids sharing these views in class. If she speaks up, she fears she might anger one of her professors and tank her GPA.  

“When you want to respectfully disagree with a professor’s opinion, you can’t,” she said. “Because it looks like you resemble everything Trump stands for.” 

It can be hard for Paige to resist the urge to speak up sometimes, especially since the media she perceives as biased toward the left often surrounds her at Franklin Hall. Every year, Paige has at least one professor who expresses their distaste towards certain beliefs or news outlets that the Republican Party engages with.  

Her family lives outside Seattle, where she’s still registered to vote. One morning a couple weeks ago, she sat down at her kitchen counter and filled in her mail-in ballot. One of her best friends was sitting beside her, filling out her own ballot. Both of them were sipping Diet Cokes and quietly accepting their political differences. Her friend, an Indiana resident, was voting for Kamala Harris. Paige scribbled her mark beside the name of the other guy. 

*** 

Alex Myers’ political awakening began at age 4, the day the gunman opened fire at his church. 

Now a 21-year-old junior at IU, Alex still remembers the chaos of that day at New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2007, where the shooter killed two members of the congregation and injured three others before killing himself. Alex was at that Sunday service with his mother. He remembers people running and hiding with his mother in the church basement as the gunshots echoed upstairs. To him it sounded like a popping sound, repeated over and over.  

“I kind of blocked it out for most of my childhood,” Alex said.  

As he grew older, he understood mass shootings were an all-too-common part of American life. But he avoided connecting the headlines to his own experience. Then he came home one afternoon and saw the breaking coverage from Parkland, Florida, where another gunman had shot and killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.  

Alex froze. Suddenly the memories of the trauma he and his mother survived came flooding back. Until that moment, he had never thought of himself as a survivor of a mass shooting. But it had happened to him, and now it was happening to others.  

The realization fueled his belief in common sense gun laws. 

Alex had grown up in a conservative household. To this day, his father remains a registered Republican who has voted repeatedly for Trump. On the day of the church shooting, his father, an Army colonel deployed in Iraq, was away fighting in the war. His father’s service in the U.S. Army influenced his childhood as well. Alex became accustomed to the presence of guns at home and learned the importance of gun safety. But today, when Alex looks back on the trauma, he and his mother endured at New Life Church, he struggles to understand how his father can remain an avid gun rights supporter. 

“I lost my dad politically to Trump,” he says. “I feel like my dad fell into the MAGA cult. I just don’t know how he can still support that man.”  

His mother is a Libertarian who believes in women’s reproductive rights. Her stance on abortion is deeply personal., Before she gave birth to him, Alex said his mother survived a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, where a fertilized egg grows outside of the uterus. Today, living in Indiana, she may not have had access to the life-saving reproductive care that made Alex’s birth possible.  

Alex’s disagreements with the Republican Party go beyond guns and abortion. Growing up in Colorado, he saw wildfires rage through forests. Pike’s Peak was on fire every summer. 

Climate change is real, he said, and the Republicans aren’t doing anything to fight it. 

Alex, a finance major at IU, is the development director for the College Democrats of America. After graduating, he wants to fight the influence of lobbyists in the nation’s capital. He is disturbed, he said, by the toxic effects of money on the American political system, all of which cements his position in the current election. 

“When it comes to Donald Trump, he is someone I can never get behind,” he said. “That man is the most un-American, undemocratic person the Republicans have ever put on a ticket.” 

Rain poured the whole way to Eastview Church of Nazarene on Nov. 5, and Alex was feeling eager to vote in his first presidential election. Alex isn’t feeling nervous because he has heard voter turnout has been high and that makes him happy. He still feels nervous and knows he’s going to feel that until the election is called. 

The thought of going to the bars crossed his mind, but he figured he would stay home and have a glass of wine, probably the whole bottle, he said. Alex was ready to join IUSTV for a panel discussion later that night. He knows he is a good debater and plans to keep topics simple. 

“Obviously, keep it simple, but I may throw in a few punches,” he said.  

Alex is greeted at the side door of the church and led to a table of poll workers. At 3:46 p.m., Alex double-checks his bubbles are all filled on his ballot, pushes the cap on his pen, and slides his ballot into the ballot box. He smiles as he is handed a voting sticker.  

“I hopefully just voted for the first woman president in the United States,” Alex said.  

*** 

On election night, Landon was in his apartment, dressed in Nutcracker-printed pajama pants paired with a Colts sweatshirt.