On Nov. 5, members of the Claremont College community gathered at venues across the 5Cs to watch broadcasts of the 2024 presidential election and discuss the election’s results.
The Claremont Colleges League of Women Voters (LWV) chapter co-sponsored a watch party with Pomona’s Politics department starting at 6:00 p.m. on the Smith Campus Center’s South Lawn where people brought blankets and enjoyed food while watching the election.
Lexi Duffy PO ’26, president of the LWV chapter, said that the goal of these watchparties was to bring people together to process and talk as a community about a monumental event that affects everyone in the 5C community.
“It seems like people really like having a place to process it together, to be with their friends as they’re experiencing either highs and lows,” Duffy said.
Duffy then discussed how since the colleges are known for political activism, the LWV works to provide resources to contribute to this passion that many students have.
“Overall, the 5Cs have a really strong reputation for people getting in their vote as soon as they can and making sure they have the resources to do it,” Duffy said.
Duffy added that political engagement at the 5Cs is unique in its “bottom-up” structure instead of “top to bottom,” which means that there are more students building their community around politics instead of administration making efforts for people to participate.
At Pitzer College, the President’s Office for Constructive Dialogue and the Community Engagement Center (CEC) hosted an event from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Gold Student Center Multipurpose Room.
Helen Chirigos PZ ’25 and Annika Solomonson PZ ’25, two student organizers of the watch party, also said they saw a similar need for spaces of political engagement during this monumental occasion.
“These people are here because they feel interested and passionate about following the election,” Chirigos said. “So we’re just addressing a need which the student body creates on their own by being politically engaged.”
Solomonson added that since the majority of Pitzer’s student body is passionate about politics, both she and Chirigos worked with the CEC to provide the watch party with food, bracelet making and art to help students de-stress and engage with the election.
“The [CEC] has always been fundamental to promoting Pitzer’s core values and a really important part of political campus life,” Chirigos said. “The staff work tirelessly, many of whom have worked there for many years to put on events like this and many other forms of opportunities for political engagement and awareness across community partnerships and inter-collegiately.”
Claremont McKenna College’s Kravis Center for Civic Leadership hosted a CMC-exclusive watch party for students and faculty at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum from 5:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The party also included a presentation of the results of the 2024 Political Attitudes Survey, which was conducted by the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World.
Attendee Jacob Pippel CM ’28 said that most of the people at the gathering leaned towards the Democratic party candidate, Kamala Harris.
“They gave us the results to the political attitudes survey at the [Athenaeum] coverage last night, and 70% preferred Kamala Harris, and I think a similar amount generally leaned Democratic,” Pippel said.
Pippel also highlighted CMC’s commitment to open dialogue around the elections, noting that the Athenaeum has hosted various election-related events for months leading up to Nov. 5. Two recent events included a discussion on potential scenarios for the 2024 election on Monday, Nov. 4, and a follow-up luncheon from the ‘Religion, Race, Gender, and the 2024 Election Conference,’ which analyzed the election results on Thursday, Nov. 7.
“CMC really embraces open discussion so everyone is comfortable sharing their opinions, and I find that nobody here has black-and-white opinions,” Pippel said. “Everyone is very thoughtful and nuanced.”
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