Professor of Political Economy Gary Wolfram walked into class on Wednesday morning and announced that the Dow was down 300 points.
“It was down 100 points at the start, 200 points around 10:30 [a.m.], and it’s down 300 points now,” he said. “So, it doesn’t look like the stock market is too happy.”
The stock market was not the only one unhappy on Wednesday morning. President Barack Obama defeated Republican candidate Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s presidential election with 50 percent of the vote and 303 electoral votes. Romney had 48 percent and 206 electoral votes.
Sophomore Gabby Mahan said she stormed angrily around her dorm Tuesday night.
“Basically there were lots of tears, a slew of profanity, and stomping around the dorm screaming,” she said.
Mahan spent last weekend campaigning for Romney with the Madison Action Fund in Ohio, and was surprised to see Ohio go blue. Important swing states that went blue such as Ohio, Florida, and Virginia gave Obama the edge he needed in the 2012 race.
Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn was surprised by the Michigan election results.
“Everything in Michigan was a surprise — comfortable victories for Obama and Stabenow, large losses for the union-backed initiatives, and the Supreme Court stayed conservative,” Arnn said. “A series of paradoxes.”
Mahan said that once Obama took Ohio, she knew Romney would not win the election, an outcome she had not expected.
“Just being surrounded by so many people who felt the same way — it gave me hope,” she said.
Many Hillsdale students were surprised by the outcome of the election.
“I thought Romney really could win it and do a good job,” said junior Max Kleber, president of the College Republicans.
While Professor of Politics Mickey Craig was not as confident in a GOP win, he said that he did think the race would have been a little tighter.
“I’ve been following these things pretty closely for 40 years,” Mickey Craig said. “I felt most unsure about what the outcome would be in this election. I didn’t have a sense of what was going to happen.”
But Craig did say that he was puzzled that Obama still won despite the dissatisfaction with his administration’s economic record the past four years.
Junior Mason Stuard, president of the College Democrats, said that it was partially for this reason that he voted for Romney in this election instead of Obama, whom he supported four years ago.
“I was very mixed in this election,” he said. “The president has not fulfilled the promises he made four years ago.”
Stuard said that moving forward from this election will require more of a willingness from both sides of the political aisle to compromise.
“We have to go into the next four years forward thinking and ready to compromise,” he said.
Craig agreed that some compromises will have to be made, but that this might be a more difficult task in the next four years.
“I think this is the most conservative caucus we’ve had in the House in a long, long time,” Craig said. “The liberal caucus in the House, majority in the Senate, and the president are arguably the most liberal in history as well.”
Moving forward is a more daunting task for Mahan, who said the election helped her decide which major she should pursue. Originally, she was a biology major and history minor, but has now switched to majoring in history and settling for a biology minor.
“I wanted to be a bio major in order to go to med school,” Mahan said. “Now there is no chance of repealing ObamaCare. I would never be able to pay off my loans.”
Kleber said he was also worried about employment after college.
“Generally with college graduates, it’s going to be hard to find employment,” he said.
Wolfram’s prediction of the economic prospects with another four years of an Obama presidency was also bleak.
“We will have sluggish economic growth at 2 percent or so, unemployment at 7 to 8 percent, no improvement on Medicare and Social Security, and continued deficits of $1 trillion,” he said.
Arnn said that the national debt and the high taxes that it will require will need to be addressed at some point.
“I do not expect any immediate or intermediate economic catastrophe,” he said, “but we think about it and will do what we can to be ready.”