Early Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump was projected to win the presidency in a clear rebuke of Democrats, leaving many students at Brown University shocked, mournful and fearful.
Over the course of Tuesday night, the former president secured victories in North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania before clinching Wisconsin — four key states that put Trump over the 270 electoral vote threshold he needed to return to the Oval Office.
The Herald spoke with 21 students, most of whom reported feeling sadness, disbelief and fear after seeing the results.
The vast majority of Brown students who planned to vote intended to do so for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I am sick to my stomach. It is extremely upsetting,” said Summer Tullai ’27, a sophomore from Indiana. “When I woke up this morning, I looked it up, and there it was. It’s a big shock.”
In the hours following Trump’s victory, Catie Manning ’25 and Madeline Day ’25, who both voted for Harris, sat on the steps of Campus Center looking out onto a quiet Main Green. Their professor had decided to move their 8:30 a.m. class outside to get a breath of fresh air.
Expecting the results to be unknown for days as it was in 2020, Day was “surprised that I woke up and it was already called,” adding that she was “shocked” and “still processing” as of Wednesday afternoon.
Many of the students The Herald spoke to echoed this feeling of disbelief. Surya Gopal ’28 pointed to Trump’s felonies and his plans to pardon Jan. 6 rioters, calling it unbelievable. “The absurdity of the situation made me think that, okay, Kamala has to win. I don’t know. How could anyone vote for this person?” he said.
Inside the Blue Room, students felt “defeated,” “disheartened” and “worried.” Gabby Baptist ’27, a Harris voter hailing from Ohio, described leaving her dorm that morning and hugging her friend in silence.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen: the fate of our lives, our rights and just our country. It’s very uncertain,” she said. “But there’s a certainty that things will be going in a backward direction.”
Students expressed concern about the future of abortion rights, immigration and climate change.
Vermont native Scarlet Stimson ’27 said that living in Democratic stronghold states is a “privilege” when it comes to issues of abortion, “but nationally, it matters a lot where the president falls.”
“Trump has made so much impact on the Supreme Court already,” she added, referencing the three conservative Supreme Court justices Trump appointed during his first term in office. “This is the last thing we need.”
For Leah Freedman ’27, who voted for Harris in Massachusetts, Trump’s victory puts a weight on her family and her Brazilian community back home.
“My mom is an immigrant. She’s a naturalized citizen, and I’ve been feeling particularly worried about her. My grandma just got a green card,” she said.
Raf Awa ’26, a junior from New York who voted for Jill Stein, said that he voted third party because he looks for certain things in candidates, particularly on immigration and foreign policy. He “didn’t find it” in either Harris or Trump.
But he added that the election “didn’t really affect me too hard.”
Many students also found the national rightward shift alarming. “The craziest thing to me is the margins of it all. In 2016, Donald Trump barely won Michigan, the state that I’m from,” Matteo Papadopoulos ’26 said. “It’s absolutely insane to me that his margins are greater after all that he’s done.”
Compared to his 2020 showing, Trump outperformed in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. As of Wednesday evening, he is on track to win the popular vote. If successful, he would be the first Republican candidate to do so in 20 years.
Sohali Vaddula ’27, the national director of communications for College Democrats of America, acknowledged that her work for the Democratic National Committee put her in a Democratic space where it was commonplace to believe that Harris would win.
But she stressed the importance of a political education that “comes from both sides” to prevent “echo chambers that perpetuate the same narratives you see around you.”
Ben Marcus ’26, the president of Brown College Republicans, said that the election highlighted the “limited range of perspectives” in Brown’s academic environment which “trickle into the student body.”
According to The Herald’s fall poll, 91% of students who intended to vote planned to cast their ballot for Harris. A mere 4.9% planned to vote for Trump. An additional 4.5% planned to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, or another candidate.
Marcus described being “taken aback” by the mood of the 24cast.org event in Salomon Tuesday night. “Trump’s face popped up on the screen and everyone started booing,” he said. Marcus ended up leaving and finishing the night in the quiet of his apartment.
“In terms of our reaction as a club to last night’s Trump victory, we’re pretty enthusiastic about it,” he added.
Kevin Kim ’25, the co-chair of the Conservative Party in the Brown Political Union, wrote in an email to The Herald that he was “disappointed” by the election’s outcome. “Regardless of political views, I think there is a dangerous precedent of allowing a person with 34 felonies and 2 impeachments to take the seat of greatest power in America,” he added.
Kim was also “saddened by the amount of hostility from both sides.” Growing up in Ohio, he described seeing “cases locally where people with polar opposite views come to compromise for the betterment of the people they serve.” He hoped the same could happen at Brown.
For student leaders like Vaddula, Trump’s victory signaled a need to confront the “larger issues within the Democratic Party that have just gone ignored.”
Mahir Rahman ’26, the president of Brown College Democrats, said Trump’s clear lead in the popular vote serves as a wake-up call.
“In 2016, at least Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but she lost the electoral vote,” adding that Democrats blamed the electoral college system, “which is unfair.” In 2024, “Trump is winning both.”
“It’s a clear vote against the Democratic Party, and it’s a mandate for the Republicans, who it seems are much better at strategy than the Democrats,” he added.
Vaddula said that Democratic messaging had “abandoned” the working class and “put blanket statements” on issues like the economy and the border.
“It’s hard to talk to voters about these issues. But the way the Democrats do, it's just not working,” she said. Vaddula believes Trump is messaging “in a way that is simple” and accessible to more voters.
“Democrats need to feel the pulse in communities. They can’t take people for granted anymore,” Rahman said. For his work with Brown Dems, he plans to “continue to focus heavily on local politics,” engaging with “with senators and representatives,” including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I. 1).”
On Tuesday night, the GOP also flipped three seats to regain control of the Senate. Control of the House remains up in the air as of Wednesday night. Whitehouse and Amo held onto their seats with comfortable margins.
Aliza Kopans ’25, a Harris supporter from Massachusetts, returned to campus Wednesday morning after a bout of canvassing in Pittsburgh.
“I'm sad in a lot of ways and scared in some ways, and I think it's really important for us to have time to grieve and feel whatever we're feeling, and then go make change,” she said. “We will be okay, and we will make it okay for ourselves and for others, whatever that means.”
Elena Jiang is a Senior Section Writer covering international student life. She is a sophomore from Shanghai, China considering concentrating in IAPA and Literary Arts.
