ANGELINA DOHRE
Special to The Leader
As the election draws near, two special courses are focusing their attention on politics among the student body: Presidential Campaign Communication and 2016 Election.
The Presidential Campaign Communication course was created by assistant professor Angela McGowan. According to her, there were three main reasons why she created this course, the first being that there can’t be a campaign without communication.
“Therefore, we investigate the evolution of a presidential candidate’s communication environment, resources and strategies, and students apply practitioner and academic literature to understand real time political processes,” McGowan said.
The second reason was to bring up student awareness in politics, especially with the election being this year.
“The course aligns with the goals [of] Provost [Terry] Brown’s ‘Fredonia as a Public Square’ initiative, particularly ‘the need to engage our students, our community and one another in respectful, peaceful and informed discussion on the urgent matters of our time,’” she said. “Students are learning to be mindful of our responsibility to encourage informed discussion and debate on all sides of the issues.”
The class also follows and meets the needs of SUNY Fredonia’s liberal arts mission. According to McGowan, students enrolled in this course will become skilled, connected, creative and responsible global citizens and professionals. “For instance, students complete a final project that requires that they work in teams to create and execute a voter mobilization plan,” she said.
The voter mobilization plan allows the students to work in groups in an attempt to spread the word about the importance of voting in general.
Senior communication major Zoe Tzetzis is currently in the course and explained that her group is tackling the topic of job opportunity.
“We’re trying to reach out to students to let them know their vote matters to what kind of job they’re going to get,” she said. “Other groups are focusing on things such as environmental issues and college affordability.”
Currently, students are learning the communication strategies that are being used in this election.
“We were comparing the authenticity between the candidates and looking at their political communication styles, such as nonverbal and verbal cues that they might do that may come off as authentic or inauthentic,” Tzetzis said. “It’s really interesting to analyze both sides.”
Tzetzis found out about the class through email and joined because of her excitement for the upcoming election.
“I think there’s a lot of controversy going on with [the election], so I thought it would be something that’d be enlightening to take,” she said.
Senior audio/radio production major Luke Wheeler was recommended by McGowan to take the course during his previous class with her, Rhetoric and Criticism.
“I’m taking this class because I feel like proper discourse is harder and harder to come by today, and wanted to be with peers and professors who understood the importance of political communication and were passionate about strategy and elections like I am,” he said.
According to McGowan, after the election is over the class plans to spend the remainder of the semester examining presidential debates and issue topics, such as religion, national security and women’s rights, along with vice presidential candidate rhetoric and third party candidates’ rhetorical choices.
The Political Campaign Communication class is a 300 level communication class that is open to all majors, and McGowan hopes to bring it back for each election every four years.
Another special courses class that is centered around the election is 2016 Election. Created by associate professor Jonathan Chausovsky, the course focuses on more than just examining the election itself.
Senior political science major Emily Huntington explained what they’ve been learning so far. “We started the class reading a book about the Tea Party and their rise to political power in 2010 and then compared their rise to the rise of the so-called ‘Trump phenomenon,’” she said.
The class’s main focus is on changes between political eras. “The basic idea is that we have been in what some scholars call a Republican era — the era of Ronald Reagan — since at least 1980,” Chausovsky said.
“We’ve also looked a lot at campaign finance and how money influences politics as well, and it was extremely eye-opening. Billions of dollars go into financing presidential campaigns — it’s really quite crazy and a bit concerning to know how much money matters in elections,” Huntington added.
After the election is over, the class plans to analyze the outcome and determine why it was the same, or perhaps the opposite, of what they’d initially expected to happen. “We will also continue with our study of the power of presidents at times of great upheaval,” Chausovsky said. “This election has upended much received wisdom about how American politics operates.”
The 2016 Election course is open to anyone, although it does have a POLI 120 Introduction to American Politics prerequisite, but Chausovsky was willing to do an override for any student that had a serious interest. He plans to offer more classes with variations on current topics and events.