The first ever Presidential debate held in Tennessee was watched on a large projector by approximately 200 people Tuesday night in the Brown Hall auditorium.
After the debate ended, students at ETSU tuned in to discuss the debate with five other campuses in Tennessee via video conference.
Debbie Harley, assistant vice president for Community Engagement, Learning and Leadership, said, “We got an e-mail from the Baker Center.” This e-mail was a specific invitation for ETSU to join the video-conference.
“I was pleased with the number of students,” Harley said. “I thought we generated some good questions about health care.” Harley was interested in hearing what students and members of the community thought about the debate. “Speak out because there is so little attention paid by the political system to college students,” she said.
Other campus organizations and groups who were involved with the event were as follows: Philosophy Club, City Management, Political Science Department, ODK, Division of Student Affairs, Honors College, the Adult Commuter and Transfer Services, and the eLearning Department that “really went out of their way to make this successful,” said Harley.
“We’ve all just witnessed the first presidential debate in the state of Tennessee,” said Michael Fitzgerald, a political science professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Fitzgerald, who is the senior teaching fellow at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at UTK, was the moderator for the video conference. He explained the rules of conduct that each student should follow when discussing the debate and encouraged everyone to be respectful of all speakers and time limits.
ETSU was the first to the podium and was given the topic “health care.” Several students and members of the community volunteered to share their opinion of how health care was presented by both candidates in the debate.
Each of the six schools involved in the forum were given a different topic. Tennessee State University spoke about energy and climate, University of Tennessee at Martin discussed education, University of Memphis talked about the economy, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville gave their final reactions and thoughts about the debate.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was scheduled to discuss war and foreign policy, but they were unable to because of technical difficulties.
Josh Culbert, a junior accounting major at ETSU, said, “The debate answered a few questions, but it also opened a few more.” He wished the candidates would “worry less about attacking each other and worry more about telling the American people what they want to know about their policies.” Culbert enjoyed the video conference and said that he would like to see more events like this at ETSU. “I thought it was really unique, but it would be really cool if it were a little more interactive.”
Jared Story, a grad student in the Master of Arts and Liberal Studies program has watched the other debates and thought this debate was similar to others in that the candidates avoid questions and jump around issues.
“I think it’s very unfortunate that other parties’ candidates are not included in the debates, because that would force the major party candidates to address the issues,” he said. Story also enjoyed the videoconference and said he “thought it was pretty interesting to see what other schools had to say about it. Anytime that there’s room for conversation and dialogue, it’s appropriate.”
The Howard Baker Center plans to webcast this event in the near future.

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