By Preston Bellini | City of MacArthur, Cameron County

Wednesday’s special discussion in Bear Auditorium of Farr Hall looked at numerous aspects of President Donald Trump’s first year in office.

It ended up being less of a discussion and more of a listing of President Trump’s pros, cons. and neutral qualities of him and his policies.

The discussion was led by Ripon College President Dr. Zach Messitte. In the beginning, he instructed the audience to write three qualities that first come to mind when thinking about Trump.

Next, he instructed the audience to label these as positive, negative and neutral qualities. He ended the instructions with identifying your hometown as either one of the following: rural, suburban or urban communities.

After the audience created the list, Dr. Zach Messitte explained that compared to last year, the list was more diverse and leaning evenly between positive, negative and neutral. According to Dr. Messitte, the lists had fewer qualities categorized as neutral.

The audience discussed the possibility of why the two may differ. They came to the hypothesis that after Trump’s election, people on the left and right  of the political spectrum came to the realization that Trump had limited power and could not implement all his promises during his campaign.

Dr. Messitte explained that going into the discussion he had set up a experiment to see if the positive, negative and neutral qualities would fit into the stereotypical political beliefs. He continued by saying rural communities tend to be more Republican-supporting, therefore more likely to support Trump, and that suburban and urban are more Democrat-supporting therefore more likely to be against Trump’s views.

Based on the list, this hypothesis would be inconclusive and the results were across the board.

The discussion was interesting but the title was misleading as the discussion wasn’t about President Trump, according to those attending. Those that attended explained that the point of the special discussion wasn’t just about talking about President Trump, but rather a lesson about discussions with those that may have opposing views.