Elizabeth—Bruriah High School hosted a town hall meeting last week, organized and executed by the student leadership. A combined effort of the student general organization and the political science class, with faculty guidance, the meeting was attended by the entire student body.
Questions for the party representatives were selected from a pool of 200 questions submitted by the students, and were posed from the podium by students in the political science class. The party representatives were instructed to answer each question and not rebut any response or comment made by the other party. Trump campaign adviser and commissioner Steven Rogers, and 36th District NJ assemblyman, deputy speaker and former Bruriah parent Gary Schaer alternated first-response opportunity for questions posed.
The first question, posed by Ariel Ezra and Sara Fried, asked about each party’s proposal to stop domestic terrorism and prevent jihadist Islam and ISIS influence from reaching and radicalizing U.S. citizens. From there, questions ranged from the NSA’s monitoring of phone calls and emails, to school vouchers, to the minimum wage, to taxes.
The hot issue of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians was posed by Eliana Raden. Schaer noted that Trump states he’s “neutral,” while the Democratic administration just authorized a $38 billion commitment to Israel over 10 years, to support security, defense and economic growth. Rogers says that actions speak louder than words from a president who sends billions of dollars to a terrorist state, also known to be manufacturing nuclear weapons, with an undeniable objective of destroying Israel. He then moved over to the Israeli flag, lifted it up and said, “We stand side by side with Israel, and this star goes with those stars…” pointing to the American flag.
Both representatives summed up their candidate’s platform. Assemblyman Schaer stated that while he does not agree in full with some of Clinton’s outlooks, actions and policies, she is not replete with simplistic “one liner” answers to the complex problems of government, and that Trump is incompetent. Commissioner Rogers emphasizes the importance of a dialogue between opposing views, and how to make America great again: focusing on the present and future, instead of the past as Clinton does.
When all was said and done, here’s how the vote went: Republican candidate Donald Trump was victorious, with 75 percent of the student vote, versus 22.5 percent for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and 2.5% supporting the Green party and Libertarian party.
