Can We Persevere? Yes We Can-dace!
By Jason D. Greenough | Web/Social Media Editor
For some, it has been a tough week following the Presidential election. The atmosphere surrounding the results that brought Donald Trump into the position of commander in chief has been filled with varying amounts of fear, anger, sadness, and uncertainty, throughout different demographics of the American populace.
Here at MWCC, Students and faculty alike are trying to sort through their own feelings on the events that transpired on November 8th, with some feeling what they can only equate to grieving, others feeling frustrated and perplexed at how their country has come to this, and others who are cautious, yet hopeful, that the 45th President of these United States will change his ways from the behavior we have witnessed throughout the last 18 months. Candace Shivers, Associate Professor of Human Services and Sociology here at the Mount, has something to say about the effect that a Trump presidency might have on college students, such as commuting costs.
“Students can barely afford to pay for their classes, so if you add on a road tax, or a road levy, [students] might be thinking ‘now I can’t afford to go to Mount Wachusett because I have to pay for this and this, and now I have to pay for this extra thing’,” said Shivers. “So I think about how this would affect not necessarily the UMass student, but our [MWCC] students,” she continued. “If there isn’t an influx of money through financial aid, pell grants, and stuff like that, it will mean, let alone me not having a job, there are going to be students who won’t be able to come here.”
“If this country becomes a country where the almighty dollar is more important than it already is, students that go to not just Mount Wachusett, but to any other community college, will be negatively affected. I’ll be alright, in the sense that I have a decent paying job, I have my education, but anyone who tries to get their education at a community college may not be monetarily taxed, but they’ll be taxed in the sense of more hoops to jump through.”
As a professional Educator, of course Shivers would be concerned with what might happen in her field of work if President-Elect Trump’s promises going forward are anything like the proposed policies showcased along the campaign trail.
“Looking back on the campaign trail, I can’t think of one social issue that Trump has talked about that I could get on board with,” said Shivers. “I mean, where does he even stand on Human Services? If you watch videos of him, you might say he doesn’t care about people who are disabled, given the fact the he made fun of them,” she continued. “Now, Hillary didn’t exactly hit home runs for people, but in terms of education, she talked about education, maybe due in part to Bernie Sanders, during most of her campaign, while I haven’t heard a peep from Trump about education.”
“I’ll be honest. I’m not sure what he could have said that would have made me vote for him. Well, he could’ve said that we were going to fully fund higher education, we’re going to put money into the military, and by the way, we are going to support Human Services and try to help students get jobs out of college. But there’s nothing about education or Human Services. It’s ‘make America great again, make America great again.’ What does that even mean?”
Shivers has been an avid Hillary Clinton supporter, through and through, for years. But, even with her dedication to the former First Lady, and the confidence she had in her to be our commander in chief, a party loyalist is something that Candace Shivers is not.
“I am not always going to vote the party line. For instance, to be honest, Deval Patrick screwed education over, and I really had to think about whether I was going to vote for him or not, but I wasn’t going to just vote for him because he had a ‘D’ next to his name,” said Shivers. “He made the teachers’ union re-open their contract after we had already agreed upon something, and he tried to screw us over with our raises, and we took him to task against Charlie Baker, because we knew what Patrick had done, so it was a feeling of ‘let’s just see what this Charlie guy can do,’” she continued. “Although [Charlie Baker] put a member of the Teachers’ union on his transition team, he screwed us over too, but let’s not get into that,” she said with a laugh.
Shivers continued: “Hillary has worked for kids almost her whole life, and while I’m not sure if it was merely politically driven or if she really has a heart for kids, I do know that she has a platform. If she got in, and screwed over Bernie Sanders’ ideas, she wouldn’t get re-elected. She would be haunted by not only Bernie Sanders, but everyone that took his word to vote for her. She was put between a rock and a hard place. Trump has no one holding him accountable on anything. With students, with education, with anything. As far as I know, he sounds more like a Dictator than a President. It’s ‘I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that’, instead of ‘We are going to do this and that’, and that is dangerous.”
As evident, Shivers is passionate about what will happen with education, but that doesn’t mean she is shutting herself off from the other pressing issues going on around the country. When it comes to race relations around the country, the Assumption College graduate wants to remain positive about what Donald Trump will do as President to make certain that justice is being served to the right people, but doesn’t necessarily see it happening.
“Maya Angelou has a saying, ‘when people show you who they are for the first time, believe them’. Trump can talk a good game about how he loves Mexicans, how he’s there for the African-American community, blah blah blah, but that’s all after the fact now,” said Shivers. “When your resolve for showing people that you connect with the black community is Omarosa, or Dennis Rodman, black people are really in trouble.”
As with so many others, Candace Shivers is uncertain about what is to come over the next four years, and that uncertainty enflames her loyalty and trust in Hillary Clinton that much more.
“I’m not sure what Hillary would do with education, but at least we would have had a shooting chance at getting something done. Truthfully, I don’t know what Trump is going to do, and that level of uncertainty is scarier than most other things.”
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