Hofstra Magazine

Rosanna Perotti

Professor, Political Science

Read More About the Debate

“What Do We Learn From Presidential Debates?”

That was the title of a one-credit course I taught this fall in connection with Hofstra’s hosting of the third presidential debate. To be honest, at the outset I wasn’t really sure what people learn from presidential debates. I spent much of the fall semester trying to answer the question for myself.

Each Friday afternoon, students and I would hole up in a Brower Hall classroom and watch excerpts of televised presidential debates going back to 1960. We’d discuss the process of preparing for and hosting a debate, the pre-debate negotiations between candidates’ campaigns, the candidates’ preparations, the choice of moderators. We hosted a guest speaker, communications scholar Diana Carlin of the University of Kansas, who argued passionately that debates really do help teach people about the issues.

Then, on the evening of Friday, September 26, things started getting exciting. I had been planning a series of Debate Watches on campus, where students would gather in the Student Center Theater, watch each televised debate, and meet in small groups afterwards to discuss and evaluate what they had seen. Professor Carlin was to speak before that first Debate Watch on September 26, and my students were to act as discussion leaders afterwards.

We weren’t sure, prior to the first Debate Watch, whether any Hofstra students would actually show up. It was Friday night, after all. But the Mack Student Center slowly filled with students, almost to capacity. Not only did they come – when the lights went down and the presidential candidates appeared on the big screen in the Student Center Theater, students cheered and sat glued to their seats, focusing on each word. Afterwards, a few dozen students and community members stayed on, gathered in small circles, and discussed what they had seen. My students were kept busy as discussion moderators, directing questions and furiously scribbling notes.

It was magical – students wanted to continue talking about what they had seen in the debate. Several were reluctant to leave. This pattern repeated itself after each televised debate: The vice presidential debate on October 2, the second presidential debate on October 7, and finally the third debate at Hofstra.

Hofstra students packed the four venues where Debate Watches were held on October 15. They were passionately interested in what was happening in the debate hall, on the screen, and indeed in the campaign. And at this point, on Debate Night, I became convinced that Professor Carlin was right: televised debates really can be more than media events. They do help teach us about the issues and about the habits of mind of the candidates. And, of course, they help ordinary citizens become more involved in the coming election. There were many other opportunities to witness the involvement of the Hofstra community in the election campaign of 2008. As director of academic programming for Educate ’08, I had a hand in planning many of the lectures, films, and panel discussions that so crowded our calendars prior to October 15. At each turn, students, faculty and staff cheerfully volunteered their time and efforts. They offered to organize events, and they often packed the house when we’d host a speaker.

On Election Day, November 4, I strolled into the Mack Student Center, where I met Sean Nabi, president of the conservative Hofstra Young Republicans, and Michael LaFemina, founder of the liberal Hofstra Progressive Students Union. They weren’t arguing – far from it. They were approaching students together, taking down information for a joint exit poll.

We had planned an evening party in the back of the Main Dining Room of the Mack Student Center to watch the returns roll in. Students were camped everywhere, many with Obama and McCain signs. They responded loudly and emotionally to the calling of elections: Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the final 11 p.m. projection of Barack Obama as president-elect of the United States. An awe settled over me as I watched students at the Election Night Returns Party, a gratitude that I had had an opportunity to work with these students, to encourage them, to open up new experiences for them, to learn from them.

I looked at the McCain and Obama student tables, and it struck me that we had learned not from watching the debates, but from hosting a presidential debate. We learned how to participate in politics: with passion, but also with civility. Working together with faculty, students and administrators to organize panels, invite speakers, publicize events, or travel off campus required patience and thoughtfulness. It required listening to, trusting and negotiating with people we don’t always work with. Like Sean Nabi and Mike LaFemina, we learned to try to find common ground, to respect differences of opinion, and to attack the many inevitable, small organizational problems – rather than the people we were working beside.

Something wonderful happened at Hofstra as a result of hosting a presidential debate. We all became partners. I think we became better citizens too.