JUNEAU — Here at UAS, we have an unusually diverse voting pool on campus.

Out of the fifteen students interviewed, 4 students will be voting for McCain, 6 of them will be voting for Obama, and a surprising 5 individuals will be voting for independent party candidates or are still undecided. Although there were the obvious base differences in policies, almost everyone agreed on several of the major questions.

One of these big questions was "What do you think about media sensationalism and focusing on the dirt on the candidates rather than on the politics?" There was a nearly unanimous disgust with the dirty politics and the coverage that the media gives it.
Carleton Shorey, a Juneau resident and UAS freshman has had enough with the media. "That is why I do not watch the news. Watching the news to me is like watching a movie. It entertains me, but it does not tell me what I want to know. If you actually want news, what you should do is not watch the mainstream news. Go out there and get your own information."

One Banfield hall resident, Chloe Hall from Ketchikan, summed up her feelings in one concise statement. "The problem is that it works. The candidates would not run smear campaigns if they didn't get results, and the media would not cover it if we were not interested."

Sophomore Brandy Disbennett answered: "Honestly I am one that doesn't care about what you have done in your past if you are the one who is going to go in and get the job done. I care about your policies and what you think and what you feel. I don't care about anything else."

Colin Johnson, a junior from Minnesota, was sympathetic for the candidates. “Yeah, she’s got family troubles, but I don't think that should hold any sway over how her political life goes. She’s just a person like everybody else, she’s got problems in her family, and I don't think that we should hold that against her as far as her career is concerned.”

Ben Browne, a Business major and Juneau resident since 1989 believes that the problem is too widespread. “That is what elections have become in this country: when it gets close, just focus on the negative, focus on the personal. When that happens is that it stops being about the issues and about their personal lives and that is not what we're voting for.”

Another issue that the majority of the students agreed upon was the selection of Sarah Palin as the republican running mate.
Max Fleischfresser, another Banfield freshman, felt very strongly about the issue. "I don't know what McCain was thinking. This was one of the most rushed decisions that I have ever seen. Even the locals disagree with his choice. This is not about what state she was from, or how much her wardrobe cost. It is about if she can lead the country if something happens to McCain."

Disbennett, however, defended the choice, "In most respects, I don't think it was necessarily a bad choice. I think that because of the Alaska thing, she hasn't really been involved in Middle Eastern affairs or anything, so she will take a very objective standpoint. I think that from that point it will be good."
While most of the people interviewed look at Palin's inexperience in foreign affairs as a disadvantage, Disbennett sees it as keeping Palin objective.

Easily the most interesting of the interviews came from the students that were either undecided or were voting for a third party candidate.

When asked why he was voting for Bob Barr, the libertarian candidate, Kelly Hackkman, another Banfield resident responded: "The reason that I am voting libertarian is because they are consistent in their beliefs. A flat tax, personal liberty and less government regulation are all important beliefs in their party. McCain is going to be just as bad and wants to keep the war going, which costs us a lot of money even though he talks about cutbacks. Obama really just wants to spend all of my money too, and that’s what it really comes down to for me. My personal liberty and my money, they are mine to do what I want with."

Shorey was one of the undecided voters. "I don't trust Obama, but I don't like McCain. What I do not want to do is throw away my vote, which is what voting for a write-in is. So for me, it will probably be the lesser of two evils. With McCain, even if I do not agree with his politics, at least he is taking a hard stance on them. I feel like Obama has been going back and forth. "

Brown also specified his dislike of Obama. “More than that I like McCain, I really don't like Obama. When it comes down to politics you really have to just pick the one that you hate the least. What I do not like about Obama is that he wants to tell us how much money we can make in a year, and he talks about the redistribution of wealth. I am all for the free market, and Obama's socialist policies will not be good for it.”

The results from the interviewees were unexpected. Juneau is typically known as a Blue city in a Red state. College campuses are also known to vote more heavily for democrats. The students at UAS fit into neither of those categories neatly.

We are a diverse student body with varying political beliefs. If there is one thing that these interviews have made clear, it is that when it comes down to the vote from UAS, it is anybody's game in November.