Photo submitted by Olivia Toomey ’26
Mount Holyoke’s current Semester in D.C. students were invited to attend vice president Kamala Harris’s election night rally at Howard University.
By Tara Monastesse ’25
Editor-in-Chief
For the first time since its inception in 2018, Mount Holyoke’s annual Semester in D.C. program is taking place in-person during a presidential election year. While Mount Holyoke College students on campus may have experienced election night through a college-sponsored watch party or on laptop screens in dorm rooms, a select group of students currently completing the program were able to witness former president Donald Trump’s reelection and its aftermath as it unfolded in the heart of the United States capital.
The Semester in D.C. program allows Mount Holyoke students to spend the fall living, studying and interning in D.C. through a partnership with American University. Intended for students pursuing a career in politics, advocacy and other related fields, the backdrop of the nation’s capital allows them to gain hands-on experience in American politics alongside their research and work experience.
During a recent weekend in Washington, D.C., Mount Holyoke News spoke with four of the seven program participants this semester to gauge how the results of the 2024 General Election have so far impacted their study away experience in the capital, as well as their future career aspirations.
Political discourse in the capital
One common experience described by students was the inescapable nature of political discussions during everyday life in Washington over the past few months. In addition to taking classes on law, policy and government and interning in federal government departments and offices, students were inundated with election news and discourse outside of their curriculums.
“You can't really avoid talking politics in D.C. ever, which is both a pro and a con,” Jules Camargo ’25, a double major in politics and critical social thought, said. “It can be a little exhausting when you want to be a little escapist in terms of your politics because things are getting stressful, obviously. But it's also good because it keeps everyone aware and engaged and civically participant.”
Other students expressed similar sentiments. Myra Zia ’26, a politics major with a minor in history, emphasized how national politics news often traveled rapidly in the city by word of mouth.
“When I was here over the summer and Biden dropped out, I didn’t find out because I read the news. I found out because I heard people talk about it, like around me,” Zia said. “The feeling of finding out, quite literally from your surroundings, was very enlightening.”
As Nov. 5 drew closer and closer, students described a significant vibe shift in Washington as people waited to learn who would be elected the next president.
“The day of the election, I could literally feel the tension in the air,” Maira Khan ’26, an international relations major with a minor in economics, said. “I could feel everyone being so worried, so nervous as to what the outcome was going to be.”
“Energy-wise, D.C. was super weird, especially the days leading up to the election,” Olivia Toomey ’26, a double major in politics and sociology, said. “The anticipation for it was a little stressful … the nerves started to kick in.”
Ultimately, though, Toomey said that “it's been really great to have [a] very politically involved community here.”
In the days after the Associated Press officially called the presidential race for Trump on Wednesday, Nov. 6, several organizations on Mount Holyoke’s campus hosted post-election destress events to allow students to unwind. In Washington, however, students were constantly reminded of the election and its impact by their surroundings.
“The city remained pretty safe while the buildings and … certain businesses were boarded up,” Khan said. “There was high security in the city, but everything was okay. There were no riots. There was no protesting. I feel like if the turnout would have been different, there might have been, but it felt fairly safe, like the city just felt sad the next day.”
In the end, most students viewed being immersed in national politics as a positive experience despite the stress it occasionally caused.
“I think because we’re in D.C., everyone else is also very, very politically involved,” Zia said. “You can almost never just turn off your phone and escape it, which is good, because that's why I'm here.”
Attending Harris’s election night rally
On the evening of Nov. 5, vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was set to speak at an election night rally hosted at her alma mater, Howard University. A group of Mount Holyoke students attended the rally after an invitation from Dr. Kelley Page Jibrell ’99, a Mount Holyoke alum and Semester in D.C. mentor based in the Washington area.
Jibrell, who has completed post-graduate studies at Howard and taught there as an adjunct professor, has been a leader with the African Women for Harris-Walz Coalition. As a mentor, Jibrell felt she could best assist students by providing them with the opportunity to experience various campaign events firsthand.
“By virtue of my role with the coalition, they really were able to have a front row perspective,” Jibrell said. “I think the excitement was palpable, and that was for most of their semester … I don't necessarily know all of their political leanings or affiliations, but they were able to see the bigger picture in terms of inside access and exposure to presidential elections.”
While the election night rally was initially a high-energy event, the upbeat crowd began to dwindle as the preliminary election results broadcast during the event reflected favorable odds for Trump.
“Before things started to look bad, the energy in the air was palpable,” Khan said, noting that attendees were initially dancing and chanting when the rally began. “And then there was a dip in energy, and you could tell that people were getting disappointed and people were losing hope at that point, start[ing] to leave … I loved seeing what happened and just observing the energy. But when people started to lose hope, it was kind of upsetting.”
“Everyone was having a phenomenal time. And then the second Pennsylvania started turning red … everybody started getting quiet,” Zia said.
Ultimately, Harris did not appear at the rally. The group of Mount Holyoke students in attendance departed shortly before the announcement was made that Harris would not be speaking that evening.
“I kind of knew Trump was going to win,” Camargo said. “As politics students, I felt like we left early because we kind of saw it coming. Like once Pennsylvania was called, we were like, let’s just go.”
Camargo mentioned feeling “disappointed” that Harris did not appear to address her supporters at the rally.
“It was a heavy walk back home,” they said.
The day after the election, Harris gave a concession speech at Howard University that encouraged her supporters to continue to fight for the campaign’s values even after the election results were called in Trump’s favor. Khan, reflecting on the election results, echoed Harris’s sentiment.
“I don't think we should ever lose hope because, okay, yes, [Trump] is here, but that just means we fight back, right?” Khan said. “We get to be sad. We get to be upset about it … a lot of people are going to be hurt, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot in this term. But that just should make us angrier. That should make us fight back harder.”
Processing the election in class
The Semester in D.C. program mandates that participants take two seminars at American University related to subjects such as foreign policy, American politics or international law. As a result of these concentrations, the United States presidential election has featured prominently in the program’s lessons this fall.
The day after the election, a U.S. public policy course taught at American dedicated an entire class discussion to the results. Toomey said the discussion allowed for a helpful debrief of recent events.
“I totally came into that class being like, ‘I don't want to talk about it,’ and left feeling really good,” Toomey said. “We talked a lot about the way that the media has impacted the election. We had a really productive conversation in the class.”
In the months leading up to the election, some Muslim and Arab Americans expressed an unwillingness to vote for either Trump or Harris because of misgivings about how each candidate would respond to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war after assuming the presidency. Zia said that the class discussion gave her the opportunity to discuss her decision to abstain from voting for Harris.
“It was especially important to me, because as a Muslim American citizen of the US who grew up in New York — in a post 9/11 world [with] rising Islamophobia — I didn't vote in this election because I just felt like I could not put my values aside and vote for anyone,” Zia said. “I also knew that I could make that decision because New York was going to be blue. So that was a risk that I took, and it was very calculated.”
“Being in a classroom where I felt like I could say that was a really good experience because people were able to hear me out,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like that's not necessarily always the case for me, because people are just unable to understand that experience. … So the fact that in that classroom at American, we were talking to a Democratic Party strategist, and I told him that and he understood where I was coming from: that was powerful enough for me.”
“We do have people from both sides in our classroom setting, which creates an interesting dynamic,” Khan said. She added that much of the class discussion centered around analyzing what went wrong for the Democrats in the election and speculating how certain voters made their decisions.
Adam Hilton, associate professor of politics and faculty director of the Semester in D.C. Program, said that working and studying alongside peers with different political views is a beneficial aspect of the program.
“Washington draws a whole range of people: liberals, conservatives of various stripes,” Hilton said. “I know that our students have many of these folks as peers at American University, [and it’s] probably a little bit more ideologically diverse than is Mount Holyoke. But I think that's a really great thing because they're encountering these folks that have the ambition to perhaps one day work in a career that could bring them to Washington or a similar kind of city.”
“And while we would never suppose that they should be in a situation where they feel they have to compromise on fundamental values,” he said, “it can be quite illuminating and educational to get a sense of how people see the world quite differently.”
Looking towards the future
The Semester in D.C. program typically attracts Mount Holyoke students who envision themselves in careers involving politics after graduation. The 2024 election results will likely have a direct impact on many of the fields this semester’s cohort plans on entering, including immigration law, public policy research and communications.
Camargo, who is currently interning with the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project, aims to go to law school after graduation and pursue a specialization in immigration law. In the wake of an incoming second Trump administration that has vowed to carry out mass deportations of immigrants, Camargo anticipates that their intended field of work will be heavily impacted in the coming years.
“I full-on intend to continue down this path, but it does feel like the hill just got a lot steeper,” Camargo said. “But I think it should only embolden people because I think in times of crisis, it's when we really need to come together and find our common goals and work towards them.”
Meanwhile, Toomey — currently a policy intern for the National Network for Youth — felt that the election results had a significant impact on her future plans.
“I definitely have stopped thinking about going directly into government work under Trump,” Toomey said. “Just because that feels both nonproductive and frustrating … I probably wouldn’t get hired.” Toomey added that she is currently considering either law school or a career in the private sector, such as working for a nonprofit or think tank.
Zia, an intern in the law enforcement branch of the Department of Justice, does not envision herself going into law enforcement for a future career. However, she believes that whatever career she pursues should allow room for her to speak her mind.
“Because my [South Asian] identity is so political, it upsets me if I’m just quiet about my life at work or anywhere,” Zia said. “And so I think the election has just taught me that, like, you can’t escape from this, this kind of stuff, and you have to be mindful of where you're going.”
“Things are constantly changing either way,” Khan, an intern at a campaign finance consulting firm who is looking to go into policy research after graduation, said. “It does make me more excited because I’m like, okay, now there will be more to look into. There will be more research.”
“It’ll be different, but the work kind of remains the same,” she said. “The issues remain the same. You just have to tackle them from a different lens.”
Liv Dentoni ’28 contributed fact-checking.