Michaela Román – Editor-in-Chief

The United States of Anxiety 

One show my brothers and I always found entertaining when I was only 9 years old was The Apprentice. The plot was simple, a rich guy sees who has what it takes to work for him and if they don’t, he has the privilege of firing them on TV. The intro to each show ended with a quote, “It’s not personal, It’s just business.”

This quote was the first of many President-elect Donald Trump quotes I’d unintentionally memorize through my life.

Nearly a year after the shows debut in 2005, Trump bragged about sexually grabbing women without their consent. The sad thing is the world didn’t find out about this until Trump was already the official GOP candidate for the 2016 presidential election.

After all of the racist, prejudice, sexist, discriminative comments Trump has made since he announced he would run 18 months ago, “Grab her by the p***y” still resides in my head more than any other.

After covering UTEP’s watch party I got home right in time for an Associated Press notification Trump had reached the required delegates, and I sat there lifeless ready to hear his acceptance speech. I felt like I was in an episode of Black Mirror or watching a satire video from The Onion.

I thought about all the progress Obama made and how the GOP senate is ready to sweep his 8 years of hard work under the rug. I thought about how a man that once summed up Mexican’s as “rapists and criminals”–fueling the flames of ignorance that already existed—was now giving an acceptance speech to take on the Oval Office. In a time where rape culture is the norm, the man replacing President Obama once promoted forcedly grabbing women by the genitalia.

Was I initially ‘with her’ because Bernie told me to be? Maybe. But this election took my generation way past figuring out who the lesser of two evils is. The results of this election went against anything 24-hour broadcast election coverage could’ve ever prepared us for. We found out too many Americans weren’t ready for more progress. Scandals aside, America chose the far less qualified candidate, it’s as simple as that.

On the night of the election, my childhood best friend told me she had voted for Trump. I stared at my phone blankly waiting for the “jk” to pop up. It never did. Right now I’m still waiting for the “jk” to pop up on this entire election season, it never will.

Kanye 2020 would be no surprise at this point.

Christian Vasquez – Copy Editor

Surprised but not Shocked 

Living in a republic means that you have to accept those that are elected.

But, what’s more, you should accept that there are those that elected him. Not in a “lets all get-together and hug it out” sort of way, but understand that for nearly 60 million people, this is who they want to be the most influential person in the world.

Is it surprising? Yes. But is it shocking? I would have to say no. The democrats chose a candidate who had to run on fear of the other to avoid her own collection of pitfalls and scandals. The DNC knew that her die-hard supporters were few and far between, and hoped that being a liked and popular candidate was no longer necessary to win an election. Instead of addressing the concerns of voters, her campaign chose to blame it on Russia of all things. They failed, plain and simple. They failed to get Congress, they failed to get the Presidency and now, because of the latter, they will fail in tipping the Supreme Court. For many, this means rethinking who makes up America. For others, it’s a confirmation of what they already believed. There are many aspects about Trump that anyone might not want in a neighbor, and while Trump isn’t your neighbor—he’s your president—you most likely have neighbors who voted for him.

We ignored the aspects of our country that we didn’t like. The racist, the sexist and the bigots that feared, secretly or openly, the “other.” I’m not calling Trump supporters racist or sexist, but they chose to ignore many of the racist and sexist things Trump said, which definitely means something. This election shows that voting isn’t enough, that you cannot change the direction of a country voting once every four years. You must be more involved beyond the vote and into your community. And because we weren’t, we deserve Trump.

Jason Green – Spring 2017 Sports Editor

Is This Real Life?

Welcome to America… where the rules are made up and the votes don’t matter. On Wednesday morning at almost 3 a.m., we found out that Donald Trump had made it to the vaunted 270 electoral votes needed to become the next President of the United States. This was shocking to myself and everyone on my Facebook feed, mainly because I had unfriended anyone who showed a modicum of Trump support in the last year.

But, as I began to look around on all forms of social media and just popular media of all sorts, I noticed that everyone was shocked. How was that possible? I mean, somebody had to vote for him, right? Well, it turns out that 59,392,837 people did actually vote for him. I mean, people came out of the woodwork. Literally…like, Jed Clampett style…Granny on her rocking chair with a shotgun and everything. Ok, no more rednecks voting for Trump jokes–even though you all know it’s true.

The funny thing about all those votes for Trump is that Clinton got 59,599,237. I mean, I’m just a journalist and I took stupid people math here at UTEP but, even I know that she got more votes. More Americans wanted Hillary Clinton to be President than wanted Donald Trump to be President. It is plain and simple. More Americans cared about having a misogynistic, vagina grabbing, racist in the white house than actually cared about emails. Now that is an America that one can actually be proud of! Or is it?

Well, we now have President-elect Donald Trump. We are the laughing stock of the entire world thanks to the good ol’ electoral college. The world economy is already taking a nose dive. I’m writing this from my end of days bunker. Ok, that last part isn’t true – I’m not a second amendment waving, Bible-thumping, Obama is coming to take my guns, get the kids to the bunker, psycho, after all. But, if I was, now might be a good time to head down there. I mean, my wife is Mexican and I do kinda wanna keep her around for a while. I know he’s not gonna deport Melania but, my wife… I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I make all of those jokes as a way of saying…this hurts. A lot. I thought America was better than this. I took my 11-year- old son to school late this morning because he was crying when I told him that Trump won. He was worried that his grandparents might get sent back to Mexico…or his great-grandfather whom he just got to really know for the first time. My son knows what Trump stands for. When I took him to school, I apologized to his teacher who was busy with his class, made up almost entirely of Mexican-American students…almost all in some state of panic/fear. The teacher said that he had been answering questions all morning about whether their parents were going to be there when they get home from school.

Welcome to Trumpmerica…who knows what the rules will be or if we’ll ever get to vote again.

Gaby Velasquez – Photo Editor

And it’s only the beginning

I feel like we all expected Clinton to win. That was until we starting hearing the results.

I walked into the election night party here on campus, with an “alright let’s just get this over with” kind of attitude, thinking that Clinton was going to win so easily and that Trump just had no chance.
Honestly, I didn’t even expect to see any students who supported Trump at the event. I really didn’t think any of his supporters existed here being that we live right on the border with Mexico and in a city which is 80% Hispanic. Much less did I expect to see them as happy and cheerful all night as they were.

However, what was truly surprising was all the Trump supporters that started to come out last night, especially through social media. This election truly broke relationships between so many people. I still can’t find a reason why people support him. It’s like no one cared about his sexist and racist comments; and, if no one cares about minorities and women.

At the end of the night, I ended up collecting more photos of Trump supporters cheering than Hillary supporters.
Waking up this morning I didn’t even know how to feel. It’s just very disappointing and terrifying not truly knowing what’s ahead of us.

Adrian Broaddus – Sports and Web Editor

Trump doesn’t suck, it’s the people and the DNC

We get it, Trump blows. He’s probably our most likable, yet least qualified president. But why blame Trump?

He simply says stand and hoards of people rise in unison; he could say the most obscure statement but people would still care, stand by his side and hold it true. He’s a populist—one we have not seen in the President’s chambers since the likes of Andrew Jackson. A populist appeals to the ordinary people, which is precisely what Trump did. He knew how stupid one fraction of America was, so he decided to morph it into his robotic colony and make it among his majority voters.

The whites have regained power. Could it mean another cycle of racism? Or, could it mean a divide among the country? They were tired of no change and no hope during Obama’s administration. They were tired of misrepresentation in Washington. So, they elected a flaming Cheeto Puff.

Now, on Hillary’s side—I feel incredibly awful for her, but I believe the Democratic party lost it for her. They had every bit of deep desire to win this election, yet they blew it. Minorities did not all vote, democratic party affiliates did not vote and it simply was not a pride for their candidate as compared to those who supported Trump.

Possibly if Bernie Sanders had ran against Donald Trump, there would have been a different outcome, but the DNC chose not to take Bernie as their candidate, despite the popular vote.

Since I’m a sports guy and I deal with a lot of stats, here are my final numbers of the day—the last time America had three republicans controlling the House, the Senate and the Presidency was in 1928. Four years after, the Great Depression hit.

Who knows what’s next after 2016… I’m just hoping (as my Editor in Chief Michaela said) for Kanye 2020.

 Rene Delgadillo –  Copy Editor

Don’t tell me that racism does not exist

He said he was a winner and many of us didn’t take him seriously. He said he would become the new president and we made memes on social media. Thanks America, and before you say anything I was going for Bernie Sanders all the way until he lost, I had no other option but to vote for Hillary because of Trump’s ideas against immigrants.

Through twitter and social media we told our readers and followers what was happening right after it happened, but I never thought that we would tell them that Trump would become the elected president of the United States.

Around 8 p.m we went quiet, we knew that Trump was the future president and that Secretary Clinton had no chance of winning. We looked at each other, confusion and amazement was evident on both of us.

I had no words to explain my confusion and anger, I had no idea of what to think or what to say. As I walked towards my car a couple of tears came down and I said: “fuck, he actually won”.

What will happen with the residence application of my step-brother and my step mom? Will they have to stay in Mexico? What is going to happen with the devaluation of the Mexican peso? What will happen to hard working immigrants who love this country? Will the wall separate us even more? Will white supremacists attack us even more? How did he win? He called Mexicans rapists, he said that men could grab women by their genitals, Trump’s rhetoric was clearly against Muslim people. He did terrible in every presidential debate and he still won?

He is the man who sued the New York Times and has supporters who created t-shirts calling for the hanging of journalists.

He was the perfect example of racism and he still won, I feel that all the advancement that we made as the country in the last years was thrown in the trash.

I’m scared and confused, but I’m hopeful of what my generation will be voting for in future elections.

If you didn’t vote don’t complain.