College administration responds to election results

In the wake of the 2024 election, Grinnell College administration has focused on “ensuring that students have spaces where they can process election results, and ensure that students are aware of support resources,” according to an email to The S&B from Ellen deGraffenreid, vice-president of communications and marketing. 

“That’s my focus today,” President Anne Harris said in the Post-Election discussion on Nov. 6. “Human dignity and our community, how we look out for each other, how we find the time to process this election and how we find the time and the grace and the resources to think about what comes next.” 

The College hosted post-election discussions on both Nov. 6 and Nov. 8. The first event on Nov. 6, which occurred just hours after the presidential race had been called for Donald Trump, featured a packed room of hundreds of students, faculty and staff. After speakers — including Harris, organizer David Harrison, director for the Program for Practical Political Education, and Peter Hanson, professor of political science — delivered their remarks, attendees were encouraged to discuss their own reactions to the election in small groups.

Attendees were asked to take notes on their discussions and any questions raised by the group, which organizers of the event collected afterwards. Harrison told The S&B in an email that these notes included “understanding political context and social ramifications of election results,” “college policies in response to future activities of the Trump administration” and “how the college can engage in debates that are brought forward by the election.” 

JC Lopez, vice president of Student Affairs, wrote in an email to The S&B that in the months leading up to the election, the College “developed various events and coordinated student resources,” including voter education tabling, presidential and vice presidential debate watch parties and post-election support systems such as reflection spaces with the Center for Religion, Spirituality, and Social Justice (CRSSJ) and increased access to Student Health and Wellness (SHAW) counseling staff.

“We continue to discuss the needs of our students and community, so additional programming and discussions may be provided throughout the year,” Lopez wrote.  

At the CRSSJ, leads have focused on supporting students and staff by teaching the CRSSJ’s core values of steadiness, humanity and safety through the election season. 

“Sometimes in moments of stress, we might think that what we want is for people to match our stress, but that’s not actually going to help us,” Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay, chaplain of the College, said. “What’s going to help us is to really stay grounded in all of this — that’s going to sustain us for a longer term. Grounding in those three values is really my goal for our department as we move forward and support the community here.”

In the three weeks leading up to the election, the CRSSJ held a lunchtime series in the prayer garage as a way to be responsive and proactive towards participant needs and concerns. The series will continue for the next two weeks, according to Brammer-Shlay, and will focus on looking at spiritually related and secular texts on approaching conflict. Brammer-Shlay also emphasized the religious and spiritual practices organized and held by members of the CRSSJ as a space for support and community. 

“What I do as a spiritual leader is to support people and accompany them in moments of uncertainty. How do we recognize that we move forward in these moments in a communal way? And how do we do that with courage, and how do we do that with steadiness, and how do we do that with respect for each other,” Brammer-Shlay said. “I encourage students to really find a place that feels like home to them, and it feels like a place where they can explore and ask questions.”

SHAW has extended their resources to community spaces, sending licensed health professionals to community support spaces in the Black Cultural Center, Disability Cultural Center, Latinx/e Cultural Center and Stonewall Resource Center. 

“What we have found out, just from experience, if you don’t have somebody there right on site, and you refer them to SHAW, oftentimes they don’t come,” Terry Mason, dean for health and wellness, said. “So we want to be right there and meet the need immediately.”

To be able to send their professionals to community spaces, SHAW had to re-allocate their resources to minimize the impact to students that regularly meet with health providers.  

“We haven’t really had any people in crisis, right? So I think that’s good, but we’re also prepared for that,” Mason said.

Most administrative offices expressed a focus on providing for the needs of students as their primary concern with the outcome of the 2024 election. When asked about if he expected any disruptive policy changes from the new administration Mason said, “I don’t really anticipate anything that would curtail the things we do.” 

In reference to SHAW’s response to the abortion ban in Iowa, he said, “we found ways to support students around that without putting my staff in jeopardy. We must follow the law, but we’re creative, and we can find ways of — if we can’t provide it, making sure that there’s a place where students are supported.”

“The simultaneity of this moment and its acuteness and its intensity because of the things that have been said in the public sphere that impact identities, that is what is hitting us in this [moment],” Harris said at the Nov. 6 event. “Those are the things that don’t align with Grinnell values that champion human dignity.”