There are 10 comments on Video: Students on the Issues That Matter Most to Them in the 2020 Presidential Election

1. How about interviewing some students who support the current President? Very inclusive of you, BU. How about we respect the First Amendment of Free Speech. Trump 2024!

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   1. Thank you. This video was more about issues, than candidates–asking students what issues matter the most to them.

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   2. Maybe, just maybe, none of the students interviewed supports our current president?
      If any of them had, I’m sure the videographer would have been included that student in the video to show another viewpoint. These students are expressing their First Amendment rights of Free Speech, even though their opinions do not agree with yours.
      Anybody But Trump 2020

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      1. True – maybe none of the interviewed students don’t support the current president. But this does not mean that Trump supporters or Conservatives do not exist on campus. They do. In this video there is no conservative issue mentioned. There is no person who says that they are conservative but don’t support Trump. And there is no Trump supporter. This means either the creators did not care to select a random sample, and thus the video is not representative of the BU student body. Or they tried to interview a random sample but selectively edited out Conservatives. Either way, it calls the integrity of this piece into question.

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         1. Thank you. To be clear, the videographers simply sought out a random collection of student voices from across the campus with the question focused on, What issue is the most important issue to you right now? These were the most eloquent, thoughtful responses. Because so much of the focus right now is on the Democratic primary candidates, with the president mostly unopposed, it should not be surprising that what most students had on their minds were the issues being talked about in debates. There was no effort to edit out conservatives or avoid them. But there also was no effort to go specifically find conservative or liberal voices. The aim was to simply find students. Period.

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            1. Yea we know what the deal is. You only want to showcase students who share your views. This is exactly the reason trump won in 2016 and will win again. This is very dishonest of you, and we notice!

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            2. Cedric, I am sorry, and confused? My note says the exact opposite of what you are claiming. We wanted to showcase students’ voices. Whatever those voices were. We did not cherry pick people based on what they said or what they believe. We asked people what issues matter most to them. What is dishonest?

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            3. You state that you sought out a “random collection” of student voices. You showcase less than 10 students, but it is not clear how many you attempted to interview. Let’s say 20, and you chose the most eloquent responses. Randomness suggests that you should, on average have 1 out of 20 being conservative if 5% of the BU student population is conservative. More, if the percentage is higher. Now you may have an unfortunate sample, but randomness still suggests that this is unlikely. If you don’t have a single conservative voice (and there are candidates who run against Trump) and also no Libertarians, you will get questions about your definitions of randomness. Of course there is also the possibility of ignorance in BU Today’s approaches to “journalism” and “reporting.”

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            4. Ok, you raise interesting questions. But I will ignore your name calling at the end to keep this discussion from going down that path. We appreciate these opinions and enjoy the back and forth as long as it stays respectful. So, does your comment mean after we interviewed a random collection of people, to talk about what issues they are most interested in, and we did not have any clear-cut conservative or libertarian voices, as you suggest, we should then go out of our way in search of only conservative and libertarian voices to make sure they are included? And should we also find voices who favor socialism? Who else? The other solution, which we intentionally avoided doing, was to go seek out voices only from the BU Democrats and BU Republicans. That way we are ensured both sides of the political spectrum. But we did not want to do that–then you only get people who are working and volunteering for their specific cause, rather than ordinary people with hopefully different views. And as the video shows, that’s what we got. For some students, the key issue was climate change, or the economy, or income inequality or student debt. That range of answers was what we hoped to get.

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2. Good piece, but I’d also love to know how many of the students you interviewed will actually vote. That would make an excellent follow up piece!

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