While the election campaigns are ramping up, some BYU students say that some important topics aren’t being addressed.
Joel Ellsworth, a mechanical engineering graduate student from Sandy, said he would like to hear more about what the candidates plan for NASA. He said he feels NASA has helped the United States become the innovative country it is.
“You can’t look around without seeing something that NASA hasn’t contributed to in some way,” Ellsworth said.
Ellsworth is correct. NASA contributed to the development of things such as communications satellites and hospital equipment to cochlear implants, grooved highways and even Nerf darts.
Other students are just tired of hearing the same political rhetoric.
“People think too much about politics,” said Lena Rowland, a freshman linguistics major from Orlando, Fla.
Daniel Steele, a senior from Oak City, studying technology and engineering education, said he’s tired of the candidates questioning each others’ qualifications for the job.
“If you’re in a position to be president, you’ve done something to get that far,” Steele said. “They just fight each other and don’t talk about solutions.”
Steele said he wants to hear more about the solutions to the problems the candidates are highlighting.
“Even if they offer grand and glorious solutions, I want to know how they’re going to accomplish it,” Steele said. “People talk about wanting smaller government. How are they going to accomplish that?”
Steele also said that he’d like to hear the candidates’ plans for working with Congress. He said he believes this would be important because the president is supposed to execute the laws passed by Congress. If they can’t work together, nothing will get accomplished.
Ashley Alley, a senior from Pocatello, Idaho, studying technology and engineering education, would like to hear more about the candidates’ education policies. She said she wants to hear more about whether they would continue to cut funding and what changes they would make to federal student aid.
Alley would also like to hear about how the candidates’ view a state’s relationship with the federal government.
“States are supposed to check the federal government, but it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, ” Alley said.
