by Connor Parks
Well all, election season is now past us. With a new issue on the horizon, I decided to finally answer a question I’d had for quite some time: how had Centre’s student body reacted to previous presidential elections, as seen in past editions of The Cento?
I turned my eyes to the invaluable Centre College Institutional Repository Collection (CCIRC) and basically had a field day. Just a shameless plug for this database: if you’re ever seeking anything in particular from Centre’s history from 1950 to 2000, this is your place, not to mention all the wild and unbelievable articles I found during my research. It’s worth spending some time in. One of the first things I noted was that earlier issues, as info-rich as they were, hardly discussed elections between 1952 and 1964, with the first real evidence of the Cento’s political side emerging in the late 60s and early 1970s.
(Clearly, Centre was feeling some kinda way about the country’s next four years. I’m guessing Vietnam might’ve had something to do with it.)
The 1972 election between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, meanwhile, exploded in coverage. Editions before and after the election included numerous student opinions, and even the results of a mock election held on campus between the candidates:
(Pete Tamborski, now a Cincinnati-area attorney, with an unabashed take on the 1972 election).We went from no politics at all to no-holds-barred!)
Commentary on the 1976 and 1984 elections was surprisingly absent, aside from a few period-appropriate cartoons. I find the ‘84 one eerily relevant:
Interestingly enough, the 1980 election was apparently important enough to warrant an entire Cento edition devoted to it. There was school-related material as well, but most of the issue was election-centric, including man-on-the-street answers to the question on everyone’s mind:
Finally, with no issues covering the 1988 or 1992 elections available online, the 1996 election brought with it some reasonable, non-controversial post-election discussion:
Who’s to say? Perhaps in 30 years’ time our own coverage pieces will be stumbled upon by future Cento readers and editors, and the cycle will only continue.