Muffled giggles, roars of laughter, grimaces and shocked silence — for Syracuse University students and faculty watching the first televised 2016 presidential debate Monday at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, emotions varied quickly.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump battled over question topics ranging from trade and energy policy to Trump’s previous assertion that current United States President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, throughout the hour-and-a-half long debate aired on CNN.

With nearly 200 people crowded into Maxwell’s Joseph A. Strasser Commons for a watch party, students stood at balcony railings, laid down on the floor and crowded around small cocktail bar tables, propped up by food service workers earlier in the night, to hear the two candidates speak.

There was a low grumbling of dissent as Trump discussed his support of stop-and-frisk policies, a few whistles and yells of support as Clinton said there needs to be more affordable higher education.

But mostly, the early one-upmanship arguments between the two candidates — where at one point Clinton and Trump argued over former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s support of the North American Free Trade Agreement for several minutes — and later discussions over how to defeat the radical Islamic State group, for example, were greeted with a drifting, hesitant laughter by the watch party attendees at Maxwell.

“I think with this debate being so anticipated, I think there was a little bit of nervousness … from the crowd, not exactly knowing what to expect (from the debate),” said Alessandro Pugliese, a sophomore Italian major, following the watch party.

By Pugliese’s interview with The Daily Orange, roughly five minutes after the debate had ended, the room was already cleared out. Pugliese sat alone in the rows of white folding chairs setup in the center of the commons, watching CNN commentators discuss takeaways from the debate on the three wall-mounted televisions used for the watch party.

“I think it was a pretty balanced crowd,” said the sophomore in retrospect, referring to the watch party attendees, as he looked around the stark, concrete common area. Plastic cups crunched on the floor, and plates of leftover food were left on couches.

Despite a crowd that frequently applauded Clinton’s statements and prepared zingers while grumbling over Trump’s frequent interjections, Pugliese said he saw a relatively large amount of Trump supporters in the crowd.

As the crowd dispersed outside Maxwell, in a gusting wind with lamplight reflected in puddles of rain, SU students stood huddled in coats discussing the debate.

Michael Anthony Kelly, a junior English and textual studies major, was one of the students waiting around outside of Maxwell. He said the watch party was a great chance for the SU community to bond together watching a very important national debate.

“I would say the event was actually a success. Due to the fact, you know, that we’re gathering as a student body,” Kelly said. “To have a whole body of Syracuse students, Syracuse professors, watching (the debate) … We’re all in the same boat, you know. And it was very much an eye opener.”

Published on September 27, 2016 at 1:15 am

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek