Bernie's Wellesley fan club
At Hillary Clinton's alma mater, a small band of Sanders supporters is up against a well-organized machine.
By Annie Karni
WELLESLEY, Mass. -- It’s hard not to be aware of Hillary Clinton’s presence on the rolling lakeside campus of Wellesley College, even 46 years after the college's most famous alum graduated. Her portrait hangs here in the political science department, alongside letters she sent to her former professors. At the campus archives, librarians are happy to cart out a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings and worn-out yearbooks documenting Clinton’s four active years on campus. The bookstore sells a Hillary Clinton action figure.
If the students who currently attend didn’t expressly choose Wellesley because of its Clinton connection, they’re keenly aware of the school’s strong tie to the Democratic frontrunner seeking to make history as the first woman president – the buzz among students is that a Clinton White House will greatly increase the prestige of a Wellesley degree. The love is requited – Clinton has credited her alma mater as the “all-women’s college [that] prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics.” It was at Wellesley, after all, that Clinton first became a star, using her 1969 commencement speech to challenge the speaker invited by the administration, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, for being out of touch with her generation. The bold move landed her on the cover of Time Magazine, making her famous before she even arrived at Yale Law School.
For politically active Wellesley women, it doesn’t feel like a duty to vote Clinton, but it can feel like bucking the trend not to. But on a chilly Monday afternoon before Thanksgiving break, a loosely organized group of about half-a-dozen students gathered in the empty basement of the campus student center to discuss their against-the-grain support for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
They didn’t all know each other socially – the women quietly found each other through the Wellesley Students for Bernie Facebook page, which now has 275 members and counting (compared to 815 in the pro-Clinton student Facebook group). Many said their support for Sanders put them in the minority in their social circles, but they did not feel moved by the former secretary of state, despite living in the dormitories she once resided in and studying in the classrooms where she learned.
“My dad thinks my support for Bernie is totally misguided because I go to Wellesley,” admitted sophomore Claire Devlin. “He keeps saying it’s bad for the brand not to vote for Hillary, which I just think is the most absurd thing.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-wellesley-hillary-clinton-216203
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