As we approach the last few months of 2017, it is important that we reflect on the past year and where we were this time last year. One year ago, the campus flooded Green Street in celebration of the Cubs winning the World Series. A couple days after that, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

The day after the votes were counted, the campus seemed mostly quiet, as students tried to comprehend what happened the night before. One of my teachers walked into class crying and stated she could not do class that day. I saw students wearing the “Make America Great Again” hat as other students on the Main Quad were trying to sing and dance for peace.

This was only a year ago, and we cannot forget how much further we have to go. Kate McKinnon’s Saturday Night Live opening monologue still rings true a year later. After she sings “Hallelujah,” she states, “I’m not giving up, and neither should you.” After everything that has happened recently in our world, we need to keep fighting for the good and keep the political discussion moving.

One good thing that came out of this election was that people were starting to engage in more political conversations. It seems people now realize the importance of engaging in politics and our civic duty to vote.

Even though many of us disagree with each other, it is important that we still engage respectfully without dwelling in ignorant bigotry, an important lesson from this past year. The hate speech being spewed during the Charlottesville protest was telling of the racism that still runs rampant throughout our country. Just as appalling was the Trump administration’s response that there was “violence on both sides.”

“Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me,” President Trump said. “Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.”

This is not in any way an appropriate response to what happened in Charlottesville. If you are protesting with a neo-Nazi group, then it is ridiculous to say you are not one of them.

The claim that both sides were violent fails to condemn the racism and bigotry that fueled the protest. One side was trying to protest racism and tried to make known that these Confederate soldier statues are not acceptable symbols of our country. Hopefully we can learn from this and understand violence is never the answer.

I understand that hate speech is not something we can even have a respectful debate about; however, we can learn to have respectful conversations with each other as to why we believe what we believe.

The Las Vegas shooting started to spark conversations again about gun control; however, the Trump administration stated, “There will certainly be a time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in at this moment.”

This raises the question: When is the right time to talk about gun control? In my opinion, the time is every day. Every day people are losing their lives to gun violence, and it is not something we can just forget about. The White House also argued that Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the country, yet has one of the highest rates of gun violence. What the White House failed to mention was that most of these guns come from Wisconsin and Indiana, where they have lenient gun laws.

Looking at how the White House approached this issue, we need to start the gun control conversation ourselves, do our research and trust the credible news sources. This past year has been a war on the media, specifically reputable news sources like CNN and the The New York Times. After a year of lies from the White House, we need to realize that it is now our responsibility to fact check them and hold them accountable. A fact is a fact; it is not an opinion.

President Trump has coined the phrase “fake news” over this past year, though, ironically, he is constantly lying himself. The New York Times even generated a whole list of Trump’s lies with all of the known evidence for it, demonstrating that the real issue is not the media, it is the president.

So much more has happened in one year since the election, and it is time to consider if we are truly happy with who we voted for, if the U.S. is in a better or worse place and how we can make things better for the country. We cannot give up now on fighting for the good.

We need to try and come together, and continue important political conversations.

Jaime is a sophomore in LAS.

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