Tess Brock: We all grow up thinking America is the best place in the world, but now I have never been so ashamed of our country. We elected a horrible human being to the White House. A person who has put the fear in the hearts of every single minority in America with hateful and offensive words. However, there are still so many people out there that care. And we will fight to survive the next four years.

Megan Hammond: For the main portion of the night I did not look at election results. Neither candidate was ideal, and I awoke Wednesday morning to mixed reactions of joy and despair. As our country continues, I’ll continue to pray, hoping for the best as I would with any other president.

MacK Korris: What’s most interesting to me is how and why there was such a large discrepancy within the pre-election polls and election results. The turnouts in Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio and Minnesota all largely varied from their pre-election adjusted polling averages, much to the detriment of Secretary Clinton. States such as Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania went red after previously being seen, statistically and analytically, as pretty safely blue states. Trump’s support in Ohio and Iowa was much, much more stronger than anticipated by statisticians such as Nate Silver. How does this happen? It seems that a large number of the non-college educated, white and often-rural voter base simply was not taken into account by polls, whether because of flaws inherent in their technological access or a myriad of other factors. What’s perhaps even more unspeakable is the voter turnout. An upwards of 47% of eligible voters simply didn’t vote.

Maggie Cipriano: As I walked down West Pine this morning, I saw multiple groups of students intertwined with tears in their eyes discussing the election results. This election has shown America’s true colors. It is important to love at this time. Parting words to love and live by: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” – William Ernest Henley.

William Kernell: I spent much of my youth in firm support of the GOP and began my political activism by defacing magazine covers that had John Kerry’s face on them.  Naturally, I began to shift away from the Party in high school and saw the Democratic Party as a bit more hip.  Now, I have come back to the Middle and colored my ballot purple this Tuesday.  I had quite the moral dilemma when it came to our 2016 presidential candidates. Let us move past our slacktivism of unruly Facebook and Twitter posts and actually make a damn difference.

Natalie Riopelle: I’m from Madison, Wisc. The birthplace and an eternal hub of progressivism and general liberalism. What I didn’t fully comprehend is that the rest of the United States, and even the rest of Wisconsin, isn’t like this. Madison did not vote for Donald Trump, while much of the rest of Wisconsin, what has been a majority blue state for 32 years, did. My state swung the race in Trump’s favor, for a sexist and a homophobe. I’m so painfully disappointed.

Kyle Smith: It’s been difficult for me to find anything intelligent to say about the events that transpired on Tuesday. Like many, I was utterly shocked by the outcome and still have yet to make sense of it. For over a year, I have been following this election intently, sharing my opinion, critically evaluating every controversy that arose — but it wasn’t until 9 p.m. on Tuesday night that I first contemplated the fact that Donald J. Trump might actually become our next president. Now our country stands on a precipice; what happens next is anyone’s guess. But I, for one, have learned to stop making predictions.