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The Daily Northwestern Wednesday, November 6, 2024

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ELECTION COVERAGE 2024

Trump poised for historic win Former president inches toward 270 as counting rolls on By NICOLE MARKUS and LILY OGBURN

daily senior staffers @nicolejmarkus

Former president Donald Trump is poised to win the presidential election, according to data from the Associated Press. Early data from the night showed the former president significantly outpacing his 2020 performance as Harris underperformed with key voter demographics and in key states. Trump addressed supporters at Trump Headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, just before 1:30 a.m., claiming victory. “I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president,” Trump said. “Every day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body.” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) also addressed the crowd, calling Trump’s projected victory “the greatest political comeback in the history of America.”

Northwestern students preferred Harris in this year’s election, The Daily’s first poll of undergraduate students showed. Among NU students who said they were “very likely” or “likely” to vote in the general election, Harris led Trump by 84 percentage points. Only one in 20 students with a voting preference said they would vote for Trump. The AP called Trump’s victory in North Carolina and Georgia, two of seven battleground states, before midnight on Election Day, narrowing Harris’ path to winning the presidency to the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But it became clear that Harris would not be able to secure the three states, and in turn, the presidency. The AP called Pennsylvania for Trump at 1:30 a.m. Cedric Richmond, the co-chair of the Harris-Walz campaign, announced to supporters at Howard University that Harris would not address the crowd as planned and would instead speak on the election results in the morning. Republicans took control of the Senate as well, the AP reported shortly before midnight.

Students worry as results roll in Potential for second Trump term causes anxiety, fear at NU By NINETH KANIESKI KOSO

daily senior staffers

As the election results continued to trail in, many students expressed fear and anxiety about the implications of the presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening. McCormick sophomore Lucy Madsen said her biggest anxiety about this year’s election is related to environmental policies. As an environmental engineering major, she said she is concerned that Trump may roll back the Environmental Protection Agency, affecting her future job prospects. She added she has found Trump’s rhetoric to be very concerning, especially after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” at a Trump rally. “I’m really concerned by the dehumanization that is happening in a lot of the (Trump) campaign,” Madsen said. “The whole talking about Haitian

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immigrants earlier this year turned into a joke for everybody but it felt really, really scary in the moment to just be like, ‘Oh, now that’s just normal to paint these people using dehumanizing language.’” Coming from Utah, a red state, Madsen said it can feel like her vote doesn’t matter. However, she said she always votes in local elections — where change is more possible. Ahead of the election, Madsen said she has been trying to avoid watching the news as a way to relieve her election anxiety. “The stakes of the election feel really high,” Madsen said. “It’s just hard having it so close, you can’t see who’s actually ahead.” Weinberg freshman Andrew Onema said he is concerned about the possibility of increasing violence during and after the election. Onema said while this election is the first one he has voted in, he is scared about increased polarization in politics. “I feel like there might be backlash on either end of or protest on either end of whichever candidate wins,” Onema said. “I do think back to some of the larger protests on Jan. 6 as

WAY OFF COURSE Students and staff report some dining workers for harassment. Compass transfers them — and misconduct continues. By COLE REYNOLDS and JERRY WU

daily senior staffers @charcole27 /@jerrwu

Content warning: This story mentions sexual harassment and racism. McCormick junior Yaa returned to her dorm in tears on Feb. 11. She recalled grabbing a tub of ice cream and spending the rest of the day under her covers. Three days later, Yaa accused an Allison dining hall worker of a pattern of sexual harassment in a written complaint. Her report detailed a series of sexualizing comments and interactions that spanned months. “The shift in the nature of (the employee’s) compliments and him hugging me have caused me much uneasiness and discomfort,” Yaa wrote in the complaint. She asked to go by a pseudonym for fear of retribution from the worker. Compass Group, the company that runs Northwestern’s food service, placed the employee on leave after receiving the report, according to dining hall workers familiar with the situation. After filing, Yaa said she didn’t encounter him in Allison again, and she began to feel comfortable dining there. But later, she recalled seeing the employee working at MOD Pizza in Norris University Center. His reappearance came as a shock, she said, because no one had told her he was returning to work. And since she was working in Norris just a floor above the restaurant, she found it difficult to avoid him. “I don’t know if blindsided is the right word,” Yaa said. “But then it’s like, I was transparent and I’d opened up about something that was difficult to talk about, so I expected a lot more.” Yaa’s experience is not unique. Interviews with and written complaints from over a dozen students and dining hall employees reveal a lack of

transparency about Compass’ complaint process, including for allegations of abuse and sexual harassment. In addition, Compass quietly shifted employees accused of misconduct to different facilities on several occasions. A Compass spokesperson told The Daily these transfers are not an attempt to avoid disciplinary action or termination, but “a deliberate effort to resolve the situation in a fair and equitable manner.” However, transfers are frequent enough that some dining workers said they have come to view employees moved into their workplace with suspicion. Workers saw getting moved as one step closer to getting fired, as one Allison employee put it. But often, these individuals were not fired, at least not until they had been moved several times. And abusive behaviors often followed the employees to their new locations, several workers told The Daily. “What the f--- is the point?” asked one Foster-Walker Complex dining hall employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from management. “You remove the abusive person here so she can go abuse other people? What problem does that solve?” ‘I was just shocked’ The employee Yaa filed a complaint against was a cook at the Pure Eats station in Allison, where cooks hand food to diners over a glass divider. For Yaa, the food also often came with one of the cook’s comments. They started out small, Yaa said. A compliment about her skin. Another about how pretty she looked that day. Yaa’s friend, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution from the Allison cook, recalled receiving similar remarks. For months, Yaa viewed the

comments as innocent, even when they started making her uncomfortable. For example, she remembered thinking it was odd when he called her a “beautiful Nubian queen” while he walked by her table. The cook did not deny making the comments about Yaa and her friend but said he wanted “to encourage them” and said the students misconstrued his words. “There was nothing lewd,” he said. “I don’t say things to make them uncomfortable.” But the employee’s actions became more explicit as Fall Quarter 2023 passed, Yaa said. Once, while Yaa was waiting for the cook to serve her food, he commented on the gloss of her lips. Then, he asked her to walk around the divider separating them and to give him a kiss on the cheek, she recalled. In her complaint, Yaa wrote that the cook asked for a kiss jokingly. But combined with his prior string of comments, Yaa said she began to feel uncomfortable in the cook’s presence. “It’s either he doesn’t say anything, or if he does say something, it’s something crazy,” Yaa said. Yaa spent the rest of the quarter avoiding Allison’s Pure Eats station whenever possible. She said she recruited friends who would scout out Allison before meals and send her a text if they saw the cook. And when she did visit the dining hall, she grabbed food from the other stations and took it to go to avoid the cook. On occasion, particularly when the cold grew more biting and walks to farther dining halls grew less appealing, Yaa found herself spending money on delivery services to avoid going to Allison.

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