Students are coming together through social media and feeling the heat in support for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, a candidate they wish to take office in the 2016 presidential election.
The group called is called Feel the Bern, which is a Facebook group that individuals are a part of at Augustana, with the only interactions they’ve had so far with other members being via a computer screen.
Though not an official group on campus, the Facebook group currently consists of 68 members, said co-founder of the group Philip Tunnicliff, a junior. Tunnicliff started working for the Scott County office in Davenport over the summer.
“(The group) originally started as a way to figure out who was on the same page,” said Tunnicliff.
He said members would share articles through the group about what was happening with Sander’s campaign until co-founder Elijah Olson, a senior, joined the team and began taking action.
“Olson started making us do things, like getting people to donate money to the campaign, and started bringing in more people…that’s how things grew into what they are now,” said Tunnicliff. “It’s an actual group that tries to better campus.”
Feel the Bern will not be a sponsored club on campus because of it being a specialized group existing only for Bernie Sanders, by the time they go through the process of getting it approved through the school the campaign will be over.
“We’ve began planning some events,” said Olson. “we’re working with Augie Democrats to host a viewing for the debate coming up for the Democratic Party…we hope to have a discussion afterwards about what is going on.”
The debate will occur sometime in mid-October.
Other events that Feel the Bern is planning to do is a chalking around campus, as well as putting up posters about Sander’s campaign once getting the approval from the Dean of Students office.
First-year Sage Shemroske said she joined the group once she found there was a huge number of people planning on voting for Sanders, because of how she feels for him as a candidate. Shemroske is also a member of Campus Democrats.
Shemroske supports Sanders views on education.
“(Sanders) seems to understand the struggle of being a college student, with the issue of loans and how he wants to make things easier on us,” said Shemroske.
Shemroske was a part of a new segment on Channel 4, WHBF, where she represented College Democrats, along with a representative from College Republicans and two representatives from St. Ambrose where they discussed the campaign on Tuesday.
“I’m not going to stop talking about Bernie Sanders, and so I plan that the group will grow bigger as he becomes better known on the campus…the bigger the group gets, the more people want to do things for the campaign,” said Tunnicliff.
