What’s a college to do when all the presidential campaign excitement is happening in the neighboring state, leaving it without any hot debate action of its own?
For a group of students at Illinois State University, the solution was to pretend they’re the candidates, and debate themselves.
The event Thursday night on the ISU campus included senior political science major Bobby Kosic portraying Hillary Clinton, senior philosophy major Patrick Milott as Rudy Giuliani and sophomore Spanish and political science major Alysa Heintzelman-Ruzek as Barack Obama, according to the student newspaper, The Daily Vidette.
The students, after studying their candidate’s positions, answered questions on topics that included the Iraq war, immigration, and health care, the newspaper reported.
With the real candidates focused on the January 3 caucus in neighboring Iowa, the mock debate brought an important level of involvement and understanding to the ISU community, Jonathan Moore, a sophomore philosophy and political science major told the student paper. “Otherwise,” he said, “we’re not going to get listened to — we’re just going to get overshadowed by everyone else.”
Others participating in the debate were senior philosophy major Alex Berger as John McCain, freshman political science major Scott Siebert as John Edwards, senior political science major Peter Lawson as Fred Thompson, and senior political science major Josh McCluskey as Ron Paul.
No mention, however, of anyone portraying the Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney.
