For Concordia College Sophomores Jen Buchanan and Robert Brunhuber, they got out to the polls today not only to cast their vote but to speak for their generation.
“I think people think our generation doesn’t care, or won’t vote but that’s not true,” Buchanan said.
Brunhuber said he showed up to Concordia’s Memorial Auditorium to cast his ballot because of a nearly palpable tension that seems to have brewed over this year’s election, whether it be in the Minnesota governor’s race or at the more local level of the Moorhead Schools levy question.
“I guess it was just the intensity, everyone spitting venom. You almost felt like you were pushed to vote,” Brunhuber said.
At the Concordia campus, head election judge Don Rosinski is saying today’s voter turnout might be even better than the 2008 Presidential election.
“Since about 9:30 this morning it’s been steady. The first couple hours it was slower but then it just mushroomed,” Rosinski said.
Rosinski said certainly a number of students were showing up to vote but the need for them to register was slowing down the process just a bit, causing him to hope a system to make college voting a go a little more smoothly would be devised before 2012.
“You’d think they could come up with something,” he said.
About WendyR.
Hello. I’m Wendy Reuer, a reporter at the Forum and yep, you might have guessed it: I’ve grown up with horses, more specifically in the horse racing world.
I could ride a horse before I could walk, but once I could drive; my family’s horse ranch was the last place I wanted to be. So, after spending a couple years in California and returning closer to home but still far enough away to appreciate it, I got back into the family business as much as I could.
Although home is in North Dakota, we run our horses primarily at Canterbury Park (near the Twin Cities) and Prairie Meadows (near Des Moines, Iowa) where I’ve worked both on the front sides and on the backside, helping my mom, a trainer. Every year she loads up our horses, other owners’ horses and lives at the track for about five months of the year.
I’ve made it my mission to get others who know nothing about horses or horse racing to learn there is much more to this second world of mine. More importantly, I try to break the cliché that horse racing includes spurs and wranglers or any nugget of horse sense to find it interesting. (For the record, you’ll see more Gucci and Chanel at a large track than you’ll ever see Wranglers and 10-gallon hats.) It’s about hard work, lots of heart and sometimes heartbreak. All in all, it’s a whole different world on the inside of the track.
I’m not an expert, but I do have some insight into the industry. I’m hoping I can offer some ideas, some explanation and a few good laughs as I help my parents with winter training. That is, provided readers can be more forgiving than the ground when you’re falling on it from an 1,100 pound animal at 40 mph.
