Walking back from a rally for President George W. Bush at the Omni Parker hotel Thursday morning, three members of the Northeastern University College Republicans were met with unhappy calls and gestures.
Carrying their Bush/Cheney signs, the three watched people yell at them from across the street and drivers shake their heads as they passed by.
“It’s easy to be a Republican in Texas, perhaps even in Florida because it’s a larger state and there’s more diversity,” said College Republicans Chair Annabelle Guerra, “but here, not only being from Massachusetts and being a Hispanic woman, I’m not the typical Republican.”
From her Environmental Protection Agency office window in a building next to the Haymarket T station, Guerra watched all week as delegates, media and celebrities wound their way through the North End to file in and out of the FleetCenter. While she called the convention a “disaster for local businesses,” she acknowledged the excitement within the city and the buzz of politics in the air.
Though some members of the Republican party gathered to protest the convention throughout the week, including setting up a “war room” two blocks from the FleetCenter, Guerra said she does not feel the need to protest against others’ opinions.
“As a Republican, it’s not always pleasant to see people walking around with anti-Bush signs,” the senior political science major said, “but you just have to be the bigger person I guess.”
Treasurer Tina Penman said some of the protests have even gone too far. At the Bush rally that morning, Penman said she watched as the “abortion truck” circled around the Republican group. The truck pictured a fetus covered in blood.
“I’m definitely pro-life but that’s just very extreme. You look at it and you just get sick to your stomach,” Penman said.
Penman, a junior behavioral neuroscience major, said despite her political views, she is keeping a close watch on the convention.
“This might sound sick, but I think it’s really exciting,” Penman said. “It’s not that I hate Democrats, it’s not that I hate John Kerry, it’s more along the fact that I really can’t stand people that aren’t involved at all. The DNC comes to Boston, I’m actually excited. It stirs up a buzz in the city.”
College Republicans Vice President Michael Hall said the need to get college students involved goes across party lines. He said his group will be planning several events in the fall, in contingence with the College Democrats, to boost voter registration.
Hall, a middler entrepreneurship major who grew up in New Jersey, said being a Republican in Massachusetts does not bother him, as he is used to being in the minority party in his home state. And while he said he does not agree with several points of the Democratic policy, he also paid attention to convention week.
“I’ve been watching every speech throughout the week to kind of see what they have to say. It’d be wrong to just go against every single thing that everyone has to say,” Hall said. “If you can’t listen to what the opposite side is saying as well, you’re not going to have [an] effective standpoint on an issue.”
