On November 5th President Donald Trump held one of his patented campaign rallies at the Memorial Coliseum. With the midterm election being one day away and Indiana’s crucial Senate race being rated as a toss-up by nearly all political analysts the president made his second visit to the Hoosier state in four days to campaign on behalf of Republican candidate Mike Braun. A number of students from Carroll were in attendance at the rally, some of those students standing on the floor and some sitting in the stands facing the president. However at least one student was lucky enough to be seated in the VIP section directly behind the president himself.

“It was hectic because everyone was running, I didn’t even know where I was going, I just wanted to try to get to the nosebleeds but then a security officer pulled me over and asked me who all was in my party and I told him two and he said that he could get us the best seats in the arena so we waited for about two hours for the seats right behind President Trump,” said Senior Madison Fischer.

Given the extensive support the president has, especially in the northeast Indiana area, the Coliseum was expecting around twenty thousand people to attend the rally, and since the arena only holds roughly eleven thousand, there wasn’t an empty seat in the arena leading to thousands being put into the coliseum’s conference center to watch the rally on the three screens made available inside. One of those students was Elijah Gutierrez. While he hoped to still make it into the main arena, after leaving school at 3:30 he was surprised by how the conference center still offered an atmosphere similar to that of the main arena.

“Well in the conference center I thought it would be pretty juiceless and nobody would really cheer or anything but in turned out that everybody was pretty juiceful and useful throughout the whole event” said Gutierrez.

While most students had different experiences for the majority of the day, there was one constant that factored into everyone’s experience. The line to get into the arena. While most students opted to just leave school early, there were a few chargers that spent all of their morning waiting in the thousands deep line to get into the arena and secure a good seat.

One such student was Senior Chris Pollock who arrived at the rally around 8:30 with his friends and waited in line from 9:00 until the doors opened in order to get spots standing in the front row.

While the rally had a plethora of different speakers such as Senator Todd Young, Ivanka Trump, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, and former Notre Dame football coach Lou Houltz to name a few, there was one moment that seemed to be in the minds of many that attended the rally.

Senior Noble Rich said, “When they announced that trump was walking out on the stage was pretty crazy, it got super loud and just having that surreal moment was pretty special”

“Probably when he walked out, it was just so loud, and you could feel all the energy in the arena, it’s just really cool,” added Senior Sam Carmody.

During his speech the president, as well as the other speakers spoke on many different issues such as immigration the Justice Kavanaugh hearings, along with the presidents traditional smack down on the fake news media such as CNN.

Despite all of the speakers being from the Republican party, Rich said that one of the lasting impacts the rally will have on him, was that it offered the opportunity to hear a multitude of different opinions.

“The fact that there was multiple people speaking you heard multiple peoples opinions and the fact that we got the opportunity to hear not only conversations about the current midterm elections and all that stuff but we also got to hear conversations about the caravans coming through mexico and other problems that are of concern”

President Trump also held a rally here in Fort Wayne during the 2016 Republican Primary as a candidate when he defeated Ted Cruz. While that rally sold out the majority of the seats in the Coliseums lower arena, the energy from that rally didn’t even compare to what those in attendance last week witnessed.

“I think it was a lot more energy, a lot more people, when he came the first time there wasn’t that long of a line, people weren’t lining up as long,” said Carmody.

Following the presidents visits to Indiana in the final days before the election, Braun went on to win his race for one of Indiana’s senate seats over incumbent Democrat Joe Donnelly.