At a V.P. debate party, Point Park students say they're engaged but want more options

At Point Park University’s vice-presidential debate watch party, a pierogi stood at the entrance talking to student voters.

“[That] was a voter registration pierogi,” confirms Carsen Brunn, president of the student organization, BridgeUSA, that hosted the event. “I don’t know whose [costume] it is, but somebody [had] a pierogi costume.”

About 30 students gathered on Oct. 1 to watch the debate between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. J.D. Vance followed by a post-debate discussion. The event included bingo cards with spaces for political debate standards like candidates saying “middle class” or “new way forward,” calling for unity, or going over their allotted response time. The first winner hit bingo 17 minutes in. Over pizza (and a generous amount of Pittsburgh’s best house-made ranch) at Point Park’s Center for Media Innovation, students watched the two candidates intently, and in relative quiet, well into the first hour of the 90-minute-long debate.

Vance got vocal pushback when he declared, “we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world,” speaking about energy policy, and his later utterance of “drill, baby, drill” elicited a loud groan.

“People show up,” Brunn tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “And they really pay attention.”

Brunn co-founded the Point Park chapter of BridgeUSA, described as a youth-led, multi-partisan movement to combat political division and arrive at solutions, two years ago. He’d previously worked for the Forward Party, the third-party initiative kicked off by Andrew Yang, but found that facilitating student dialogue amid “viewpoint diversity,” as the organization encourages, “was a lot closer to what [I] actually wanted to do.” (Though BridgeUSA lists Yang in its network of supporters — along with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Captain America actor Chris Evans — the nonprofit is not a direct offshoot of the Forward Party.)

At Point Park, BridgeUSA started with a sparsely attended discussion about mental health. But during the 2024 election cycle, turnout for its events has ticked up. Brunn attributes the increase to obvious interest in a national election but also believes it underscores students’ desire for political engagement and community building.

Some experts believe that young voters in Pennsylvania could be the “deciding factor” in the 2024 presidential election, and much ink has been spilled speculating about how to appeal to Gen Z voters.

From Brunn’s perspective, “As a Gen Z-er, we do seem to be in a little bit of a unique situation, in the sense that we are looking at the world around us that we're about to enter and … we’re being shown a lot of problems that we did not contribute to, but we are being looked to to solve, like climate change,” he says. “I think that causes us to want to get engaged, to want to mobilize.”

Though the organization includes progressives, conservatives (who Brunn notes turn out less), and those who just want to stay involved with current events, students don’t subscribe to strict party affiliations. During the post-debate discussion — which included a moment where students watched themselves covered live on WTAE — comments ranged from the effectiveness of fact-checking through a QR code to how reality TV and celebrity worship shaped watchability.

But when asked if they thought the debate would move the needle among undecided voters, students consistently decried the lack of choice presented.

“This whole idea of polarization in America, it’s not real,” says Riley Mahon, who's involved locally with the Green Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, and Sunrise Movement. “We have two capitalist center-right parties, which is fine if that's what your beliefs are. But when people glorify bipartisanship and centrism between these two already very similar factions, to me, that is not a good thing … If you have two options, and they're [both] up here saying, ‘Wow, look how much we agree on everything’ … then everybody who doesn't agree on that issue does not have a candidate, which is not healthy for democracy.”

About half of students said they remained undecided voters and almost all said they did not feel represented by either major party candidate. They specifically cited candidates’ positions on immigration, climate change, fracking, and healthcare. One student, a member of the Service Employees International Union, noted that, during the debate, neither candidate mentioned the historic dockworkers strike declared earlier that day.

“My big thing for being undecided [is] because I just cannot morally support a party that is willing to continue action [for] Israel,” says Sienna Wraith, who’d hoped to see larger policy shifts following Sen. Kamala Harris’ nomination. “And when she started talking about her policies … and one of the big things was I didn't see a single mention about the rampant transphobia going on this country … I just realized that I was not excited about what the Democrats had to offer.”

“I could understand why it’s easy to be undecided,” another student replied, echoing earlier sentiments. “Because I think we as a country have progressed beyond the need [for] two parties. There’s so many different beliefs and ideas that just, again, aren't represented.”

In keeping with ideas espoused by BridgeUSA, the discussion ended by affirming a need for alternatives. Brunn thinks that, regardless of any election outcome, political change will require collaboration.

“Get out there, folks. Get out there,” he tells City Paper. “Talk to your fellow Americans. It’s not always going to be fun. It's not always going to be easy, but I think what needs to happen is we need to have the[se] difficult conversations now.”