Nueva’s first presidential election had been an upset. Donald Trump’s win in 2016 was without precedent in recent history, a political outsider overcoming a massive polling deficit on a platform far outside of orthodoxy.

Located in the solidly Democratic Bay Area, the consensus view on campus had been that Hillary Clinton was a president-in-waiting.

“People were looking at Nate Silver’s model and were shocked at Trump having even a one-in-three chance,” said Upper School Math teacher Liam McDonald ’19, who was then a sophomore. “I think that election really broke students’ sense of certainty about politics.”

The day after Trump’s election, many students returned to campus still shocked by the surprise outcome the night before. The business-as-usual plan for that day had been disrupted.

“We got very little done,” McDonald recalled. “In a lot of my classes, we just talked about the election.”

Eight years later, the country has been through two tumultuous presidencies, increasing polarization, the overturning of century-old legal and political precedents, all without mentioning a global pandemic and American involvement in new wars in Europe and the Middle East.

The 2024 race gives America a choice between starkly different candidates. But closer to home, school administration and of-age voters in the senior class will have to make difficult decisions on how to engage with what promises to be a highly contentious election.