The upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion promises to be a strug­gle. With no clear Republican can­di­date tak­ing the lead, no one is sure what, exactly, the cam­paign between President Obama and the Republican nom­i­nee is going to look like come elec­tion time.

Amongst the Republican pri­mary, we have a myr­iad of can­di­dates with a vari­ety of views. There’s Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Ron Paul amongst sev­eral others.

While some stu­dents do not report fol­low­ing the elec­tion or have any plans on vot­ing, there is cer­tainly a pres­ence of stu­dents on cam­pus who are inter­ested in the elec­tion. Amongst the stu­dents ques­tioned there did seem to be a ten­dency towards Texas con­gress­man Ron Paul whose lib­er­tar­ian rhetoric res­onates with some young voters.

“He’s the only per­son that’s seri­ous about spend­ing,” says Derek Nelson, a senior at Ferris, “out of all the Republicans and Democrats, I don’t trust any­one would bring the troops home except Ron Paul. He’s also the only one who will stop the lob­by­ists and seri­ously cut the power of the government.”

Adding to the Ron Paul craze is Kyle Perrault, a senior in pre-medicine. “The gov­ern­ment has been grow­ing out of con­trol and infring­ing on our rights but Ron Paul favors a small gov­ern­ment which upholds our rights, this coun­try is on a path to ruin and Ron Paul wants to fix that. He’s not just another can­di­date paid off by big corporations.”

This fear of cor­po­rate con­trol of our gov­ern­ment is a fear that res­onates with many peo­ple across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. From more con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments like Students for Ron Paul to more left-leaning ones like Occupy Wall-Street, dis­gust with cor­po­rate influ­ence over the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is likely to be a big issue which the can­di­dates will have to address if they hope to come out on top of the election.

Still, while many seem to favor Ron Paul for the Republican Nomination there are many other voices to be heard here at Ferris. Many stu­dents do favor the reelec­tion of President Obama, point­ing to the fact that the sup­posed fail­ures of President Obama have more to do with the overly con­trar­ian Republican Congress block­ing the President from any action he tries to take.

In regards to Obama’s pres­i­dency Tim Burke, a sopho­more here at Ferris says, “he’s done the best he can with what he had to work with.” “He hasn’t really accom­plished a lot,” adds Brett Bieth, “but you can’t really blame him when Congress shoots down every lit­tle thing he tries to do no mat­ter what.”

Still, crit­i­cal voices are heard about Obama amongst the stu­dents. “He’s increas­ing the size of gov­ern­ment so much that it’s get­ting dan­ger­ously close to social­ism,” says Kyle Perrault.

Amongst stu­dents, the big issues that they would like to see be addressed in the upcom­ing elec­tion are many. “The stu­dent debt, and tuition going up,” says Time Burke, “and how they want to cut social ser­vices instead of cut­ting the mil­i­tary bud­get.” Kyle Perrault adds not just con­cern for the mil­i­tary bud­get but “the amount of spend­ing in the entire gov­ern­ment and a lack of con­cern for our rights.” “The high cost of edu­ca­tion is what con­cerns me,” says Brett Bieth. Student debt, spend­ing whether in excess, not enough or a com­bi­na­tion of the two, bring­ing home the troops and a cor­rupt influ­ence of big cor­po­ra­tions and lob­by­ists over our gov­ern­ment seems to be what con­cerns young vot­ers here at Ferris. These con­cerns are cer­tainly ones we will hear more about in the months lead­ing up to the 2012 election.