Media from across the nation and world are descending on Georgia Tech’s campus, but one student journalist has an inside edge and a five-minute commute.
The school’s newspaper, the Technique, is sending its 20-year-old managing editor, Alec Grosswald, to report tonight from McCamish Pavilion. That’s the Georgia Tech basketball arena where the press will gather to cover the debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump. The debate will happen nearby at CNN’s Techwood Turner campus.
Grosswald is a third-year mechanical engineering student from Alpharetta who graduated from Johns Creek High School. This summer, he’s living just a five-minute walk from McCamish, where he’ll be the lone reporter today representing the Georgia Tech student newspaper.
He called the debate assignment “the coolest” of his young journalism career.
“As a young voter who is pretty active in politics and reading the news I find that people our age, they don’t really feel valued in politics. And they don’t feel really represented well,” he said in a Thursday phone interview. “They feel like they really don’t have a voice. As student media, I really want to encourage you do have a voice.”
By 1 p.m. Thursday, he said he’d yet to run into any other student reporters working for their school newspapers. The Technique plans to post updates tonight on its social media accounts as well as on its website.
Grosswald said college students are looking for the candidates to discuss topics that matter to them. His classmates who are future engineers want to hear about policy plans for infrastructure, sustainability and tackling the climate crisis, he said. He’ll be watching tonight to hear how Trump and Biden talk about those topics.
Those are “the biggest discussions that we really have,” he said. “How can we protect our planet?”
Young people also want to know more about Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, reproductive health care and free speech issues on campuses that have been roiled by protests in recent months.
Grosswald said he only recently brought up the idea of covering the debate for the Technique and wasn’t sure if he’d get credentials.
“This debate is happening right here on our campus. As student media we can provide a really poignant, unique and really necessary view,” he said.
