Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi announced Sept. 24 that the House will launch an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump after he asked the President of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son in a phone call back in July. 

After the call, White House officials put the record of it into a highly classified computer system, greatly restricting those who had access to it. A whistleblower working for the executive branch filed a complaint after officials tried to cover up the phone call according to CNN.

Sophomore political science major and President of the College Democrats Anna Ardelean said she believes that the impeachment will encourage students to pay more attention to politics. 

“I think it’ll have an impact on everyone,” she said. “I hope it gets more college students to pay attention because impeachment is a huge deal and it doesn’t happen every single day.” 

Impeachment is a political process that says any civil officer, the president included, can be removed from office “for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” stated in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. 

Only two presidents have ever been impeached, the last one being Bill Clinton in 1998, but he still finished his term in office. 

Ardelean said that everyone has an opinion on the issue and a lot of people are divided by this. She said that there’s a lot of debate on both sides, so it’s not a black or white issue, but still an American issue that college students should care about.

“I think it’s more of a constitutional issue than more than just a political issue,” Ardelean said. “I would rather have four more years of a Republican president and lose the democrat seat than set the precedent that we can never use impeachment again.”

Ardelean mentioned that the impeachment has affected the College Democrats organization.

“We haven’t had a meeting since it was announced, but as a whole, there’s a boost of morale,” she said. “Typically, younger Democrats are a little more left than the traditional party. A lot of the younger people are more anxious to impeach and have been. They’ve been wanting this for a long time.”

President of the College Republicans Brooke Frederick said that the impeachment rumors haven’t affected the College Republicans organization.

“We talked about it in our last College Republicans meeting and it’s been widely discussed,” she said. “It was the main topic. We haven’t seen increased membership because we have a steady amount of students coming into our meetings, but it’s definitely been a hot topic of the conversation.”

The senior political science major said she believes that the House will not be able to bring charges to President Trump.

“I think that if there’s something there, they moved too quickly,” she said.

There has to be a particular reason to impeach the president, and it has to fall into one of the demands of the Constitution.

“You can’t impeach someone just because you don’t like them,” Frederick said.

Six House committees will continue investigating the president on impeachable offenses. If they find that it is sufficient, the House will hold a floor vote on articles of impeachment. Then, if a majority of House members vote to impeach Trump, the articles will be moved to the Senate and they’ll hold a trial. If at least two-thirds of the members vote to convict, Trump will be removed from office. Otherwise, Trump will remain in office as the president.

“If they find something and he actually did something wrong, go forth with it, if that’s rightful, but if it’s not let’s just stop with the impeachment because we don’t like him,” Fredrick said.