Students start up political instagram pages

Politics is all over social media, and students at the high school have started running accounts for both political parties. The owners of these accounts remain anonymous, but in the comments of some of the posts, students have started debates using their public pages. 

The first two that were created are called CFHS_DEMS for the Democrat side and CFHS_REPUBLICANS for the Republican side. Their first posts were in 2018 before all the political craze and continue to post to this day. Both of their bios include “Uniting students and Cedar Falls High School to advocate for (political party) at the local, state and national level.” 

These two accounts have done pretty well with a following of 130 for the Democrat page and 111 for the Republican page. 

The other two most recent pages created are called cf_democrats and cf_republicans. These pages have sparked many debates under their posts, which keeps the two pages popular. The Democrat page has a following of 140, and the Republican of 110 followers.

Freshman Maya Johnson is among those students wondering who is running these pages. “Some students have an assumption of who runs these accounts. For example, people believe that Ryan Westhoff runs the CFHS_DEMS page because he is most actively posted on there,” she said. 

However, senior Bryce Stillman said, “Some students believe that Kellen Chenoweth is the owner of the CFHS_DEMS account. She is always actively representing the Democrat candidates and wouldn’t be surprised if she had started the account.”

The debates that happen are sometimes among the cf_democrats and cf_republicans accounts, and comments under each other’s posts and students chime into these debates. Sometimes, the discussion takes a decidedly sophomoric path. “The cf_democrats and cf_republican pages are sometimes immature and just like to argue, which gives off the hint that these might just be run by some freshman or sophomores with a very biased opinion.” Stillman said.