Now that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has announced his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, local and national media outlets have seized on the fact that he moonlights as an adjunct professor at Florida International University in Miami.
Journalists are showing up on campus asking students what they think about Professor Rubio.
Opinions are mixed.
“Even though he’s Hispanic, and I see that as a beneficial quality, I don’t think he has women in mind,” 20-year-old political science major Jennifer Lopez told the website Fusion.
Another student, biomedical engineering major Jose Garduño, agreed with this sentiment.
“If he wants to gain the vote from the youth, he will have to be a little more liberal,” biomedical engineering major Jose Garduño advised the website owned by Disney and Spanish broadcasting giant Univision.
At the same time, other students endorsed Rubio’s political stances.
“I agree with his stance on family and abortion, and I think he would be a great candidate for our country,” Spanish major Grace Pastor told Fusion.
Still other students suggested that Rubio, a 43-year-old first-term senator, could use a little more seasoning before he is ready to be president.
“We just came out of eight years of Obama and there’s been some tribulations there as well, and I think we need somebody with a lot more experience to steer us in the right direction,” FIU student Edmunds Bernard said.
Miami PBS station WLRN managed to find a student who has actually completed a course (in an international relations) partially taught by Rubio.
“So I saw this class taught by Marco Rubio and I just decided ‘yeah why not?'” FIU graduate Abel Ramos Taype told the PBS station.
“He was really open to critics and to other opinions and ideas that probably he wouldn’t contemplate because of his party affiliation. You know, he’s a Republican,” Taype explained.
“He would throw sometimes jokes about policy and current events but not that much, not that often,” the recent graduate added.
Rubio was born in Florida in 1971 to parents from Cuba. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1993 with an undergraduate degree in political science. Three years later, he graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law.
About 60 percent of the undergraduate population at FIU is Hispanic.
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