On Tuesday, Jan. 20, President Barack Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address as a televised program that reached 31.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

The president spoke on a variety of topics: He proposed the controversial plan for free two-year community colleges, addressed equal pay for women in the workplace, shared plans in the works at NASA to bring Americans to Mars, he took a moment to relish the dramatically lowered gas prices, he mentioned the reduced unemployment rate, and talked about the status of America as a “green” country.

Many of these topics resonated with Shippensburg University students. Here are some of their reactions:

“I watched it and I thought it was less effective than they were promising it would be. I thought a lot of the promises seemed kind of empty. For example, he was talking about reducing the cost of community college, [but] there was not really a plan on how to fund that. I hope that they will all be able to work together, but just through hearing the State of the Union and then the Rebuttal, it seemed like everyone was still butting heads. I don’t see much getting done, but maybe good things will happen.”

-Katya Luckenbach, Biology

“He talked about the unemployment rates, and he says ‘finally the state of the union is strong’ and says that [the] unemployment rates are at 5.4 percent. At 5.4 percent, I think we are great. No matter what the conditions are [of] the jobs that were actually created, no matter how stable they are, and no matter if they are career jobs versus temporary jobs, I am actually really happy to see some sort of promise progress that you really cannot deny.”

-Joshua Wood, Computer Science

“What stood out to me is that the Republicans were on their phones [during the address]. And I am not someone who has such strong political beliefs that I cannot see both sides of something — I am not so much Democrat or so much Republican, but it almost made me not care about the Republican side because they are on their phones in the middle of it. If we can get even half of what he said done, like he [said] in that speech, if we can get even half ot that to happen, then we are better for it.”

-Steve Gudonis, Communication/Journalism

One thing that really resonated with me was the potential for free, two-year community college. I feel like in the end, it is going to cost the taxpayers more and essentially in turn create a thirteenth and fourteenth grade, yielding more emphasis on masters’ degrees and maybe PhDs. In theory, yeah, it is a good idea. It gets more people better education, and for free. But who is going to be paying for it? Who is going to be teaching these classes? They are not going to teach for nothing.”

-Greg Flood, Biology

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