While politicians in Washington continue to debate the Clinton situation, local students with strong political interests hold their own opinions on the issue.

Patrick James, chairman of political science at Iowa State, said censure is not a definite option, though it seems to be gaining support from moderate Congress members.

Republican supporter Chris Martin, freshman in political science, said censure is not the best option in this case.

“I think that doing what he did is impeachable, and censure simply does not go far enough,” Martin said. “Anything that is done in a public building that I have to pay taxes for is my business, and the business of the American people.

“I think what he did is impeachable and anytime you demean the United States of America it should be impeachable,” he said.

Democratic supporter and Government of the Student Body President Bryan Burkhardt said the process needs to be respected.

“If I had to make a decision about this, I would either be in favor of censure or dropping the whole thing all together, but I have no idea what is going to happen,” Burkhardt said.

“If they continue with this I think that this would make the presidency look like a weak position. We need to mainly be concerned about how we appear to the rest of the world and the people in our government,” he said.

The grounds and issues surrounding the inquiry are hard to sort through, James said.

“It is hard to judge what will happen. There are too few cases that we can make a decision without a constitutional scholar,” James said.

“The only time this has ever happened was with the case of Andrew Johnson, who was not convicted, and Richard Nixon, who derailed the process by resigning from the presidency,” he said. “If we had a large case history to compare this to — thank God we do not — I could say that this is an example of an average case, but we just don’t have the data.”

James said the future of the inquiry is unclear at this point.

“I am going to say that with the option of censure available that many of the forces that want him slammed, that is impeached, and the people that want him cleared are weaker together than all of those moderates that are in favor with censure,” James said.

“I would have to say right now that it will probably end in the censuring of the president,” he said.