GREENFIELD — In hopes of providing community members with a safe space to express their feelings, whether they be concerns or hopes, about the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election, Dean of Students Shelley Errington Nicholson led a dialogue at Greenfield Community College on Thursday.

Errington Nicholson is new to the college, having started in her position in July. Previously, she worked at Mount Wachusett Community College, where she held similar dialogues after major world events, such as Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that sparked Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

“My background there was holding dialogues on tough topics and providing spaces for people to be able to feel comfortable having conversations that they may not get to have anywhere else,” Errington Nicholson said in an interview. She added that she’s found that conversations about complex and tense subjects “are going to happen, but sometimes they’re not productive because of how they’re happening. And so, my goal is to make sure that they’re productive conversations about the tough topics.”

Errington Nicholson said those who attended the dialogue primarily expressed feelings of “fear, disappointment [and] regret,” but that the conversation just as easily could have been celebratory, and despite the feelings of grief, she saw attendees come away with a sense of hope.

“I think we had a really good, productive conversation,” Errington Nicholson said. “People were able to talk about fears and anxieties at the same time. I think people were also able to inject some hope. I heard some really positive things about where we are, being in Massachusetts, being on this campus here, being in the community of Greenfield, and knowing that no matter what happens on a national level, our local community is going to be OK. … So it was really nice to have a group of people who, by and large, were disappointed, still come away with some really positive perspectives.”

Attendees also had the opportunity to discuss specific concerns about what the new administration might mean for them, their families and their communities.

President-elect Donald Trump has said that he plans to eliminate the Department of Education and take over the accreditation process for colleges. Trump also has taken aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts.

In an interview following Thursday’s discussion, Rosemarie Freeland, coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center, said that she feels grateful for the setup of Massachusetts’ higher education system, but she is still concerned about how a new administration could impact students’ educational experience, with changes to policies such as Title IX, for example.

“GCC, in this community, is life-changing for individuals and families,” Freeland said in an interview. “So any real or perceived threat to the resources that we need — federal, state, even the less [tangible] but so necessary academic freedom for our faculty in their classroom spaces — any threat to that is deeply concerning.”

GCC student Ollie Perrault attended the dialogue. In an interview, she said she was grateful for the opportunity to process her emotions with her community.

“I had been sitting with my feelings on my own for about a day, and just needed to find some outlet to connect in community about [the election results]. And I think I learn best in community, and so I figured I would process this best in community, too,” Perrault said. “I’m feeling better now that we had that conversation. I think I was in my own doom spiral of, how are we gonna deal with this? [The dialogue] allowed me to let everything go in a new way. So, I’m feeling better.”

Ada Denenfeld Kelly is currently a student at Greenfield Community College. Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.