Photos and Analysis of Barack Obama at GMU

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Barack Obama made an appearance at GMU this afternoon. Since I’m a history major there, I was extremely excited about the fact that we had one of the front runners in the race for the presidency coming out to our school –though John Kerry and John Edwards had come to George Mason back in 2004. After seeing the large crowd at the event (as one GMU official told me, the number of people “was just too high to count”), I think it is safe to say that I wasn’t the only person excited about having a presidential contender come to Mason.

The rally was a display of student involvement.
Although there were several members of the community attending the event, the event was primarily targeted at college students. The event, for instance, was hosted by the George Mason University College Democrats and was sponsored by the organization “Students 4 Obama.” As a testiment of the power of the internet, “Students 4 Obama” began as a group on Facebook and has now seen its influence spread as this could be considered its kickoff.

Keeping along the same lines of having this event focus on the students, Obama’s appearance was considered a “student event” and, thus, the GMU Dems were primarily responsible for gathering volunteers and letting the university know what type of assistance it needed. That being said, the event ran extremely well and everyone there appeared to be extremely grateful for GMU’s students and the role they played in the event. The Executive Director of Students for Barack Obama, Meredith Segal, for instance, told me “Mason’s an awesome place. It’s great to be here.”

The Crowd Gathers
As the crowd readied for Obama’s appearance, I felt as though I could have almost been at one of the school’s basketball games as the pep band played the GMU Fight Song and a few other charts. Although it might be somewhat unusual to have a school pep band at a political event, I believe it was somewhat fitting considering that the crowd was primarily students and energetically chanted “Yes We Can,” which was the event’s theme, on several occasions. The crowd was also filled with some students who so strongly supported Obama’s candidacy that they drove upwards of 17 hours or more in order to attend the event. Others arrived at the event 5 or 6 hours before Obama arrived just so that they could have seats in the front.

Preliminary Speakers
At about 1:15, the program began as some students made their way to the back of the stage and the communications director for Students 4 Barack Obama, Famid Sinha, and the founder of One Million for Barack Obama, Farouk Olu Aregbe, really pumped up the crowd by leading some cheers and passionately talking about how Obama is the candidate that will lead us in a new direction.

Next, the Executive Director of Students for Barack Obama, Meredith Segal, and the Deputy Director Tobin Van Ostern, came on stage to announce that this could be considered the kickoff event for Students 4 Obama. After stating how happy they were to be at GMU, they then introduced Senator Barack Obama as the crowd went absolutely crazy.

Barack Obama’s speech
Part of Obama’s appeal as a candidate is that many people believe he will be able to connect with younger voters. According to the crowd’s reactions during Obama’s speech, I would have to agree that most of the students ate up his message (though it was a rally for Obama so that’s somewhat to be expected.) As some of the previous speakers mentioned, many of the students there look forward to change after spending a significant portion of our lives (about a quarter of it in my case) with George W. Bush as president. Therefore, my fellow students completely understood when Obama spoke about how the cynicism of the Bush administration has lead to an extremely partisan environment where the Republican leadership prevented much from getting done. The senator claims, however, that that is where the Democrats come into play because we have the audacity to hope for a better future.

Obama also spent time discussing how we need to make health care more affordable to all Americans. He pointed out that many recent college grads enter the “real world” and might struggle to find proper health care because their employer doesn’t supply it and it is simply too expensive for someone just starting out on their own to afford. This just shouldn’t be the case. Along the same lines, he also discussed how we must improve our economy and work on making a college education more affordable.

As can be expected, he also briefly mentioned the War in Iraq during his speech. He stated that our troops have served honorably and deserve to be praised, but we need to stop the escalation of the war and eventually begin redeploying the troops (hints why he introduced the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.)

Conclusion
I believe that the event went very well and as a fellow GMU student told me, this will hopefully increase Mason’s “ability to bring in big league candidates.” Obama also won some support by his actions as he was walking out of the Johnson Center (the building the event was held in) because he showed his great ability to interact with crowds by shaking hands, and even apparently receiving a hug from one student, and signing copies of his book. All and all, however, I think the GMU Democrats were the biggest winners in the whole event. The leadership of Jessica Wallis, Anna Martin, and various other officers resulted in a fabulous event and I have no doubt that more and more candidates will now begin to reach out to the George Mason University.

UPDATE You can follow this link to see more of my photos of the event in a flickr account.