Presidential Debate pre-show

Sitting in the audience at the Presidential Debate was surreal at first, until it was announced that there would be a pre-show.

During the pre-show, the UNLV choir sang the the National Anthem and then Nevada Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley spoke. She energized the crowd by saying, “As of today, 9,000 more Democrats in the state of Nevada have registered then Republicans.” Then she introduced Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean.

As he made his way onto the stage, the crowd stood up giving Dean a standing ovation.

“This is a generation that truly sees themselves as a diverse community. It doesn’t matter if you are white, black, or brown, we all vote in one proportion,” Dean said.

The crowd continued to cheer until the debate started.

So very very surreal

I’m probably the only one who feels like this, but I just cannot wrap my mind around the fact that we are going to have a presidential debate on campus! That’s amazing, the whole campus should be shaken up like a James Bond martini, yet if you walk anywhere past CBC and the Thomas & Mack/Cox Pavilion side, you wouldn’t even guess that this monumental event was taking place.

I have no classes past the BEH building, I have no reason to ever walk to the other side of the campus, but does that mean that I don’t have the right to be a part of anything that has to do with the debate? The best I saw was a sad little table that had one person there and an “Obama ‘08″ poster on it on the grass in front of the law building. Granted, will probably all change on the day of the actual debate, so we’ll see. As excited as I am, I can’t help but feel a bit distant from everything.

It’s really frustrating that everyone seems to go out of their way to exclude students on campus from being a part of this debate. I understand that there are limited seats inside the debate, but to limit who can go to the Student Union building and watch the debate on TV? What is that about? And then they wonder why students would rather just go home instead of participating in school events. Maybe if you stop having lotteries that might help. But I digress. The main purpose of this entry is to bring up the fact that total awesomeness is in the making, yet if you walk past a certain point on campus you would never know. It’s very very strange, and even a little bit sad. Why is it like this?

Of course I will probably be proven wrong on the day of the debate itself. I hope I am.