WASHINGTON – Gradually, several pictures have been painted to illustrate what happened on Nov. 4 when Barack Obama pulled off his extraordinary win. Several experts who met this week with columnists from the William Monroe Trotter Group praised the heavy participation of young voters, specifically college students.
Valerie Jarrett, one of President-Elect Obama’s three transition team co-chairmen, said many young people quit jobs and volunteered for the campaign. As of Nov. 9, said Jarrett, 48,000 resumes had been posted to the new Web site, change.gov.
Many people she explained want to do service work, something Americans have not explicitly been asked to do by their leaders during this period of wars abroad and economic meltdown and urban decay at home.
At Howard University, William Spriggs, chairman of the department of economics, noted that new Howard President Sidney Ribeau probably assisted in Obama’s win of battleground state Ohio. During his time as president of Bowling Green University in the Buckeye state, Ribeau grew the black student population from 135 to 1,300. This year, many of those students volunteered for the candidate, and just as importantly, voted for him.
Mike Strautmanis of the Obama transition team told the columnists that 20-something voters cast ballots at the same rate as senior citizens, a remarkable detail because elderly folks are reliable, and the conventional wisdom regarding the young was sure, they’ll register, but will they show up?
Oh, did they.
Young voters said Strautmanis, “Showed up in Iowa before our campaign got there. They moved after Obama announced in Springfield that he was running.” There were anecdotes about students deferring law school to volunteer for the movement.
Last week my 20-ish junior journalism students covered the election around the Hampton University campus. Tour buses were provided by the administration to take students to the nearest polling station, about a mile from campus.
Many students however did not wait for the first bus at 9 a.m. Before polls all over Virginia opened at 6 a.m., a long line of HU students formed at that polling station just after 4 a.m. Those students consciously left their Obama T-shirts and other political propaganda items in their dorms to avoid potential disputes with poll officials. They heeded warnings about polling place etiquette.
Instead, the women and men donned their hooded sweatshirts and created a line of solidarity about the polling place, reported one of my students.
Late that night, when the TV networks called the election for Obama, another student reporter captured the thrill of victory. Young men and women were in the student center for a watch party and were cleared from the facility by 10:30 so maintenance people could clean up. Yet when the news came just before 11 p.m., mobs of students found ways to unlock the doors then yell and sprint around the two levels of the building.
Outdoors, cars packed with students cruised Tyler Street and honked horns. Stadium-like roars erupted around campus through the night.
Young voters have been energized. They have been empowered. They made a difference. Now they will be asked to apply that energy to the work that must be done after Jan. 20.
