Columbia has released details regarding the process by which students will be able to obtain tickets for next Thursday’s joint appearance of presidential candidates Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) at Roone Arledge Auditorium.
Registration for the ticket lottery that will determine attendance for the Sept. 11 event of non-partisan coalition ServiceNation will be open Friday, Sept. 5 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to a school-wide e-mail from University Programs.
As stated in the e-mail, the lottery drawing “will be monitored by students,” and results will be sent out via e-mail on Monday, Sept. 8. Selected students must then present their CUIDs to pick up their non-transferable tickets in person. The event starts at 7 p.m., but doors will open at 4:30 p.m. and close at 6:30 p.m.
The event, officially known as ServiceNation Presidential Forum, will begin with an introduction from New York Governor David Paterson. The event marks the first day of ServiceNation’s two-day launch summit. The Sept. 12 portion, which will not be held at Columbia, will feature speeches from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), and other public leaders.
According to the e-mail, McCain and Obama will make remarks “on a national stage” that focus on public service in America. TIME Magazine editor Richard Stengel and PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff will moderate the dialogue.
Since Columbia is not sponsoring the event, student seating will be limited. According to ServiceNation’s Web site, approximately 600 people have already signed up for the summit. Campus buzzed on Thursday as students universally expressed a strong desire to attend the first event in which McCain and Obama will appear together as the official nominees of their parties.
Tim Zimmermann, a representative from Be The Change Inc., an organization of the ServiceNation coalition, said that the bulk of the auditorium seats will be filled by the 600 attendees, the campaigns, their sizable press pools, families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, and 100 “young leaders,” many of whom are college-aged.
According to the e-mail, students from each school of the University (including affiliates Barnard and Teachers College) may register for the lottery. Roone Arledge has a seating capacity of about 1,200.
While the Columbia College Democrats and Columbia University College Republicans are joining forces to make the event non-partisan, both groups are scrambling to get tickets.
Although President Bollinger’s office ensured CU Dems Director Chris Daniels, CC ‘09, and CUCR Director Lauren Salz, BC ‘11, that no exceptions would be made for the organizations to score seats outside the 200-ticket University-wide lottery, that doesn’t mean they won’t take a shot at alternatives.
“We are certainly trying through the Obama campaign,” Daniels said. At this point, he doesn’t know how many tickets the group will be able to get, but he’s optimistic that the Dems will fill at least a few seats on Thursday.
Salz is going to “try everything I can,” including calling up the McCain campaign and making her plea to ServiceNation, the community service organization sponsoring the event. But, she said, “I’m not too hopeful.”
For those less fortunate, the e-mail stated that Columbia will arrange “alternate viewing options,” but did not specify what those options would entail. Both Dems and CUCR hope to set up a large outdoor video screen to broadcast the event, in similar fashion to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to campus last year.
“I sincerely hope it doesn’t embitter Columbia students,” Zimmermann said. “There’s limited space, the media needs tickets, the campaigns need tickets. It’s not anything we’re intending. We want to do anything to make this happy. Unfortunately, we have lots of people who are eager to go, and we’re just having to say sorry. There will be live feeds available on cable channels. We would love it if everyone could attend, but the hall is just not large enough.”
Zimmermann said Obama and McCain may appear on stage together briefly, but they will not debate. One will speak after the other for a set amount of time. The model will be similar to the one used at the forum in Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, except there will be no cone of silence or set questions. Zimmermann added that further details are still being worked out.
McCain and Obama committed to be part of the ServiceNation event before the venue was set at Columbia. The McCain campaign committed to the candidate’s presence a month ago, and Obama’s campaign committed two weeks ago. Obama has often been reticent in discussing his time at Columbia. “I have no doubt that Barack Obama, when he’s there, would acknowledge his connection to Columbia,” Zimmermann said.
ServiceNation is not paying Columbia for the space. And while knowledge that both candidates would speak in New York on Sept. 11 has been public for about two weeks, the venue was only disclosed yesterday. “Columbia has long been connected with service learning and a number of service initiatives,” Zimmermann said. “As a venue, it just made sense. President Lee Bollinger was very receptive and excited, given Columbia’s connection to these ideas, so we tried to work it out. Ultimately that worked out, and we’re really happy about it. By coincidence, there are connections for both candidates at Columbia.”
