Inauguration Draws Columbians to Washington, D.C.

Christine McHone, GS ’10, was waiting in line for inauguration tickets at her local congressman’s office when the man in front of her began telling the story of how Barack Obama saved his life. A drug addict until he was 35, the man recounted standing on a street corner in Chicago when a young community activist handed him five dollars. Obama came back a week later and suggested the man go into drug treatment—at least, he reasoned, rehab over jail meant that there would have to be more women there.

That was 15 years ago. Now, the man was waiting for a chance to see Obama take his place as the next president.

“It was just amazing,” McHone said. “This guy was sharing his story and showing ... just how amazing this whole inauguration is.” While McHone joked about trying to justify her time off from school, she thought her experience was ultimately defined by the spirit of unity that she sensed at the inauguration.

“People are coming together, and that’s really what America needs right now,” she said.

Columbia College Student Council president George Krebs, CC ’09, who had worked for the new media department of the Obama campaign, has been in town since early last week working with the transition team to transform the Web site into one that was more in tune with Obama’s technology-savvy campaign and administration.

“I think it’s [the inauguration is] one of the top five moments for American history,” Krebs said. He also said that he had been inspired by Obama’s leadership style—one that is built on “really embracing the people who make up the movement”—and that he hoped to set up a YouTube channel for the student council similar to Obama’s.

General Studies student Samantha Jackson was drawn to Obama’s fulfillment of promises of service and saw him as a force in a black community that often lacked male leadership.

“I was raised by my mom,” Jackson said. As someone who lacked the presence of a black male role model, Jackson said she could see the damage it could cause, saying that “a lot of us have a lot of black female models, but when it comes to black men, they’re not there.”
Jackson, who campaigned with the Columbia Democrats in Virginia, has stayed active on campus even post-election.

“As a young black woman, and also a Democrat and a student of the world, I feel blessed,” Jackson said. “As a college student, I feel very privileged to be at a school where he went.”

Alex Kirk, CC ’11, and Sean O’Keefe, GS, both found Washington D.C. to be energizing, almost alarmingly so.

“It was crazy, very crazy,” O’Keefe said, recounting his experience with packed metro cars and teeming crowds in a usually empty National Mall—a striking difference from the city’s tone when he was interning at Senator Diane Feinstein’s office last summer. “Imagine Times Square in all its craziness. ... That’s my best analogy for it.”

Kirk found herself in an unexpectedly vast sea of people when she attended a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Obama’s honor on Sunday as the concertgoers spilled out past the Reflecting Pool and past the Washington Monument. “It was ridiculous,” she said, and an indicator of the kind of energy she would find in the inauguration’s participants. “It was getting people pretty riled up.”

“It’s important for everyone to have their own individual experience,” Kirk said, despite the excitement. “We’re witnessing a part of history.”