Student campaigners reflect on Obama inauguration

President Obama’s inauguration Tuesday marked the end of a long journey for many students who have devoted their time to the Obama campaign over the past two years.

“There are times when I sit back, and I can’t believe that this is actually coming true, after we worked so hard,” Mark Jia ’10 said.

Jia, as deputy field director of Students for Barack Obama (SBO), played a major role in mobilizing students on university campuses across the country to get out the vote for Obama. In the closing weeks of the election, Jia estimated, SBO helped 500 local campus chapters bring students to the polls.

“To believe that this is happening is just surreal. It is an incredibly gratifying feeling,” he said.

Though Jia celebrated Inauguration Day from his home in Massachusetts, many other Obama campaigners made the pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., to witness the inauguration in person.

Maya Reid ’12 said that, as an African-American, she decided at the beginning of the election that the process was too important for her to watch from the sidelines.

“My grandmother marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and my father supported Malcolm X,” Reid said in an e-mail. “For my first vote to be cast for an African-American man for President of these United States of America a mere forty-something years later — that’s downright phenomenal.”

Molly Alarcon ’10, after having “canvassed and phonebanked, you name it,” decided that she “just couldn’t stay in New Jersey for the inauguration,” she said. Despite the cold, Alarcon rose early to get a prime spot on the National Mall on Tuesday.

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“It’s been a long time coming,” said Alarcon, who has supported Obama for two-and-a-half years.

For some Obama supporters, the inauguration was an opportunity to reflect on remarkable experiences from throughout the campaign.

Susan Lyon ’09 recalled an incident campaigning door-to-door for Obama, when she “knocked on a door, and it was opened by a man who had not yet voted and his 4-year-old son.” Though the man was reluctant to vote, she eventually inspired him to cast his ballot.

The man walked out of his house grinning and told Lyon, “ ‘The man on the news just said that when Obama wins, I can tell my kid I helped it happen. So I guess I better go vote so I can tell him that one day,’ ” Lyon said.

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Other students also traced their most defining memories of Obama to the campaign trail rather than Inauguration Day. Julia Kaplan ’11 recalled going to Pennsylvania one “cold and wet and miserable” day to listen to Obama speak to a crowd of 9,000 people. “Obama got up there, and suddenly everyone kind of stopped, stopped trying to push each other, forgot how cold and wet and miserable they were, and just listened,” Kaplan said.

Despite the thrill of the inauguration, however, Obama supporters are looking apprehensively to the future.

“I am really excited but still a bit nervous,” Jonathan Moch ’12 said in an e-mail. “There are just so many problems erupting onto the national and international scene right now.”

Kaplan cautioned that the country should not expect Obama to “work magic overnight.” She is, however, hoping for some very defining changes in the short term.

Moch, as a dorm captain for the Obama campaign in Forbes, knocked on every door in the college to try to get votes, he said. Though cognizant of the difficulties Obama will face, Moch said he remains optimistic.

“I think it’s important for people to remember though that this is a beginning not an end,” he explained.

Reid was confident in Obama’s ability to address pressing national issues. “I expect Obama to live up to his campaign promises. I expect this country to look remarkably different four years from now,” she said.