Something Verbose hits all of the key points so I’m not going into a full post. I estimated around 150 people at the start, which was good news; early reports of rain threatened to suppress turnout at the event.
Unfortunately, State Senator Erpenbach had to cancel. The night certainly lacked the “pop” from last year, where Lt. Gov. Lawton spoke to a packed 3650 Humanities, but given the non-election year nature of this kick-off meeting, I think they should be happy with the event. There was quite a bit of activism rhetoric, with an array of groups gunning for bright-eyed freshmen interns. Little do they know what they’re getting into…. The three major Democratic Presidential candidate student groups also spoke, with starkly different presentations. Obama’s was more scripted, professional, and inspirational (with a little shout-out to fellow blogger Erik), while the Hillary crowd went with a humorous tone. The Hillary group got quite a few laughs by dropping “clusterfuck,” the Daily Show’s term for the road to the White House and a discursive favorite of the Critical Badger. Good call.
The Edwards student group was certainly less pomp and circumstance, but I found the group to have a genuine sense of raw student activism. They won’t be as large as the Hillary and Obama groups, but I was impressed with their dedication, despite a small Edwards presence in campus Democratic circles. In fact, they’ll be the first student group to hit up Iowa, visiting the Hawkeye state this Saturday. Chair Ben Taft called Edwards, “the only candidate for social justice,” arguing that, “we can’t replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats.” I suspect SFH and SFO would beg to differ.
Some kick-off dates for you:
Students for Hillary: September 20th, Humanities TITU, 6pm
Students for Obama: September 13th, Grainger 1100, 6pm
Students for Edwards: September 16th, Union south, 7pm
By about 8pm the crowd was getting restless and started to trickle out the back, although speakers did not end until after 8:15pm. I was disappointed not to see more promotion of their blog, but hopefully that’ll be coming in the next few meetings.
As for coverage of the event, a little disappointing. Shut out by the Cardinal and page 3, behind the Campus Anti-war Network which stole the front spot for kick-offs in the Herald today. Check out Something Verbose’s post or the CDM website. I suspect they’ll get some pictures or video up soon.
2 Comments
September 11, 2007 at 1:00 pm
What happened to not going into a full post?
September 11, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I had 2 pages of notes. That’d be 5x as long.