Inauguration Dissapointment

INAUGURATION DISSAPOINTMENT
By Marisa Kendall


Inauguration Day may have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but many students at American University had to make sacrifices and overcome obstacles to be part of the history-making event.
Tens of thousands of Americans flooded the Washington Mall Tuesday to see the first African-American be sworn in as president of the United States. Of the approximately 2 million who showed up, thousands came from area schools and universities on one of the coldest days of the season.
Tracey Swan, a sophomore in the AU School of Public Affairs, was determined to see Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, take the oath of office.
She made it to the Mall, suffering an elbow to the nose in the packed crowd, but she was unable to get a good view of the ceremony. Swan left soon after Obama took the stage because of the cold and a sore nose. But she said she still enjoyed the overall experience.
“It was kind of cool to see the crowds and be at the Mall during it,” Swan said.
The media had spent days warning travelers of potential crowds and transportation hassles, but these very hassles were what stood out most positively in some AU students’ minds.
Junior Topher Minasi planned to wake up at 5 a.m. to secure a spot on the Mall but ended up sleeping until 8 a.m. After walking from campus, he said he was unimpressed.
“[I] sat around for an hour, got bored of not seeing anything, and left right after Obama got on,” Minasi said.
Aaron Rosenberg, a high-school senior from Des Moines, stayed with a friend in a dorm at AU. Although he arrived at the Mall at 7 a.m. armed with a ticket to the purple section, he was not admitted onto the Capitol grounds in time to see the ceremony. Rosenberg had been waiting four hours when word spread through the line that security officers had stopped letting spectators inside, he said.
“I was frustrated, but it happens,” Rosenberg said. “And I’m still here, which is pretty cool.”
Rosenberg was not alone in his disappointment. More than 4,000 blue and purple ticket holders never made it onto the Capitol grounds because members of Congress had distributed more tickets than there was space, reported The Washington Post.
The line of ticket-holders that had been building all morning quickly disintegrated into a mob once the purple gates opened, leaving thousands of angry people outside to shout at the guards and chant “pur-ple, pur-ple!”
Rosenberg did not understand what was happening in all of the chaos, he said.
“Everyone was all bunched up and we didn’t really know what was going on,” he said.
Other AU students enjoyed being part of the massive crowds that flooded the Mall and surrounding Metro stops.
Paige Howarth, a freshman in the School of Communication, cut back dramatically on her night’s sleep in order to secure a spot near the parade route. She arrived at the Tenley Town Metro station in time to witness a line of AU students that curved from the escalator all the way past the shuttle stop, about 50 yards.
“It was pretty neat to see it all and see all the kids that are out supporting Obama,” Howarth said.
Nathan Pace, a freshman in the Kogod School of Business, left at 2 a.m. to be one of the first to arrive at the Dupont Circle Metro stop but still had to let the first three trains of the morning pass because they were completely full, he said.
“It was an all-nighter, but it was amazing,” he said.


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