A College Campus: THE Place to Be on Election Day

Ok, I know the last thing you probably want to read right now is another blog post about Election 2008, but this is short and sweet, I promise.

Fact: There can be no cooler place to be on Election Day than on a college campus in a battleground state.

Now, I wouldn’t at all consider myself to be a total fanatic when it comes to politics. I didn’t donate my Facebook status to Obama, and I didn’t have a McCain poster in my dorm room window. NO, I’m not apathetic — I knew and cared about the issues — but I wasn’t one of the kids standing by the sundial in the middle of New Campus telling people to skip class and go vote. (Those kids were awesome though.)

And still, Tuesday, November 4, 2008 was one of the most exciting days I’ve experienced in my 4 years here. It was like every square inch of the campus was anxious, anxious because Virginia was anyone’s win and anxious because regardless of the outcome, Tuesday night’s announcement would be big.

It’s really corny, but what people around here have been saying is true. Years down the road, I’ll remember exactly what I was doing and who I was with on Election Day ’08. I probably won’t remember the Labor Economics term paper I should be working on right now or the football game this coming weekend. BUT, I’m pretty sure I will remember standing outside the Williamsburg Community Center in the rain with a friend at 7 a.m. while the Student Assembly passed out free cider. I’m pretty sure I will remember looking at CNN’s map of Virginia results with my roommate and being shocked to watch the thousands of William and Mary student votes add up right before our eyes. And I’m pretty sure I will remember the entire roll of chocolate chip cookie dough that 2 friends and I shared as we stayed glued to the T.V. later that night.

When my kids (waaaaaaay down the road now) bring home history books covering the 2008 election, I know I’ll try to fill them in on all these details from that first Tuesday of November my senior year. They probably won’t care, and they’ll probably just call me “old.”

And then I’ll pull a super cliche parent phrase out on them and say, “Well, one day when you’re older, you’ll realize how privileged and COOL it was to be young and on a college campus during such a historic campaign.”

Because it truly was.