TMP Photo by Kelly Hite. MTSU students stand around a television in the Keathley University Center to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama.
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As Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office at noon today, Middle Tennessee State University students gathered across campus to witness the historic occasion.
“According to CIRCLE, a non-partisan organization that tracks youth civic involvement, young voters preferred Barack Obama over John McCain 68 percent to 30 percent in the November 2008 election,” said Gina Logue from MTSU’s news and public affairs. “Now it’s their turn to savor their victory.”
MTSU also set up televisions in campus resident halls and TVs were tuned to the event across campus.
“You don’t realize how you take part in history,” MTSU nursing major Anescia Collins, 20, said, adding she played a part by voting in the November presidential election, not only for herself but for her parents and grandparents.
“I wasn’t born into slavery or the civil rights movement but my parents and grandparents were,” she said.
Collins was one of many MTSU students that gathered in the Keathley University Center to watch Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of the United States.
The students broke into spontaneous applause when he took the oath and tears were seen on many of the young faces assembled around the television.
Dianne Feinstein, U.S. senator from California, summed up the meaning of the occasion to both young and old in her speech at the Capitol today.
“Future generations will mark this moment … as the moment when a dream marched from the Lincoln Memorial to finally meet the walls of the White House,” she said, referring to Martin Luther King’s historic 1963 speech and the inauguration of the United States’ first black president.
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.
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