Moment to brag

Many of the students who attended the trip to Iowa this past weekend have been included in on websites (I believe there's some Obama stuff...when I find it I'll post it...) and been asked many questions about the trip for both the Newswire and the Xavier Muskie News among other channels.

Well, there was apparently a NY Times photographer at the Edwards events we attended in Iowa. So! Here's my moment to brag...I found myself (though it's not obvious to anyone but me, really) in two of the pictures on the NY Times online website under the Edwards Multimedia slideshow. The links to the pictures are here:

In this picture, I am in very middle in the far background. You can see my gray sweater and colorful scarf. I like the main woman's John Edwards Superman button.

In this one, I'm the shoulder he's about to put his hand on. You can tell by the scarf again! How exciting!

~Briana Hansen

Still Recovering

This is a picture of the Edwards Team doing "visibility." For those of you watching the weather, there was a big snow storm in Iowa on Saturday. It was a good and a bad thing...on the one hand, some of us got a chance to be a little closer to the candidates because not as many people came out. On the other, it was--well--a snow storm. This is a group of us out in the pouring cold cheering for Edwards.



These visibilities are a funny thing, because they're often small groups of young people cheering on their candidate with clever cheers. The Obama people were across the street and when they were done doing a cheer, we would start chanting for Edwards. One of the Edwards cheers I remember was "We love Elizabeth and we love John! We want to see them on the White House lawn!"

One of the staffers actually told me about this thing called a "sign war" that took place a couple weeks before we came. Each candidates team gets a set amount of time to put up as many signs supporting the candidate as possible. There can only be one person from the team inside the hall at any given time, and the teams have to tag in and out as they come to decorate. He talked about it really enthusiastically and it made me think about how encouraging it is that so many young people are still involved in the campaign process. In a world where our generation often comes across as apathetic and jaded towards the political process, it's really neat that there are games and structures in place to keep young folks involved. Though the process of choosing the person who may lead the free world is not a game, at least those involved in the long, tedious, difficult jobs of doing much of the brunt work behind the candidate find ways to keep their spirits up.

-Briana Hansen

Super Saturday

Yesterday was filled with so much excitement, I'm still trying to recover from it all. Though I don't have much time right now, I wanted to say that I got the opportunity (with the rest of the Edwards team) to go to a forum with the Senator, then breifly talk to him afterwards and get a picture with our group. Afterwards, we did a visibility event for a while before attending a "Community Values Forum" with five of the Democratic candidates. It was a packed day filled with fun and interesting lessons and reflections.

More to come in the next couple days...

~Briana Hansen

At Obama HQ

My name is Greg Koehler. I am a senior PPP major at Xavier, and I just thought I would check in and relate my brief experience with the Obama campaign last night. I was supposed to work with the Biden campaign the entire weekend, but instead the Biden volunteers spent Friday evening working for Obama due to minor scheduling complications.

Obama HQ was abuzz with life. Most (but certainly not all) of the workers are young, twentysomething devotees of the Senator, evidently having the time of their lives, despite the outrageous hours they have to put in. You can tell that they eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff, and they exude a sense of hope for the future that's contagious.

Most of us were put to work making phone calls, while another several were put on envelope stuffing and addressing postcards. Some people might be disappointed with those kind of peon jobs, but what you have to remember is that someone has to do the crappy jobs, and they may as well be done by the untrained volunteers. Besides, what's really fun about going to a big campaign headquarters is just experiencing the inside of the beehive. I love chatting with the people and and asking them about their work. I was dead tired from the bus ride, but somehow I managed to feed off of the energy, and the evening reaffirmed my belief that politics isn't dead in America. It's certainly alive and kicking here in Des Moines, Iowa.

Greg Koehler, '08

Obama greets XU

Obama greets XU

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama happened to be staying at our hotel in Des Moines. Although clearly worn after a long day of campaigning, he was gracious and generous enough to individually greet several members of our trip in a sincere and genuine manner. At approximately 12:50 eastern time, Senator Obama entered a side door at our hotel where serveral Xavier students were loitering. "Are you guys all from Xavier University? That's a long way to come," said Obama. He then proceded to greet us indivudually by name, ask about our day, and thank us for our enthusiasm.