Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Debate Days

Probably everyone knows by now that the Vice Presidential debates were held at Wash U last week. By the way, I work there. And by the way, I work for possibly the biggest "event planning" type of office on campus. Alumni and Development (my department) is constantly doing events and programming for alumni, and always does them professionally, expensively, and well overall because... well, we are the development office. The more we dish out for our alums, the more (*fingers crossed!!*) they will dish out for us (no sarcasm here...). So anyway, we are always called on to do big events like, oh, presidential debates and stuff. So there was tons of excitement on campus the days leading up to the event, but I'm convinced that our office was particularly crazy. I mean, I know that a lot of other offices were encouraged to leave by 3 or 4 p.m. to avoid the traffic and craziness, while our office was still recruiting volunteers on Thursday morning.



So, you ask, did I get to go to the debates?!? No. I didn't even volunteer. I didn't even want to. I mean, I kind of wanted to. I know I probably just missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, BUT 1. I had the Graduate Reunion weekend beginning the next day, which is basically my whole purpose in life at Wash U which comes to fruition the first weekend in October every year. 2. Jason was leaving to go out of town the following morning and I just didn't want to be out of the house all night right before he was leaving. 3. They were looking for volunteers to stand in the parking lot and direct traffic, not escort Obama around or anything glamorous. So I don't really feel like I missed out on much.



Nevertheless, it was an exciting day on campus. And although I was crazy busy and had reunions coming out of my ears, I took 15 or 20 minutes to walk around campus and just experience what was going on. It was exciting indeed!

My walk to work in the morning.


Helicopters flying in the sky. kind of crazy.



The football field transformed into a satellite field... plus tons of cops, obviously.

The NBC truck.

I think this was where Fox News was broadcasting from (hence the mccain/palin signs).

Where CNN was broadcasting from... many many more obama/biden signs. They even had an "Express Yourself" booth where students could make signs and pins and stuff. I saw one pin that said "I'm Anti ______" and you could write whatever you wanted in the blank. That was quite interesting.

My favorite sign of the day.... oh so proud to be from the south.

And look who stopped by the office! McCain, Obama, and Biden were wondering around somewhere too :-)



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4 comments:

brooke b said...

LOVE all of these 'behind the scenes' pix!! Definitely feels like a cool experience -- even if you didn't 'go for the gold' and work the parking lot. And, I hope Jason felt like a super hero for getting picked over our future president!

PS Sarah looks insanely tall. :)

gfygrl said...

*giggle*

i see sandy in the window of your picture!

gfygrl said...

so i've been studying the reflection in that picture closely.

that's the cubical by karen's office, isn't it?

Lindsey said...

karen, you think too much about stuff that doesn't matter.