Proving the improbable, the University student body aligned with the American public to make history by electing Barack Obama as the 44^th and first African-American president of the United States on Tuesday.

Putting an end to the longest presidential campaign run in history—it started almost two years ago, Obama won a landslide victory, securing wins in key swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Missouri’s tally was still undecided as of press time, but was leaning toward the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Obama’s ability to energize young voters was solidified at the polls as 70 percent of voters who, according to the New York Times/CBS poll, said they were voting for the first time, cast their ballots for Obama.

In a considerable increase from 2004, the youth vote, according to CNN, made up 21 percent of the total voters this election cycle.

Reflecting the University’s largely liberal standing student body, data from an exit poll conducted by Student Life showed that 87.22 percent of the student body voted for Obama. Business students were slightly more likely to vote for McCain than the general student body population

“Wash. U. turnout was unbelievable. Close to 100 percent,” Sophie Cohen, president of Students for Barack Obama, said. “I’m very proud of Wash. U. Youth finally showed they do matter a lot. We do have a voice.”

Of the student voters who decided who they would vote for within the last three weeks, 80 percent voted for Obama.

Lining up with the national polls, which suggested that most Americans

placed the economy as their top concern this election, almost a third of University students said that the economy was the largest factor when deciding for whom to vote. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ranked second at almost 15 percent.

Yesterday was a day for the Democrats to remember, as the party also swept the legislative elections, picking up seats in both houses of congress. For the first time since 1995, the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House.

Democrat Jay Nixon won the Missouri gubernatorial race by a wide margin as well.

The Washington University student body however, did clash with the greater St. Louis public on proposition M. The Student Life exit poll showed that an overwhelming 88.64 percent of students voted to approve proposition M, which would increase MetroLink funding, although the bill ultimately failed in the County.

Although the Democrats outnumber the Republicans on campus, the Republicans have also made their voices heard in their efforts to campaign for Senator John McCain.

Republican Monika Monson, a sophomore, said that although she is disappointed that McCain lost, she will stand behind Obama in his presidency.

“I’m going to be gracious in defeat,” Monson said. “I hope [Obama] follows through on all his promises and I wish him luck.”

Student Union Brittany Perez noted the political activism and discourse that reverberated through campus yesterday and called it characteristic of excitement that has flowed from the vice presidential debate here last month.

“On campus a lot of people were really energized. Even though [voting] was early, you could tell people really thought this was there responsibility. There wasn’t even a choice whet they were going to do [vote] or not,” Perez said.

Perez added that that sense of obligation caused students to do more than just vote, saying that they contributed both money and volunteering time to the campaigns.

“People have taken ownership of this election. You can tell from the people that stuck around here and the people that have been getting people out to vote in the last couple of days that they are really invested,” Perez said.

With additional reporting Johann Qua Hiansan.

More than $60,000 were set aside for political programming this year, with the largest contribution coming from Student Union and supplemented by funding from the Office of Student Activities and the Gephardt Institute.

Though that money has gone to fund speakers, panel discussions, art installations and other new events, attendance has not substantially increased from that of previous years.

“Students are clearly involved in the political process this year, and the programming that various groups have put on has really added to it,” sophomore Jordan Aibel, program assistant for the Gephardt Institute and a coordinator of political discussion series Controversy N’ Coffee, said. “But at the same time I think that the excitement for the political process this year hasn’t necessarily translated into increased attendance.”

Even as groups like the Political Science Students Association (PSSA), Coffee N’ Controversy and the College Democrats and Republicans have increased their programming, the primary method for political involvement for most students has remained informal. Students still prefer political conversations with friends.

“There’s a lot more talking going on—especially when the vice presidential debate was going on,” Tim Shaw, a junior and political science major, said. “Even the people who are apathetic are talking about why they’re apathetic.”

Though event organizers were pleased to see more conversations happening around campus, they continue to see a niche for structured programming—specifically exposing students to a wide array of opinions and viewpoints.

“At this time of political polarization, we should have a scholarly background for the politics happening,” junior Mark Dudley, organizer of PSSA, said. “It’s important to have these programs in place to educate these students because of the punditry.”

Dudley and others have revived the PSSA this year as a place for academic discussion of political issues; the organization is meant to cater to students from all disciplines, not just political science.

Though at times the PSSA has drawn nearly 75 students to an event, most events have attracted several dozen at a time.

Students do benefit greatly from increased discussion, according to Aibel. But he also noted that relying exclusively on those discussions prevents students from being exposed to a full range of political ideas.

“The fact that students just want to talk about this with their friends when they could be talking about anything else shows me that they care, and that is great,” Aibel said. “But, on the other hand, the fact that students are oftentimes only talking to their friends means that they might not be exposed to ideas and opinions that are different than the ones that they have.”

Going forward, student groups are looking to capitalize on students’ willingness to have discussions by highlighting student discourse in their programming.

“We’re trying to highlight the informal nature of our event,” Aibel said. “Our central focus is getting students to engage the panelists, the professors, in dialogue.”

As groups continue to prepare events in advance of the election, administrators of the election programming fund are satisfied with the way the money has been used so far because it allows for many fewer limitations on political events.

“Continuing to fund events with social and political focus is beneficial to our campus,” senior Brittany Perez, Student Union president, said. “I hope by November we have an informed student body that can make educated decisions.”

According to Perez, the fund is continuing to be used in the time leading up to the election at the same—if not a greater—rate than was seen before the vice presidential debate.

“It’s only been a week since then, and we’ve had the same number of appeals, if not more,” said Perez. “I think student interest is only going to increase in the next couple of weeks.”

With additional reporting by David Song

Through the efforts of the Student Union (SU) executive board, SU Senator Mike Post and the Washington University Athletic Department, fans of the football team held a tailgate—where students barbecue, play music and prepare to root for their team—before the home opener to encourage school spirit.

The game, which was originally to be played at Greenville College, was rescheduled on short notice, prompting SU President Brittany Perez to plan the event in less than one week. Nonetheless, she claimed that 20 fans turned out before the game.

“We met to talk about how can we create a tailgating culture that maybe students could catch onto and make a tradition,” Perez said. Perez met with the Athletic Department earlier in the week to generate interest in tailgating at the University.

“A big thing about Wash. U. is that people wish there was more school spirit, and a great way to start that is through athletics,” Post said. “We need to make it an experience.”

The tailgate tradition has persisted perhaps since the birth of college football. For decades, legions of fans—mostly at major Division I universities—have shown up before games. Many fans of college football are even bigger fans of the pre-game tailgate.

“The thing I was pleasantly surprised about was how excited everyone was,” said Post, who hopes this weekend’s success will bring more people out to games for the rest of the season.

While the tailgate scene has so far eluded the University, Brittany Perez hopes this weekend’s event began a new tradition that will unify the student body and ignite school spirit.

“We said if we want to do something, we got to start with the first game. We can’t let it pass,” Perez said; she expects a bigger turnout next weekend, when the Bears face off against Westminster College at Francis Field, and SU has an entire week to inform students.

The University Pep Band is also expected to perform next week.

Perez hopes that SU’s efforts will prompt students to take the initiative and start their own tailgates, but in the interim, SU will continue to provide a grill, chips, dip and some beverages to entice students.

“We’re going to continue to promote on a smaller scale,” Perez said. “I think we want to use the resources we have in SU to get the tradition started.”

While the University is not the size of many schools renowned for their tailgating traditions, Perez thinks the student body is ready to tailgate.

“We don’t want to force it upon any student,” Perez said of the push to tailgate. “We want it to be something that students want to do.”

Perez hopes that the tailgating tradition will extend beyond football and will continue for all University athletic events throughout the year.

Junior Michael Young, who went to the inaugural tailgate, said he was only one of four students at the event but hopes to see a rise in attendance.

“I’ll definitely come back next week,” Young said. “It would be cool to have a tradition so everyone’s not in the library all the time.”

He added that the low attendance may be due less to the unpopularity of campus athletics and more due to the time of the game. Next week’s game will take place at night.

“I woke up at 12 [noon] and everyone was still sleeping,” Young said of his housemates.

With additional reporting by Ben Sales.

The Election Programming Fund, consisting of $55,000, will be directed toward groups interested in mobilizing in preparation for Election Day on Nov. 4.

The fund, which will supplement regular Student Union (SU) funding channels, is open to any student group and will be distributed by a special committee consisting of undergraduates inside and outside of SU, graduate students, faculty and staff.

Another committee, headed by SU President Brittany Perez and Robin Hattori, program director of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service, will organize the scheduling of campus election programming.

SU student groups, as well as informal groups of students with program plans, can appeal for funding starting on Aug. 27. The fund will be open until Nov. 15, giving groups time to hold post-election programs.

While student groups may appeal for programming money through their semester budgets or by way of the SU Treasury’s appeals fund, Perez feels that the establishment of an additional election fund serves to energize political activity on campus.

“We wanted to make sure that we definitely had money to dedicate to political programming for the semester, that there was money to make sure that we have an active political atmosphere,” said Perez.

Creation of that atmosphere is a priority for SU in light of what Perez sees as a lackluster student effort to get involved in the political scene, especially with the national vice presidential debate taking place on campus on Oct. 2.

“In the three years I’ve been at Wash. U., I feel like students have not been involved politically at all,” she said. “It’s the nature of what’s coming our way with the vice presidential debate coming here, along with this being an election year, that people naturally want to be involved.”

Although the fund is aimed at getting non-political groups involved in the election, the fund will also attract some of the campus’s prominent political activists, the College Democrats and College Republicans.

Ben Guthorn, president of the College Democrats, said that a broadening of political activity on campus serves his group’s interest as well.

“It’s important to understand that political action is not necessarily about candidates, and parties don’t express every single outlet that people need,” Guthorn, a junior, said. “To open this outlet allows every group to serve its own niche [and] protect [its] members.”

Guthorn plans to apply for the fund and would like to use part of it to bring Comedy Central political commentator Mo Rocca to campus as one of his group’s central election programs.

The College Republicans, conversely, have not yet decided whether they will use the fund. Senior Charis Fischer, the group’s president, expressed skepticism over whether the fund’s presence would draw activity from non-political groups.

“The cultural groups might have something they want to highlight but I don’t know what level of interest there is among those groups, though it is relatively high because of the heated [presidential] campaign,” Fischer said.

Student groups’ election programming will come in tandem with SU-sponsored political events, the largest of which will be the Stand Up Campus Rally to take place on Sep. 11, a day when students and local speakers will voice their political views while student groups will be able to showcase their missions.

Although Perez sees the rally as another opportunity to heighten students’ political sensitivities, Fischer feels that it will not provide significant benefit to groups.

“I thought [the rally] was redundant because there’s already the activities fair,” she said. “At the rally you can do your own thing but I don’t see how it will do that much for the groups. People know what we’re about so it’s not worth our time.”

The fund has raised concern because of the strain it put on SU’s budget, which was the focus of controversy within the body late last year, and because of the potential it creates for SU to display political favoritism in deciding which groups to fund. Perez, however, believes that these problems have been resolved.

“I hope that from funding all of the different efforts, we’ll have a very diverse group of events,” she said. “With $55,000 we can’t fund every program in full but we encourage everyone to seek additional funds elsewhere.”

Fischer feels that the fund will favor some views over others because of the campus’ political scene, but does not feel that it is a major concern.

“I know that the preponderance of groups that apply will be liberal,” she said. “As long as it doesn’t come down to blatant favoritism it doesn’t worry me.”