When the Obama administration announced last week President Barack Obama would be speaking on campus, many students waited to hear from their professors about the status of their Thursday classes.
In the meantime, they flocked to Obama’s campaign website to acquire a ticket for the event. To acquire a ticket, prospective speech-goers had to enter their email and phone number, giving the Obama campaign thousands more emails to spam on a daily basis.
The university should not have let this happen, not while at the same time allowing the speech to take place in the heart of campus.
Surely, some of those who signed up won’t mind the daily campaign updates, and others who plan to vote for the president in November are fine just deleting the email if it means they got to see the President of the United States speak.
But, while it can be easy to forget sometimes, this campus is also home to conservatives. Some of those conservatives undoubtedly wanted to attend the speech because of the special opportunity to see the president. Whether or not one agrees politically with the president, it is an important part of the political process to see the leader of the country in person.
If having to give the Obama campaign an email and phone number dissuaded even one student from going then the process did more than its fair share of damage. In negotiating the details of Obama’s visit, the university should not have allowed his campaign to require emails and phone numbers to register.
The day before the event, some professors expressed concern over the role the university played in the presidential visit, including those raised above, as well as the location of the speech on Bascom Hill.
This board understands the concerns raised, but also sees the value in having the speech on Bascom Hill, especially given the construction on Library Mall, where he spoke in 2010. Some may question the location based on the number of classes cancelled and buildings that closed for a partisan speech. But regardless of the content of the speech, which was overtly partisan based on the lineup of speakers ahead of Obama, the opportunity to see the sitting president speak is one that is worth missing a class or two.
However, we agree with professors that the university should release any emails or records of negotiations between administrators and the campaign. It is important for students and faculty to know how the location of the speech was determined, as well as any information about the cost of the event and how much the Obama campaign will contribute financially. We hope the university addresses the concerns raised by the faculty quickly, and hope what it reveals is better than what we saw in the ticketing process.
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