More than a dozen Northwestern students will make a pilgrimage to Washington today for the Saturday inauguration of George W. Bush as the 43rd president of the United States.
They come from a variety of political stripes and organizations. Some will go to protest, some to cheer and some to observe. But they are all drawn by a desire to be part of history.
“It’s a really historic moment,” said Tracie Gibler, a Weinberg sophomore and a “moderately hard-core” Bush supporter. “And I’m glad I get to be there and witness it.”
Gibler said she received an official inauguration ticket from her U.S. senator’s office and plans to fly to Washington with her father and Caille Sugarman-Banaszak, a Weinberg senior. “I didn’t realize how hard (tickets) are to come by,” Gibler said. “I lucked out.”
Gibler’s tickets will gain her access to coveted seats in the secure perimeter for the inauguration address — a privilege denied to NU students who will join the mass protests in the streets of Washington.
About 10 students met in Norris University Center on Thursday evening to plan their protesting trip. Most expect to caravan University of Wisconsin students through a connection organized by Northwestern Students Against Sweatshops. Most will head to Washington with no specific plans for which protests to join or even where they will spend the night.
Students said they were drawn to the event not by a single issue, but by a litany of causes that have come to represent the modern activist movement: the environment, civil rights, anti-globalization, workers’ rights and others. But they also were drawn by the contested 2000 presidential election.
“It was a breakdown of the rule of law and a suppression of democracy,” said Tom Noerper, a psychology graduate student making the trip. “These mass demonstrations are an important part of building the movement. I consider it being a good citizen.”
Peter Micek, a Medill sophomore, said the protests were important to “remind Bush that while he may occupy the White House, he still has to answer to the majority of the people.”
But according to political science professor Ken Janda, the activism movement embodied by Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign and demonstrations like the Seattle World Trade Organization protests does not have a bright future.
“If you take that 2 percent (of votes that Nader won) and you move them from place to place, they look pretty big,” Janda said Thursday at the Public Affairs Residential College. “But I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”
Although students did not expect clashes with police at the protests, they did not rule them out.
“If we’re yelling in the streets, that’s the way democracy works,” Micek said.
But Janda said a peaceful transfer of power is a keystone of democracy and argued against disruption.
“I hope that people who go to Washington find fulfillment from the experience, but I really hope it doesn’t disrupt the inauguration,” he said. “I don’t think it’ll be a Seattle.”
