President Barack Obama will not speak on Grounds Wednesday after the University declined his campaign’s request last week, saying it would cause an “extraordinary disruption” to the second day of classes. But some students are planning on making the trip downtown to see the president regardless of classes.
Jeff Atkins, a third-year doctoral student in environmental science, tweeted Monday night that he planned to leave a lab group meeting early to hear the president speak.
“I am going so my sons can see and hear the president,” Atkins tweeted. “Likely, I think everyone else will be as well.”
The University’s argument has caught the attention of some students, though.
“I was planning on going but I have class on Wednesday,” said fourth-year College student Anna Ferrara. “I’m not skipping because it’s the first week.”
The Obama campaign considered hosting the event at the Amphitheater or the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, said an Obama campaign official. The flurry of activity accompanying the president’s visit will instead occur off Grounds at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion on the Downtown Mall. Gates open at 1 p.m. Wednesday.
University spokesperson Carol Wood said the use of either on-Grounds site would have required the closing of the buildings directly adjacent to the sites for the whole day, which would have disrupted 186 classes, according to a University statement released Friday.
As a compromise, the University offered John Paul Jones Arena as a possible venue, which University Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato said in an email would have been a credible option.
“To cancel so many classes on the second day of the semester, and for a purely political campaign event, is a terrible precedent,” Sabato said.
In addition, the University would have had to bear the entire cost of security for the rally, which would have been a “substantial and open-ended expenditure of staff time and money,” Wood said.
These are the same costs the University would have to offset should Republican candidate Mitt
Romney decide to visit Charlottesville, Wood said.
Even though the president won’t be speaking on Grounds, Sabato said he should still draw a crowd.
“No doubt interested students will turn up,” he said.
Ferrara, however, said she thought hosting the rally on Grounds would have engaged more students.
“It would attract the rising younger generation in a way that could make them get more involved in politics and their country’s government,” Ferrara said. “After all, the people who make up our generation are the ones that will or could become the leaders of tomorrow.”
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