At least five spectators with Emporia connections were among the masses of people wedged into Washington, D.C., today to see the presidential inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama.
Cammy and Megan Challender, Cody Lindquist, Sara Jordan and Nick Ashburn all have attended speaking engagements, toured the nation’s capital and were to attend the inauguration through their affiliations with conferences sponsored by the Congressional Youth Leadership Council.
Emporia High School graduates Jordan, Ashburn, and Cammy Challender all were hired part-time to be faculty advisors for the CYLC’s University Presidential Inaugural Conference. EHS graduate Megan Challender, a full-time employee of the CYLC for two and a half years, is a site director for the Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference, which Lindquist, an EHS sophomore, was chosen to attend.
Cammy Challender, who works as program director for Big Brothers Big Sisters in Lawrence, took time early this morning to talk about the energy and excitement she was witnessing as the inauguration ceremony loomed.
She’d applied for the CYLC faculty advisor job and gone through the interview process in hopes that would give her an avenue to attend the inaugural.
“I didn’t want to miss the historic inauguration,” she said.
Despite the crowding and the stress of a suddenly overpopulated city, she said that people have been surprisingly nice.
“Everyone seems to be in pretty high spirits, easy to talk to,” Challender said. “... Everyone’s just really, really excited to be here and witness an historic moment.”
She noted that although all presidential inaugurations are inherently historical, Obama’s taking over as president had generated a different atmosphere than other inaugurals.
“I just think there’s a lot more energy and excitement than in the past,” said Challender, who has worked on political campaigns and had lived in D.C. for about a year and a half when she worked for a non-profit organization.
She was attracted to the temporary faculty advisor position not only because it would give her an opportunity to witness that historic moment herself, it also presented opportunities to attend speeches by former Democratic presidential candidate and author Al Gore and ret. Gen. and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
“I really enjoyed both of them,” Challender said.
She described Gore’s speech as “kind of all-encompassing.”
“He was pretty funny actually, and he cracked some good jokes,” she said.
Gore spoke about the importance of harnessing available renewable sources of energy, emphasizing wind and solar power as key to the change.
“Colin Powell was an awesome speaker. He was very engaging and dynamic,” Challender said.
The speech was geared to inspire the high-achieving young leaders chosen to be part of the CYLC groups.
“In order to be a good leader, you have to be a good follower,” Challender said, reiterating Powell’s message. “His speech just seemed to resonate with the students.”
Political pundits like Mary Matalin and Tucker Carlson were among the speakers who presented workshops for students, in addition to the formal events.
The university contingent of the conference was made up of about 5,040 students. Almost 10,000 high school students were in D.C. with the program and another approximately 3,000 students were sixth- through eighth-graders chosen for the Junior Youth Inaugural. A staff of almost 1,000 people was assembled to shepherd the younger students and give advice and directions to the young adults representing universities.
Most of the participants had gotten an early start to get to today’s main event.
“People from our hotel left as early ... as midnight,” Challender said. “Another group, I think, left at 2:30 a.m. Then there were steady streams of people leaving at 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.”
The Metro public transportation system opened at 4 a.m.
“It’s very crowded,” Challender said. “People are very, very dedicated. Everyone just really wanted to witness history and be a part of the action here in D.C., so they were willing to sacrifice sleep and comfort in order to be down at the mall.”
Washington officials already had planned to close certain streets to accommodate the crowds, and it appeared that additional streets had been closed as numbers of people began to swell.
“I know that for our conference, they reserved the hotel rooms about a year and a half ago to ensure that all of our students had a place,” she said. “There’s not a single hotel room available within a two-and-a-half-hour drive of Washington.”
CYLC rented the Hard Rock Cafe in the capital as a gathering place today for the students to come in to warm up, get food and, if they wish, watch the proceedings on big-screen televisions in the restaurant.
“I’ve heard that it is hard to get places with streets being blocked off and all those things. It is more of a challenge to get to places,” Challender said. “But at the same time, we knew that it was going to be hard to get people from one place to another. ... We gave all of our students a map with alternate routes.”