Inspired Student Watches Inauguration Day in D.C. While Others Head to TVs

By Journalism I

Thousands of University of Tampa students gathered around television sets and computer screens Tuesday to watch the inauguration of America’s first black president, Barack H. Obama.

Ironically, they saw more of the 44^th president than one U.T. student who was actually on the Mall. Although Stefanie Emrith was far from the president, she was also far from disappointed.

“Just being there was enough,” she said, her voice still brimming with excitement eight hours after seeing the speech.

“It was freezing, but nobody complained. Everybody came out: old, disabled, all different races, all different walks of life,” said Emrith, who went to the inauguration as part of a leadership conference. “The town really was buzzing. It was Obama-mania.”

She said the scenes gave her hope for Trinidad, where racial discrimination is common.

“To see a country come together with all races, I was just so glad to be there. Although I’m not American , it was amazing to witness all these people come together to make history.”

Emrith watched the events from the Lincoln Memorial and from near Seventh Street, but eventually the cold forced the Caribbean native to retreat to a hotel lobby.

“We didn’t even get close enough, but nobody complained,” she said. “People were so happy to just witness it that they were chanting his name.”

UT Viewers

Even back in Tampa, sophomore Samantha Saplholz said she could feel the enthusiasm.

“The positive energy of the crowd was overwhelming,” she said.

Allie Taylor said the excitement spread well beyond the inauguration’s estimated 2 million attendees.

”President Obama is an inspiration to the nation,” she said.

Obama’s much anticipated speech recognized the national crisis but offered hope and encouragement, calling on people to take responsibility and to shape a more positive future for the nation.

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America,” Obama said. “For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.”

Since his election, the former community organizer has stressed service, a message that resonates with UT’s P.E.A.C.E. office, which coordinates volunteerism.

Organizers, like Molly Murphy, anticipate Obama will spur interest.

“I think we’ve found he is an influence on our generation,” said Murphy, who is ready for waves of volunteers.  ”If there is an abundance of student volunteers, we are prepared to facilitate them.”

Obama said Americans had made a critical decision.

“On this day we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord,” said Obama, asking Americans to do what they could to make the nation great again.

“This is the price of citizenship,” he said. “This is the source of our confidence. This is the meaning of our liberty and creed.”

Looking forward

With his daughters by his side, Obama said he wanted to ensure the nation’s ideals were passed on to future Americans.

“With fixed eyes on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried fourth the great gift of freedom and deliver it safely to future generations,” Obama said.

While Obama was hopeful in his speech, he said he sees the challenging times ahead.

“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real,” he said. “Change has come to America.” Obama said.

UT student Katelyn Goodwin said she feels the transition.

“I think big changes are coming,” she said. “He spoke like a leader.”

Conservative Support

Even those who didn’t vote for Obama said they support the new president. Some are even ready to go to war for him.

Two ROTC students, Ryan Enix and Tony Gaeta, were eager to give their opinion about the inauguration, as well as the campaign.

“We followed the campaign throughout, however, voted for McCain,” said Enix and Gaeta. Both students felt that McCain would lead the country better in a time of war due to McCain’s strong military background, which Obama lacks. However, “As Commander in Chief, we support Obama and would follow orders if put into that situation in the future,” said Enix.

Jason Bass, a sophomore, said in his predominantly conservative hometown, Obama had won over a number of supporters.

“He connects with the younger generation,” he said.

Bass watched the Inauguration in his English 102 class and was assigned to write a paper on the format and content of the speech.

“I thought the speech was very well done and very powerful,” he said. “I hope he will act on his words.”

Freshman Alex Caraballo agreed.

“It’s about time to move towards a progressive agenda. He needs to establish America as
a moral authority and come together as one.”

Watching the Inauguration

Most students who had class during the events watched them on television. Senior Stephanie Whitehall watched during her screenwriting class.

“It was such a historical moment,” Whitehall said. “When future generations ask you where you were during Obama’s inauguration, you don’t want to say you were just in a room doing nothing. Just by watching it, we became a part of history.”

A few students who didn’t watch the speech reasoned that with today’s technology the full broadcast would be streaming instantly. One student, John Dolan, was waiting until later to watch it on his computer. Junior Deja Smith was waiting too.

“I have it recording at home,” she said. “It comes to show you how America is changing.”

Many UT professors let their students out early to watch the event.

“Right when I got out of class, I turned it on,” said junior Bryan Cormier, who was at first underwhelmed. He had recalled John F. Kennedy’s stirring inauguration speech in which he famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

But soon, the president’s speech had won Cormier over.

“As I reflected on Obama’s overall message, I got more excited.”

The Obama supporter said he once saw him in Boston.

“His theme of unifying our country and breaking down the Republican/Democrat barriers is inspiring,” he said.

Nicole Sicignano, senior, watched the inauguration in her criminology class.

“Everyone was really excited to watch it,” Sicignano said. “They loved everything he said and had to offer.”

Sicignano, who has been an Obama supporter since he started his campaign, liked his speech.

“I loved what he said about equality and education,” Sicignano said.

Junior Ashley Whitney was also excited to watch Obama’s speech, but the classmates in her Racial and Ethnic Relations class thought differently.

“In the beginning, they were making fun,” said junior Ashlea Whitney, who voted for Obama in her very first presidential election.

Inauguration Bits & Bytes: Sick Senators, Security, Poets and Pomp

By Journalism I

Senators Become Ill

Today’s inauguration ceremonies ran smoothly until two U.S senators both required medical attention.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D- MA), 76, suffered a mild seizure during the inauguration lunch, and Senator Robert Byrd (D-VA), 91, required medical attention after being distraught over Kennedy’s seizure, CNN reported.

Byrd has since recovered, and Kennedy was transported to Washington Hospital Center.

“After testing, we believe the incident was brought on by simple fatigue,” neurologist Edward Aulisi said. “Senator Kennedy is awake, talking with family and friends, and feeling well.”

Kennedy is expected to be released Wednesday.

In May of 2008, Kennedy suffered his first seizure, later determined to be caused by a malignant brain tumor, which was removed in June. Throughout his treatment, Kennedy continued his staunch support.

Earlier around the Mall, the frigid temperatures hospitalized roughly 20 people before 10 a.m., MSNBC reported.

Inaugural Poem Gets Mixed Reviews

Obama chose his friend, poet Elizabeth Alexander, to read the inaugural poem “Praise Song for the Day.” The Yale University professor of African-American studies is a former faculty colleague from Obama’s teaching days at the University of Chicago.

Within hours of the reading of the inaugural poem there were already comments posted on the Internet.

The majority of people feel that the poem was too simple and slowly delivered, lacking appropriate depth and passion for the moment.

Others loved it and believed the poem was true and faithful, its simple words creating complex and detailed pictures.

Safety and Security by the Numbers

• 170 million – Estimated dollar amount the inauguration cost
• 20,000 – National Guardsmen ready to respond if there was an emergency
• 10,000 – National Guardsmen on site
• 8,000 – Police officers from the District of Columbia
• 5,000 – Portable restrooms (Yes, that’s safety)
• 1,000 – FBI personnel
• 150 – Number of multi-agency intel teams in the region
• 5 – Number of inches thick “The Beast” (Obam’s limo) is
• 1- P-3 Reconnaissance plane overhead (aka “The Rover”)
• 1 – Number of limousines named “The Beast”
• 0 – Number of vulnerabilities “The Beast” has. RPGs, chemical and biological weapons don’t even stand a chance.

Office Space

To ensure an early start and good seats, Jordan Conrad, a 22-year-old Concordia student and his Canadian friends spent the night in a D.C. office building.

He said the scene at the mall was “post apocalyptic.”

“It was like the world had just ended and the only place life existed was on the Mall,” he said. “Some streets were completely desolate, blocked off by Greyhound buses while others were filled with people who were literally neck to neck.”

Inaugural Traditions

Obama’s inauguration had several allusions to Abraham Lincoln at the bicentennial anniversary of  Lincoln’s birth. Obama swore to “preserve, protect and defend”  the country with his  hand  on the  same  Bible  that  Lincoln used.

The oath included the same 37 words spoken since the time of George Washington. It comes from Article II , Section I  of the U.S. Constitution. It’s the only sentence in the document that is in quotation marks: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

According to the US Senate website, George Washington added “So help me God”, and  so has every president since.

Obama marks the first president since John F. Kennedy to bring children into the White House.

Calvin Coolidge had the first radio cast, and Harry S. Truman had the first television  broadcast.

The post-oath celebrations have evolved into their own tradition, all planned by the a committee. The inaugural parade began with Washington’s travel from his home in Mount Vernon, Va. to New York City.

The inaugural balls have been part of the celebration since James Madison’s 1989 inauguration. Bill Clinton’s second inauguration set the current record of 14.

Sources: cnn.com, inaugural.senate.gov/2009/, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pihome.html

UT, home of Pinter Review, Mourns Nobel Prize-winning playwright, dead at 78

Harold Pinter, a Nobel laureate and one of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights, died in London Wednesday after a long battle with cancer.

The University of Tampa’s Frank Gillen, a Dana professor of English and founding editor of the Pinter Review, is among the people who nominated Pinter and said after the 2005 win, “It’s a very happy day. I feel like my faith and the University’s faith in Pinter have been acknowledged.”

Gillen, who met with Pinter often and corresponded with the playwright for many years, had been invited by the Swedish Academy three years before to write a nomination, his second for Pinter.

The first, written in 1997, said the playwright “is concerned with the transformation of the human spirit” and “has stood against the misuse of authority and called attention to social and political injustice.”

Since 1987, the U.T. Press has published the Pinter Review, an acclaimed semi-annual academic journal devoted to Pinter.

“Even in the dark days when there wasn’t much interest in his work, we published faithfully, and the University supported us. I’ll always be very grateful for that. There is no other university in the world that publishes a journal devoted specifically to the works of Harold Pinter.”

One issue published Pinter’s first full draft of “The Homecoming” with handwritten revisions and an essay on its significance. The Pinter Review editor and the UT Press also sponsored the Pinter Review Prize for Drama.

“Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century,” the Academy said in the 2005 announcement. “That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: ‘Pinteresque.’”

Czech playwright and former president Vaclav Havel described Pinter’s award as “absolutely deserved.”

“You don’t really know how happy I am,” Havel wrote in a congratulatory telegram to his friend Pinter.

Pinter’s plays are stark and spare explorations of the human condition, and his finest work captures what critics have described as the poetry of everyday language. Early in his career, he perfected a style of pregnant pauses, a style that would be widely imitated and quickly came to be known as “Pinteresque.”

His best-known works are “The Caretaker” (1960), “The Homecoming” (1965) and “The Birthday Party (1960)–dark dramas in which the real action seems to be lurking in some subconscious space beneath the surface of the dialogue.

In addition to his 29 plays, Pinter also took turns as an actor, director and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and for one of his own plays, “Betrayal.” Both were nominated for Oscars.

Harold Pinter in "Krapp's Last Tape"

The academy also praised Pinter’s continuing analysis of “threat and injustice” and his work, since 1973, “as a fighter for human rights,” taking “stands seen as controversial.” In his later years, he became known for his political activism and for his often strident criticism of the U.S. government.

In 2005, after being treated for the throat cancer that eventually killed him, Pinter told friends that he had written his last play and would devote his energies to poetry and political activism.

It was later that year that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He was too ill to travel to Stockholm to accept the prize but he used the occasion to film a scathing attack on U.S. foreign policy.

“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them,” said the frail playwright who delivered his lecture while seated in a wheelchair with a blanket over his knees.

He castigated the U.S. for supporting “every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the Second World War” and ridiculed Americans for their “self-love.”

“Listen to all American presidents on television say the words ‘the American people,’ as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

“It’s a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion,” he said.

Pinter delivered his indictment in a raspy voice, full of dramatic pauses and bitter irony. Michael Billington, theater critic for the Guardian newspaper and Pinter’s biographer, wrote that the Nobel lecture could have been staged by Samuel Beckett. Certainly, it was Pinteresque.

Born Oct. 10, 1930, in London’s East End, Harold Pinter was the son of Jewish immigrants who ran a dressmaker’s shop. When World War II broke out, he and other children from that heavily bombed district of London were separated from their parents and evacuated to the countryside, an experience that would traumatize the boy and color his writing as an adult.

After returning to London and discovering a talent for acting, he was accepted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. But he dropped out after two years and then risked a jail sentence when he refused military service. He was fined instead.

Pinter’s first full-length play, “The Birthday Party” is widely admired today but was a flop when it was first produced in London’s West End, closing after only a week.

His second play, “The Caretaker,” secured his reputation as a serious artist. The play is a spare psychological drama in which two brothers, Mick and Ashton, invite a manipulative stranger into their household and soon find themselves in a delusional struggle for power and space. The play regarded by many as Pinter’s masterpiece is “The Homecoming.” It tells the story of Teddy, a professor at an American college, who returns with his wife to the London home of his unhappy working-class family. In this work, Pinter perfected the style of pregnant pauses that eventually became synonymous with his name.

Also characteristic of his work are the stark settings–typically a bare room, a seedy boarding house or forlorn bed-sit. Pinter used bleak physical spaces to draw out the bleak interiors of his characters.

As a playwright, Pinter was at the height of his powers and his fame in the 1960s and early ’70s. He continued to write though the next two decades, turning out a dozen plays between 1980 and 2000, but none that achieved the stature or success of his earlier works.

In his later years, his plays took on a more political aspect. “Mountain Language” (1988) deals with the oppression of the Kurds by the Turkish government, while “One for the Road” (1984) tells the story of Nicolas, a self-proclaimed civilized man who earns his living as a torturer for an unnamed government. In a 2001 production of the play in London, Pinter played the role of Nicolas to huge acclaim.

“As an artist, Pinter has an alarming range,” wrote follow playwright David Hare. “He can play great, big major chords made up only of anger, indignation and contempt. But at the other end of the instrument, he can also unbalance you by reaching humor, grace and intense personal warmth.”

Pinter became an active campaigner for human rights in the early 1970s and rarely missed an opportunity to denounce the dishonesty and hypocrisy of political leaders. Americans were his favorite target.

Addressing a peace rally in London’s Hyde Park on the eve of the Iraq war, Pinter denounced the Bush administration as a “monster out of control.”

“The country is run by a bunch of criminal lunatics, with [Prime Minister Tony] Blair as their hired Christian thug. The planned attack on Iraq is an act of premeditated mass murder,” he said.

A few months later, during a poetry reading at the National Theater, Pinter said: “The U.S. is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany.”

Pinter’s animus toward the U.S. predates the Bush administration. He was an outspoken critic of former President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy and once in 1985, while traveling with American playwright Arthur Miller, he was thrown out of a U.S. Embassy function for denouncing the Turkish government’s flagrant human-rights violations.

Despite his criticism of the British government–he once refused a knighthood–Pinter has expressed a passion for England, its countryside and especially for cricket, which he described as “the greatest thing that God ever created on Earth–certainly greater than sex, although sex isn’t too bad either.”

Pinter married Fraser, a biographer, in 1980. His first marriage to actress Vivien Merchant collapsed in a highly publicized scandal in 1977 after he began an affair with Fraser. Pinter and Merchant had a son, Daniel. Merchant died in 1982.

“It was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten,” Fraser said.

Story from Tom Hundley (MCT) with information from the UT and Tampa Press Web sites.

Prominent UT Alumnus Killed in Mexico City Plane Crash

By Peter Arrabal, Editor in Chief

After a quick ascent to one of Mexico’s most powerful positions, Juan Camilo Mourino, Mexico’s Interior Secretary, died in a fiery plane crash in Mexico City. He was also a 1993 Univesity of Tampa economics grad.

Mourino, who drew criticism in Mexico because he was Spanish-born and U.S.-educated, was a key player in Mexico’s war on drugs. He was traveling in a government jet from San Luis Potosi, where he was celebrating the launch of a program to welcome back migrant workers. The plane was headed to the international airport in Mexico City.

“With his death, Mexico has lost a great Mexican, intelligent, loyal and committed to his ideals and his country,” Mexican President Felipe Calderon told a news conference. “I ask all Mexicans that they don’t allow any event, no matter how difficult or painful, to weaken them in the pursuit of a better Mexico.”

The plane crashed into an affluent neighborhood, the Associated Press reported. Several buildings and cars were set on fire, and officials evacuated buildings in the area, displacing about 1,800 people.

Mourino, 37, previously was the chief of staff for Calderon and ran his election campaign in 2006. He said in a 2007 interview with “UT Journal” writer Dan Sullivan that he faced big challenges in creating jobs for poor Mexicans and fighting organized crime.

Officials from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and FAA will assist the Mexican government in the investigation of the crash.