South Campus lottery winners hitch free ride to D.C.
Keith Shults, advisor to the South Campus Organization for Programming Excellence, checks in students as they board a bus bound for Washington D.C. to watch the presidential inauguration.
Emily Mcguire entered a raffle held in the Goldstein Student Center with a couple of her friends. The prize: A free ride to Washington to see the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Mcguire’s name was pulled. So were a few of her friends’ names.
‘It all worked out perfectly for me because I had tickets to the inauguration, but no ride,’ said Mcguire, freshman child and family studies major.
So Mcguire, along with 35 other Syracuse University students, left South Campus Monday at midnight to make it to Washington for the political festivities.
‘We are so lucky to all be going down together,’ Mcguire said. ‘It will be great to have my friends with me to witness this part of history.’
The South Campus Organization for Programming Excellence held a raffle for the free bus seats available to South Campus residents Wednesday.
The bus is scheduled to arrive just outside of Washington for the inaugural events beginning at 9 a.m. It will return to Syracuse at the end of the day, so students can be back in class by Wednesday morning.
Erica Hurtt, president of SCOPE, said that this trip is part of the organization’s goal to build a community among South Campus residents.
‘Once you leave the dorms you lose the feeling of community, and we think it’s important to have programming like this trip, so you can have that feeling on South Campus, too,’ she said.
Hurtt said students will be free to go wherever they like once the bus reaches the city. Keenyn Wald, assistant residence director for south campus, said the idea to go to Washington for the inauguration came about after a member of SCOPE’s executive board wanted to get tickets to the swearing-in ceremony.
SCOPE used every connection they had to try and obtain tickets to the inaugural events, but could not get them. Instead, the group expanded the trip to not just the SCOPE e-board but any South Campus resident interested in taking a ride to Washington.
Some students jumped at the chance. Abbey DiPlacido, president of SU’s College Democrats, mentioned the historic significance of the inauguration and said she was thrilled to be able to go with SCOPE.
‘I think we’ve had so many years of disaster that the whole atmosphere there will be of excitement and hope,’ she said. ‘It will be a very unique event and it will be great to be a part of that.’
Published on January 19, 2009 at 12:00 pm
