OU students mainly react with jubilation over Obama's victory

Some students wept. Others ran into a friend's arms. The screams and the car horns echoed through uptown Athens Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning as some celebrants drove up and down Court Street yelling 'Obama' out the window.

Some students wept. Others ran into a friend's arms. The screams and the car horns echoed through uptown Athens Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning as some celebrants drove up and down Court Street yelling "Obama" out the window.

It started when the crowd in Ohio University's Baker Center erupted after CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer announced that Barack Obama would become the next president of the United States. (Obama won 349 electoral votes to McCain's 147, and carried an actual majority, 52 percent, to John McCain's 46 percent.)

A crowd of Democrats and Obama campaign volunteers in Skipper's Bar and Grill erupted similarly when Obama's challenger, Sen. John McCain, came on screen to give his concession speech. Watching some of the Obama campaigners was like seeing championship fighters break down after a prizefight.

How did a senator from Chicago winning the country's highest office lead all of this emotion to spill out onto the uptown bricks?

Because Obama projected a simple message, "Yes we can," and turned it into "Yes, we did."

One mob ran around Court Street in a demonstration of youthful exuberance and unrivaled optimism, chanting "Yes we can." Some jumped in front of a video camera outside of the Board of Elections office and screamed those three words at the top of their lungs.

But this was not a celebration like what happens after a favorite sports team wins a championship game. What made this historic election special for youth voters was how they believed they made a difference.

Whitney Barksdale, a freshman studying nursing, said she does not consider herself political. Though she supported Obama, Barksdale said she wasn't a member of either the Democratic or Republican parties.

"Getting to vote makes me feel like my opinion means something," Barksdale said. "Obama stands for change and that means something.

"Being able to vote for an African-American candidate meant a lot to me," added Barksdale, an African American. "For it to be my first election, I got to be a part of history. That's special."

Barksdale showed her support for Obama with her vote and a black t-shirt with gold script and an Obama portrait.

Her feelings about voting rivaled those of someone who volunteered during the campaign.

"The 'voteless is hopeless' program is a nationwide program through our fraternity," said Mark Wright, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity. "Being a part of that program really makes me feel that I made a difference."

Wright wore a shirt that read "Voteless = Hopeless" to the University Program Council-sponsored Election Results Party in Baker Center. What the slogan means is that people without a vote are hopeless, he explained. With that in mind, his fraternity started a program to encourage African Americans to vote.

Wright and his fraternity were just one of many organizations encouraging African Americans to vote. But the black vote was not enough to elect Obama, he noted.

"I think this is amazing," said Wright, a junior media-management major at OU. "It's really a testament to what we can do when we come together. This election was an example of what we can accomplish."

America's young voters came out in droves and overwhelmingly supported Obama. Both MSNBC and CNN's Web sites ran stories calling the youth vote a key to the Obama victory.

"This was a real victory for youth voters," said CNN correspondent Bill Schneider at 12:43 Wednesday morning about the news network's coverage.

The age demographic 18-29 went 66 percent to Obama, according to CNN.com. That group make up 18 percent of the electorate. As age increased, support for Obama decreased, though it remained strong in age groups up until the 65-and-over group, according to CNN.com's results.

Students like OU junior Liz Clark helped spark that kind of youth support for Obama. Clark, the president of OU Students for Obama, had been a campaign volunteer for over a year.

"I don't think we really thought we would be here," acknowledged Clark right before Obama took Ohio's electoral votes. "We really believed in Sen. Obama as a candidate, but we just couldn't think about what it would be like to be here. We made a difference and that's exciting."

Clark sat in on conference calls with other student organizers across Ohio at the earliest stages of Obama's campaign against Sen. Hillary Clinton. If you have been on campus in the last two months, you probably walked past her at one of the Students for Obama tables. She may have registered you to vote or canvassed at your door.

Clark wept after the election concluded. She grabbed hold of another College Democrat member, Lauren Elliott, and they both cried.

"This is your victory," said Obama during his acceptance speech, again speaking directly to students like Clark, Elliott, Wright and Barksdale, as if they did not already know.