The opportunity to travel to our nation’s capital for the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th president was a project that began in October of 2008 (and, yes we did get a little ahead of ourselves…).

Alana Fields and I set out with the goal of chartering a bus to DC and bringing 40 WU students who wouldn’t be able to get there on their own. In the end, we were only able to raise enough funds for five students.

A failure? Not at all.

Attempting to provide this opportunity for WU students has been a lesson in community organizing taken from the pages of B. Obama’s handbook. We set out with an inspired goal, worked to achieve it, and in the end saw some measure of success.

I’m glad we set out to do this, and none of it would be possible without the generous support of the Gephardt Institute, Dr. Randall Calvert and the American Culture Studies department, Mixed, and countless other campus entities and student groups that came together to help make this happen.

-Andy