Students Pack Wilder to Witness Political 'Coaster

The Face of the Future: A beleagured boy takes in the raucous scene at Wilder on Tuesday night. (photo by Areca Treon)

Only Oberlin knows how to throw a party like this, featuring six masochistic hours of presidential election poll-watching fun. Tuesday evening, the Wilder main lounge was taken over by several hundred politically savvy students in an Election Day event sponsored by the politics department. The seven-foot screen from the presidential debates was back, along with two more televisions covering different networks in the back of the room, one TV by the photocopiers outside the lounge and the all-important CDS support - all the Chex Mix you could eat.

As the night began, the room was filled mostly with students taking a quick look at the poll numbers and leaving, but within the first hour students were settling in for the long haul. Of course, no one predicted quite how long the vote-counting would take. When Wilder closed at just past 1 a.m. two-thirds of the room was still full.

The crowd was overwhelmingly rooting for Gore. Any on-screen appearance by Bush was resoundingly booed. By the end of the evening, even Nader's interviews were eliciting negative reactions. The few Bush supporters in attendance tended to watch the television outside of Wilder lounge, possibly to get away from the solidly Democratic crowd inside. "In this room, it feels like I got the wrong invitation to the Democratic National Convention," Tom Angel, a pro-Bush sophomore, said. "It's a little disheartening."

Ralph Nader's role in the election outcomes was a hotly contested point. Although there were many staunch Nader supporters in the room, other students, seeing the close exit polls, expressed regret over their votes. "I voted in Ohio, and I'm relieved to see it wasn't close, so I don't have to feel bad," junior Erika Englund said.

The fact remains that the Nader vote did tilt the balance in some states, including Florida. Ron Kahn, professor of politics and unofficial emcee of the proceedings, said, "I don't want to simply blame Nader for the loss, but without Nader running, it's quite clear that Gore would have been President. I think this election will make it more difficult for Nader to get support, especially among well-meaning liberals."

Bush took an early lead, at one point early in the night he had 28 electoral votes to Gore's three. Erin Wiley, a first-year from Michigan, summed up the mood of the room, saying, "It's really tense. Bush is in the lead, and that's really scary."

The next two hours were, for Gore supporters, optimistic. But even though the Vice President pulled ahead with large states in the Northeast, the rest of the night remained a political Super Bowl from hell - a constant back-and-forth between the two candidates, with no clear winner.

The largest uncertainty was Florida. Early on, the major networks declared Florida a Gore victory but by 9 p.m. all the broadcasts had retracted that prediction and reclassified it as an undecided state. By midnight, Florida's Bush and Gore totals were determined to be as close as one-half of one percent; a situation that requires an automatic recount under Florida law.

Students were forced to leave Wilder with no clear winner announced.

At the end of the event, Gore had victories in almost all of the Northeast, the states around the Great Lakes and in the West Coast: Bush won virtually all of the Southern and Plains states.

"It's the most fascinating election I've ever seen," Kahn said.

"Not just because of the split in the popular and electoral college vote, but because there's a real cultural divide in the country. Bush gets votes where there's a lot of land but relatively few people, and Gore wins the cities and more populous states."

Despite students' frustrations over the election's ambiguity, the event was considered a success by those who attended. Acting President Clayton Koppes said, "I'm a little biased since it was my idea, but there's a lot of political interest on campus, and it seemed like a good way to bring people together."

That sentiment was echoed by sophomore Amanda Burton, who said, "I think this is great.

"Oberlin's extreme political environment sometimes irritates me, but I'd rather have people foaming at the mouth than sitting at home saying, 'I don't care,'" she said.