<p>"Dear fellow member of the Columbia community,</p>
<p>I am delighted to welcome you back for the new academic year with some exciting news. Columbia University has been selected to host "ServiceNation Presidential Candidates Forum" next Thursday evening as a partner in the ServiceNation Summit that will take place in New York on September 11-12.</p>
<p>On September 11, a day of remembrance that ServiceNation organizers intend for nonpartisan reflection on our obligations as citizens, we look forward to welcoming both Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama back to our campus for a nationally broadcast conversation in Alfred Lerner Hall about the future of national service moderated by TIME Magazine editor Richard Stengel and PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff. Governor David Paterson is scheduled to provide a welcome to the event.</p>
<p>It is entirely fitting for us to become part of this two-day conclave that will bring together so many admired leaders in our country to consider ways to expand the scope and scale of successful service programs throughout the nation. Public service and active involvement in the issues facing our society have always been an essential part of Columbia's identity and academic mission. As a leading research university in our nation's greatest urban center, ours is a campus of robust engagement in the life of our neighborhood and City, our nation and our world."</p>
<p>I had just read about this last night and had the pleasure of telling my d and she was pretty excited about it. What an exciting time to be at Columbia!</p>
<p>Nope, no such info. Just an incredibly vague promise that </p>
<p>“Given our limited space, we will ensure that all seating available goes to students in our University community. Students will receive a follow-up email tomorrow with details regarding how to register for the ticket lottery.”</p>
<p>Apparently the college dems/reps are requesting another jumbotron thing like we had for ahmad.</p>
<p>yeah you have to register for the lottery and then get really lucky. i wonder if the scholar’s office can pull some strings for their people? after all, they promised us special positions at these kinds of events…</p>
<p>I’m going to be a downer on this one. How is this momentous or amazing or somehow representative of Columbia’s greatness/prowess? All sorts of crappy no-name schools host candidate forums and debates. In fact, I remember lots of debates at second-tier state schools in flyover country swing states, and can’t recall them ever occurring at top schools.</p>
<p>I agree “momentous” is a bit of a stretch but come on now, if you don’t think that this is easily the most watched election in the past 20 years, you’re deluding yourself. Any time the 2 major party candidates are on stage together, it’s going to be a closely watched event. </p>
<p>And besides, all the freshman this year missed ahmadinejad. Let them revel in the Columbia name a little bit.</p>
<p>Edit: ditto on the registering for the lottery. Someone didn’t realize 25,000 server requests would be going to one site…</p>
<p>Ole Miss was bombarding our h.s. senior with mailings, etc. She got the card a couple of months ago saying they were going to be hosting the first presidential debate, and gave her a link to her “own” site with more info about it. I was all excited and told her it would be worth a trip to Oxford, even if she had no remote desire to go there, if we could attend the debate. The link was just to tell how honored the Univ. was to be hosting the debate. Of course, there were no tickets to be had!!!</p>
<p>I guess this makes Columbia <strong>almost</strong> as cool as Ole Miss :)</p>
<p>i sent them an email about this and they said the registration time was extended to noon on saturday. </p>
<p>EDIT: scratch what i wrote before, i just got the confirmation email. keep hitting refresh and hopefully you’ll get through. otherwise, try after midnight when things should calm down a bit.</p>
<p>Not sure what you mean by “the most watched election.” I’m not sure you know what you meant, either. </p>
<p>BTW, every four years, everyone always says that the current election is “the most important election.”</p>
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<p>Anytime something’s only on PBS, it’s watched by almost nobody. Think outside your Northeastern Ivory tower… 10 million plus will watch the crap reality TV shows or whatever is on FOX/ABC/etc. on Thursday night at 8pm. This forum will likely get, at most, 30 seconds on the next day’s Brokaw/Couric shows.</p>
<p>A whole boatload of people watched that, watched the rerun, or heard about it and went and watched it online or elsewhere. Well-produced, these things get lots and lots of attention - and even moreso this year.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove, other than that you’ve still got your argumentative chip on your shoulder. It’s an honor for Columbia to host such a debate - just like they hosted a John Edwards speech in 2004 - and you do nobody any service by trying to be a contrarian on this.</p>
<p>I follow politics pretty closely, and I had no recollection of what this Saddleback forum was. If I don’t know what this is, I doubt Joe Sixpack knows what it is.</p>
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<p>It’s not really an honor. Presidential candidates’ appearances at universities are a-dime-a-dozen. I’m sure Edwards spoke at dozens – if not hundreds – of other universities in 2004, so I’m not sure why it would be such a great honor for Columbia to host him.</p>
<p>McCain, Bradley and Gore – three of the four top candidates for the WH – all spoke at CU in 2000. Whoopie.</p>