Obama Inauguration From Students' Perspective

The following was printed in the Boothbay Register, our local newspaper, last Thursday:

At Boothbay Region High School, participating students - seniors Morgan Mitchell, Davis McClellan, Josh Tirado and junior Wyatt Colby, Jr. shared insightful commentary and opinions.

A mock-election was held at the high school and Obama reigned victorious there as well.

Mitchell said, "We are in such a dark time right now that any progress will be phenomenal. I think he is coming in at the right time to really make a change.

"President Obama is eloquent, but he also has the smarts, the logic, and the organizational skills to make it work."

"Obama represents change, but it is going to take all of us as a country to bring the change to us," Tirado. "Everyone is going to have to cooperate with the changes that are going to take place.

"And there are probably going to be a lot of them in these first four years that are going to require a lot of sacrifice from the US in order to bring this country back and repay the debt we owe."

Colby noted that when former President Bush began his eight years, then outgoing President Bill Clinton had left the Capital with a surplus - none of the debt that he had inherited remained.

"I think it's good for us to [develop] a new perspective - not that I necessarily agree with any of his policies - but we need change to evolve," said McClellan. "My dad is an evolutionary biologist, [so] I tend to think a lot in those terms.

"Without mutation, without change in the genes of species there is no way to adapt to our [dynamic] environment. The same is true in government; if we don't have the constant struggle between the left and the right, we won't change."

McClellan was enthusiastic about the President's cabinet choices, citing his selection of scientists as scientific advisors in particular. "He is surrounding himself with experience."

"His web site has a blog where you can sign up for email updates on the Obama administration's progress - it keeps us in touch and involved.

"He is taking the technology we all use to inform and talk to each other and is utilizing it to create a line of communication - he is not sticking to the old ways. I think that is amazing. I am not the biggest Obama supporter in the world, but what he has done, for me, is to give me the faith and the hope that what he does he will do well and the United States will come out on top," McClellan said.

"What he is doing is actually changing the world. Racism isn't gone, but our kids and their kids will grow up knowing that there was a problem between blacks and whites in the past, but they will never know the struggle that our grandparents, parents and we have seen in our time," said McClellan.

"Now people of all races can wake up and say, someday I could be the President of the United States."

"When I think of that inauguration, I think of all those people and how he delivered his speech. I see it as the launching pad of a great moment," said Mitchell.

Tirado likened Obama, the president, to past presidents remembered as having effected change - Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

"They weren't just presidents, but presidents really for the people that represented hope and new development, and were people that we trusted."

"Obama feels like an everyday person like us," said Tirado.

"He has good plans for the economy," said Colby. "He is the man with the plan and I think he will do a good job."

"I feel so lucky to be alive right now," said Mitchell. "To be in a time when I am mature enough and engaged enough to follow Obama's journey and political path and to participate in it. I think it is so amazing that there is this whole new spirit of engagement, not just in our country, but the world."

Mitchell describes our new president as "a man of integrity and class who is articulate, but is also so appealing, so cool. I just want to meet him.

"People are starting to feel hopeful, be excited; regardless of how you might feel about him, we've come a long way."