Monday May 7, 2012 year: 132 No. 64
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8A Youth vote the bullseye of Obama’s radar
CODY COUSINO / Photo editor
President Barack Obama speaks to a crowd of about 14,000 at the Schottenstein Center at OSU May 5 during his “Ready To Go” Rally, which kicked off his 2012 re-election campaign.
Scarlet return
Columbus Crew’s Matt Lampson visited his Buckeye roots last week during the Connor Senn Memorial Match.
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ANDREW KELLER Lantern reporter keller.600@osu.edu Student loan reform and access to college were two main speaking points at President Barack Obama’s second visit to Ohio State in as many months. OSU communication professor Erik Nisbet said the topics themselves are important, but the points have more relevance because of who they target, Obama kicked off his re-election campaign at the Schottenstein Center Saturday to a crowd of about 14,000 people at his “Ready To Go” Rally.
Smashing debut
4A
Marvel’s “The Avengers” broke opening weekend box office records, bringing in an estimated $200.3 million.
campus
A look inside the Obama rally
At the rally, Obama lobbied for youth votes. The votes of people under 30 tilted the election in Obama’s favor in 2008, and he said he hopes to use his favor with young voters in 2012. But the continuing economic malaise might erode the lead he originally had and make the ÿght for youth voters more difÿcult. “I think he’s going to have more challenges in 2012,” Nisbet said. “He’s no longer a new face.” Obama won the youth vote by a wide margin in 2008, with 66 percent of voters under 30 choosing him against John McCain, according to a 2008 analysis by Pew Research Center. Nisbet suggested that this was because Obama presented himself as
a fresh brand to a group of young people who had already become profoundly disillusioned with the past eight years of politics. “He was younger, and his methods resonated after eight years of a Republican administration,” Nisbet said. “He was effective at using social media and the Internet, which reached out to young people.” However in this campaign, Obama has lost his brand effectiveness, Nisbet said. Additionally, youth voters, some of whom are graduating and facing the true difÿculties of the still-lingering recession, might be less likely to vote for him.
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Students protest for young people’s rights LINDSEY BARRETT Lantern reporter barrett.684@osu.edu While President Barack Obama was inside the Schottenstein Center Saturday rallying supporters for his re-election campaign, a student group was outside trying to get people ÿred up about its own cause. About a dozen students stood outside passing out ° iers and urging students and other attendees to re-imagine a university without corporate greed. A ° ier read: “Imagine if you found out that your tuition has doubled in a decade, and will only continue to rise. Imagine if the cost of parking went up, and the OSU workers that maintained them were replaced by complete outsiders to Ohio State. Imagine if you had no say over
any of these decisions. It’s not just your imagination.” Andrew Lin, a third-year in sociology, was among the group outside the Schottenstein Center. He said corporate greed is a problem because a majority of the members serving on OSU’s Board of Trustees have ties to corporations, and they make the decisions that affect the university, with one of those decisions being parking privatization. President E. Gordon Gee sent an email to students, faculty and staff on April 23 to announce that the administration had issued a Request for Proposals from companies interested in leasing parking operations. The deadline for bids is May 30, when the administration will recommend a decision for the board to vote on at its June meeting, Gee said in the email.
Courtesy of Molly Shack
Students protested everything from parking privatization to high tuition costs outside the Schottenstein Center May 5.
2A Romney team sets up camp during rally SARAH STEMEN Oller reporter stemen.66@osu.edu
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Members from former Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign parked their bus on OSU’s campus all day May 5.
Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney made his presence known on Ohio State’s campus Saturday during President Barack Obama’s kickoff campaign, keeping his bus at the Fawcett Center throughout the rally. Ryan Williams, a national spokesperson for Romney’s campaign, said the Romney bus had been parked at the Fawcett Center throughout the morning with student volunteers coming in and out campaigning for Romney and making phone calls during Obama’s efforts to rally Ohioans. Romney will be appearing at Stamco Industries Co. in Euclid, Ohio, near Cleveland at 1:50 p.m. Monday. This marks his second recent appearance in Ohio as he stopped in Westerville at Otterbein University on April 27. Williams said there were about 50 students who campaigned for Romney throughout the morning. Williams was one of about 14,000 that attended Obama’s “Ready To Go” Rally at the Schottenstein Center. Williams said he was not impressed with the turnout or the rally that kicked off Obama’s re-election campaigns.
“Voters know many of the president’s promises that he made are as empty as the several thousand empty seats in that arena,” Williams said. Romney knows the importance of Ohio, Williams said, and he will be campaigning hard there. “No Republican has not won Ohio who has gone to the presidency in many years,” Williams said. “It’s a state that we take very seriously and we’ll campaign in it vigorously.” In a letter on Romney’s campaign site signed by the former Massachusetts governor himself, he discusses the issue of jobs and unemployment in Ohio. “But you’ve now had three years to turn things around. The record of those three years is clear. Your policies have failed, not only in Ohio, but across the nation,” the letter states. During his address, Obama ÿrst complimented Romney, saying he has raised a great family and worked well at a ÿnancial ÿrm and running the state of Massachusetts. “But I think he has drawn the wrong lessons from those experiences,” Obama said. “He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors like him make money, the rest of us will automatically prosper as well.”
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