By Christina Smith
ABC News’ “Presidential Debate Voter’s Guide” series recorded a live broadcast from the Netherlands Café on Wednesday allowing about 100 University students to participate in the filming, as well as permitting a jam-packed cafeteria to watch.
The broadcast covered important issues that needed to be addressed in Wednesday night’s debate. The anchors, ABC’s Liz Cho and Bill Ritter, focused mainly on each campaign’s strategies concerning the War in Iraq, national education problems, unemployment, job creation and, at the forefront of the discussion, fixing the American economy,
Although many of the eager students were sitting in the background of the show, four lucky undergraduates were featured in on-air interviews with Cho and Ritter.
Jon Adonailo, a senior political science and history major, was one of the four students. When Cho asked him how he thought his upcoming graduation would be affected by the state of the economy, he answered that if he was unable to find a job after graduation, he wouldn’t be able to pay off his loans, and that “wouldn’t be very good.” Adonailo hopes that this answer has drawn viewers in similar situations to pay closer attention on the important issues at hand in the election.
“I just hope people focus more the actual issues and not on the he-said-she-said of politics,” he said.
Ritter also interviewed two freshman from the University, one republican McCain supporter and one democratic Obama supporter. Both students expressed their reasons for backing their respective choices.
“It was nerve-wracking [to be on air],” said Francis Humes, a freshman biomedical engineering major and one of the students interviewed by Ritter, “but I was glad that I could share my views with the public on national television.”
Despite the limited number of students able to speak on-air and sit on camera for the filming, those who were able to watch from the Café were eager just to be involved in one of the Debate ’08 events.
“The atmosphere in the background of the Café was exciting,” said freshman Becky Gore who is a resident in the Netherlands housing complex. “Even though we weren’t involved in the filming, it was still a thrilling experience.”