Regent Rigmarole

For those of you who dont know, UBC has several theological schools attached to it. These include Corpus Christy, Vancouver School of Theology, and Regent College. Regent has an extremely large American student population, so was the site of our most recent voter registration drive. Now a school of theology might not seem to be the best Obama recruiting ground, and if this were in the United States, that might even be true. However the theologians here for the most part have a very progressive outlook, and as I was surprised to find out, don't vote on their faith. This came as a slight disappointment, as I spent a few hours last night reading up on Obama's view on faith, as well as the details of Palin's anachronistic interpretation of Paul, and McCain's overly simplistic view of Christianity. We got our foot in the door from one of our members, James (as shown with his beautiful and patriotic daughter), who was working the election booth for the Regent first year representatives next to us. This was my seventh day tabling for the Obama campaign, and I can say without a doubt that this was by far the busiest I have seen it. In a period of about one hour, we had over 25 people register. In total we registered 32 people, almost all of them either leaning towards Obama, or (far more often) extremely excited to vote for him. For most of the time, it was so busy that we actually had to expand to nearby tables, which I claimed in the typical way recognized by international law; by placing an American flag on them. There was one unfortunate moment, when someone came who was quite irate that we had an Obama banner across our table. Apparently he was under the impression that voter registration had to be completely non partisan. However, by that point the table was so crowded that people couldn't actually see it anyhow, so I saw no harm in taking it down.

Ending on the typical happy note that I like to, I now get to introduce to you all the first two UBC Obamanauts, two wonderful women that will be accompanying me to Las Vegas next week to help campaign for Obama, Bridget (left), and Julia (right). I figure I should let them do it in their own words, so without further delay here they are;

Hi, my name is Julia Hoffman, I am 19 years old, and a second year at UBC. I plan to be a geography major, in the new environmental sustainability BA program (a mixture of environmental and humanistic/political geography). I'm from Santa Fe, NM. One of my main concerns is global warming and the environment. Considering the United States emits about 25 percent of the world greenhouse gases, despite being only 5 percent of the world population, things really need to change, and fast. Aside from agreeing with just about everything that Barack Obama stands for, I'm particularly passionate about his policies to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and other Co2(+)-emitting energy sources that cause air pollution and global warming. Studying and living in Canada, I feel isolated from the hustle and bustle going on this election season. I believe that this is a crucial election which could define the way in which the United States is viewed by the rest of the world as well as the course of action in the environment, and I want to help in any way that I can. I recently heard (and don't quote me on this) that those who are only now registering to vote plan to vote for Obama. If that's the case then I plan to register as many people as I possibly can in the short time that I'll be campaigning.

Hi, my name is Bridget Ehrman-Solberg and I am a 19 year old second year student at UBC interested in studying International Relations. I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and continued to live there until the end of high school. Having grown up throughout the Clinton years, I felt and saw the transition into the Bush administration. I am thoroughly fed up with how our country has negatively changed internationally and in our own economy. Barack Obama sends a message of positive change that I believe will allow our country to meet its full potential both at home and on an international level. I am excited to say that this will be the first election that I will cast a vote, not only because I know have a voice that can be heard but because of who I get to vote for.