Stars and students rally for candidate

By Ashley Wiokowski
Western Herald

(Karie Kuiper/Western Herald) Kal Pen and Jurnee Smollett spoke to students Wednesday in front of the Bernhard Center, encouraging them to get registered to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

It was change that brought students to the front lawn of the Bernhard Center, and it was change that actors Kal Penn and Jurnee Smollett spoke of when they visited Western Michigan University’s campus Wednesday.

Penn, who played Kumar Patel in “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle,” and Smollett who played Denise Frazer in “Full House,” were brought to campus to motivate students about registering to vote.

The visit, was motivated by a campaign in which the two will travel to college campuses across Mich. to motivate college students through the Barack Obama campaign.

Penn said that he supports Obama for several reasons; many he said were personally motivated. He said in these times he’s seeing many of his friends whose jobs are going overseas, who have no health insurance and knows the possibility of watching them go to war.

“We have a presidential candidate who promises four more years of failed policies and then we have a presidential candidate who has a track record of change, and that’s what we need—change,” Penn said.

Smollett was the first to speak as she pumped up the crowd by saying, “Hello, hello, hello my people!”

Smollett said that she supports Obama because she knows he could change the nation’s direction.

She told students about how she was in New York the day the twin towers fell and spoke of the unity she saw being brought out afterwards.

Smollett said that it was that unity that was taken from the current administration “to fight a war that should have never been fought.”

“We were distracted by that mourning that a lot of us were not able to realize where that administration was leading us,” Smollett said. “We need to change where we stand, we are all going to inherit a world that doesn’t like us.”

Penn spoke to students next. “I’ve actually done nothing political in my life,” he said.

Penn shared his own story of how he was neither Democrat nor Republican but an independent. He spoke about his cynicism he felt.

“I was told when I was really little that if I worked really hard, I could make anything for myself,” Penn said. “And I was always told that people from ages 18 to 35 probably don’t vote, so we won’t make that much of a difference.”

Penn said that in the state of Mich., as a swing state, we have the power to decide in this election.

“Think of the power we have to change,” Penn said.

He said what impressed him about Obama is that he has had experience with many blue collar Americans.

Penn talked about Obama’s work as a civil rights lawyer, who he said just paid off his student loans with sales from his book.

It was this that he said inspired him, the concept of working hard for one’s self to make anything happen.
Penn said most importantly Obama is fighting to help college students pay less to attend college, like his support for the Pell Grant and a $4,000 tax credit to college students especially.

Nicole Vafadari, a senior majoring in international and comparative politics, Spanish, and film, TV and media studies is part of the group “Students for Barack Obama,” who sponsored the event.

She said bringing celebrities to campus gave students a relation to them.

“Students and stars in Hollywood are so different but we agree on one goal—and that goal is change,” Vafadari said.

The group, which can provide students text updates on the Obama campaign by texting “WMU” to the 62262 (Obama) and can be reached at 269-343-2913 or www.mi.barackobama.com/mistudents, registered 636 students to vote at Bronco Bash according to Vafadari, and she hopes to register more.

“We want to empower students to empower themselves … anyone can register to vote,” Vafadari said.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=411

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Sep 11 2008. Filed under Local, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
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