Wednesday, November 7, 2012 | Binghamton University | www.bupipedream.com | Vol. LXXXII, Issue 16

PIPE DREAM

FOUR MORE YEARS

CHICAGO (AP)‚ President Barack Obama heralded his re-election with a call to action early Wednesday, telling Americans that their citizenship doesn't end with their vote and declaring that the "best is yet to come."

Obama offered a call for reconciliation after a divisive election, but defended the freewheeling nature of politics and said big decisions "necessarily stir up passions."

Obama said he wants to meet with Republican rival

Mitt Romney to discuss how they can work together. He says they may have "battled fiercely, but it's only because we love this country deeply."

The president rolled to a second term with more than 300 electoral votes.

Obama spoke to an ecstatic crowd crammed into the cavernous McCormick Place convention center in Chicago's lakefront. Obama appeared about two hours after he was declared the victor in his re-election bid and less than an hour after Romney offered a cordial concession.

The president took the stage with first lady Michelle

Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia.

Romney said earlier that he had called Obama to congratulate him on his victory, adding that he prays "the president will be successful in guiding our nation."

The president's team had projected confidence for days, but nervously watched the election returns roll in Tuesday night. Even as the race appeared to be turning in Obama's direction, the staff was narrowly focused on Ohio, the Midwest swing state where Obama and Republican Mitt Romney competed fiercely.

Four years ago, hundreds of Binghamton University students celebrated Obama’s first term with an impromptu rally that swept through campus and fireworks set off near Dickinson Community. In 2012, a placid campus quietly watched as Barack Obama coasted to a second term.

More than 150 people, including University President Harvey Stenger, attended a presidential election viewing party in Appalachian Dining Hall Tuesday night. But by 11:30 p.m., only 30 students remained to hear news sources unofficially

announce Obama’s victory.“There wasn’t fireworks and

fan fare but I heard a few scattered “YES“‘s from down the hall,” said Joseph Howard, a sophomore majoring in computer science who watched the election from Dickinson.

In 2008, a member of Binghamton’s New York State University Police recalled seeing more than 500 student supporters of Obama marching from Newing College through the residential communities to the University Union.

“I just heard people walking through Hinman. When they came back around they had eight times as many people,” former

BU student Sterling Timberlake-Brown said in the Nov. 5, 2008 issue of Pipe Dream.

There were no students marching last night, and unlike Obama’s first election, which followed a campaign predicated on promises of change and inspired so many students to action, most students silently soaked in the 2012 elections to see the elected president remain the same.

“Four years ago was the first black president,” said Bill Beuhler, a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering. “Now, it’s the first black president reelected, so the excitement is going to be somewhat less.”

Jim KuhnhennAssociated Press

Staff Reports

This election, a quiet campus Obama coasts to reelection

"Tonight in this election you, the

American people, reminded us that

while our road has been hard, while our

journey has been long, we have picked

ourselves up, we have fought our way

back, and we know in our hearts that for

the United States of America, the best is

yet to come."

— President Barack Obama