(Crossposted from Brainstorm)
Fox News is there already and CNN is on its way, to be followed in short order by NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NPR, and a host of print and foreign news organizations. “The first salvo of news stories is going to be about race,” predicted University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat when I interviewed him on September 2, and he’s right. This morning’s Memphis Commercial Appeal (my local paper) has a four-page spread about Ole Miss, and the focus is on the university’s racial history from the violent past to the post-Confederate flag, post-Colonel Reb present. The Commercial Appeal’s story and editorials are entirely upbeat, just as Khayat hoped: “The media are going to come here and see the James Meredith statue and see our diverse and friendly student body changing classes and they’re going to want to tell that story.” By debate night—a week from this Friday—about 3,000 media personnel will be on the Ole Miss campus.
A mile-long chain-link fence and other security measures are making life less convenient for everyone, but students are over-the-top excited about hosting the first Obama-McCain debate, especially when you tell them that it’s taking place on the anniversary of the first and most famous presidential debate in history, the Kennedy-Nixon faceoff in 1960. (Oddly enough, university administrators weren’t aware of this PR-dream factoid.) Sixteen courses with a debate tie-in were added to the curriculum this fall (“The debate presents a teachable moment,” says political science department chair Rich Forgette), along with 53 lectures, movies, panel discussions, quiz bowls, art exhibits, and other special events. Some of that was to make up for the fact that only about 100 members of the Ole Miss community (all of them students, Khayat decided) will be able to attend the debate itself. Many of the rest will be camped out watching a big-screen telecast in the Grove, the heart of the campus and its legendary pre-game party scene on football weekends.
Having hosted one debate, will the University of Mississippi try to get another? Probably not in 2012, says Khayat, because the expected presence of an incumbent president on the ballot will drive the security demands out of control. But 2016 may be different. “We’ll be experienced. And we’ll still have much of the necessary infrastructure in place that we’ve added for this one.”
This concludes a four-part series.
