From the issue dated October 15, 2004
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A Debatable ReturnColleges spend millions on playing host to presidential debates. What do they get out of it?
Coral Gables, Fla.
Four hours or so before the first presidential debate gets under way here at the University of Miami, Donna Shalala flits among the 135 students gathered in the lobby outside her second-floor office. Sporting a Miami-green jacket, the university's president works the crowd -- the lucky few chosen to attend tonight's 90-minute debate.Passing a table of students wolfing down free sandwiches, Ms. Shalala pauses long enough to ask, "Isn't this the neatest thing that ever happened to you?" Ms. Shalala has looked forward to this night since the 2000 debates, when she was considering the top job here. She decided early on that the university should serve as a location for one of the 2004 presidential debates. The former secretary of health and human services in President Bill Clinton's cabinet saw the debate as a chance to burnish the university's image as a serious academic institution and a rare opportunity to shine in the media spotlight for something other than football. Later that evening, a few seconds after 9 p.m., Ms. Shalala is part of a television audience of an estimated 62.5 million that watches as the debate's moderator, the newscaster Jim Lehrer, peers into a television camera and says, "Good evening from the University of Miami Convocation Center in Coral Gables, Florida." In the past decade or so, college campuses have become the preferred sites for America's quadrennial presidential and vice-presidential debates. The colleges provide the debates with the necessary facilities and support staff, as well as with a certain gravitas and respectability. But what do the colleges get? A hefty price tag, for one thing. This year three institutions are playing host to a debate for the first time: Miami, Case Western Reserve University, and Arizona State University. Each expects to spend upward of $2.5-million. (The fourth, Washington University in St. Louis, which has served as a location for two previous debates, predicts that it will spend a lot less than that.) Among the costs are a $750,000 fee to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the event's sponsor, and numerous upgrades of the campus infrastructure. There are also intangible costs, mainly the inconveniences for almost everyone caused by security, even though few get to watch the debate in person. For all that, colleges get a publicity bonanza. Presidential debates have become mammoth media circuses that last for several days and attract some 2,500 journalists. Campuses are transformed into sets for live broadcasts by the television networks and 24-hour news channels, much the same way ESPN uses screaming college students and football stadiums as backdrops for its live "College GameDay" broadcasts. There is a packed calendar of events, presidential candidates thanking the university on national television, and, of course, the institution's name plastered on everything, including bottled water for the horde of reporters. Organizers of the Miami debate even gave the event a theme: "Celebrating American Democracy and Diversity." 'A Lot of Visibility' Campus officials hope that the hoopla will resonate long after the candidates have uttered their final words. "We certainly get a lot of visibility," says Ms. Shalala, who coveted the first debate because it usually garners the largest television audience. But others say the benefit of having such an event is debatable. "Some people see this as a marketing coup, but I can't say strongly enough that's the worst reason to do it," says M. Fredric Volkmann, vice chancellor for public affairs at Washington University and a member of the university's debate-planning committee. "A single event like this does not have the transforming ability to change a college's reputation." A debate is probably the single biggest event to which a college will ever play host. For planning purposes, think commencement, major football game, rock concert, and freshman move-in day rolled into one. Holding the debates on college campuses is a relatively new arrangement. (This is only the second time that all of the debates in an election year have been held on campuses.) One reason the debate commission favors such a location is that the colleges get students involved as volunteers and plan other activities intended to help spark an interest in politics among young people. Campuses also have the ready-made infrastructure -- arenas, large open spaces, and plenty of phone lines and Internet connections. "Our job is to make sure it's ready," Mr. Volkmann says. For college officials, having one's institution selected as a debate site is akin to a city's being awarded the Olympic Games. The process begins more than a year and half before the election, when colleges that want to serve as a debate location submit proposals to the commission. Of the 14 bids the panel received for this fall's debates, all but two came from colleges. Members of the commission visited the potential sites before announcing their choices last November. Much of the actual planning is left to the colleges. All manner of logistics are considered, with the aim of preventing mishaps that have befallen previous debates, like the 27-minute audio cutoff during a Carter-Ford debate, in 1976, and the infamous overheated studio for the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, in 1960. At Miami, officials had to figure out how to supercool the debate hall (install extra air ducts over the stage), ensure that the campus electrical network was fail-safe (run the debate hall and media center on generators), and allow the many journalists simultaneous access to the Internet and telephone lines (run more than 240,000 feet of wire and cable). The commission's rules require colleges to provide reporters a facility for filing stories within 500 yards of the debate hall. To meet that requirement, Miami cleared its student-fitness center of 22 tons of dumbbells, weight machines, treadmills, and other equipment, hauling it to another floor and a nearby trailer. Arizona State, with no building close to the debate hall, spent $60,000 to construct a donated tentlike structure in the grass. Inevitably, the biggest headaches are caused by last-minute changes that come as campaign and media officials visit a site for the first time, in the days before the debate. "Sixty percent of what we do is documented and planned for, and 40 percent is on the fly," says Stewart Seruya, Miami's chief computer-network officer. A day and a half before the debate, Mr. Seruya racewalked the inner hallways of the university's convocation center. The 8,000-seat basketball arena had been transformed with large black drapes and 23,000 square feet of carpeting into an intimate-looking studio. With little notice, Mr. Seruya had been told that he needed to install cable-television monitors in several of the arena's holding rooms. "So now I'm in the cable-TV business," Mr. Seruya said, peeking into a room that had been carved out of a section of hallway. "This room doesn't even have electricity." And with that, he was off to Radio Shack for a $100 worth of cable splitters. Much of what the technicians do here in the days before the debate will be undone the day after it is over. Unlike Case Western, which used last week's vice-presidential debate to permanently upgrade some of its technology, Miami figured that it would have little further use for the extra wiring. So, Mr. Seruya says, he bought some of the cheapest available. To recoup some of its costs, the university charged news organizations for access to phone lines and the Internet. A spot in front of the convocation center for television stand-ups went for $300. In the media center itself, high-speed Internet access was $350, and a phone line was $250 (or $550 for both). Most of the money raised to pay for Miami's debate preparations came from private donors. The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, which operates a gambling resort west of Miami, donated the largest chunk, $1.5-million. (The Commission on Presidential Debates has its own sponsors, among them Anheuser-Busch, which set up a giant tent next to the debate hall that was full of free food and Budweiser for journalists and support staff.) None of the other universities playing host to debates this year were as fortunate as Miami in snagging such a big donation. To pay the bills, they focused largely on local corporations and tried to avoid hitting up donors to whom they might turn in subsequent fund-raising campaigns. "We felt this was something not just for us, but for the City of Phoenix as well," says Virgil Renzulli, Arizona State's vice president for public affairs and chairman of the university's debate-planning committee. Even so, at the time of the Miami debate, funds for the Arizona event were about $200,000 short of its budget. "There were a lot of people raising money for political campaigns this year," says Mr. Renzulli, who was here to observe Miami's preparation. One fear that host colleges have is reliving what happened to Washington University in 1996. It was to be the site of the first debate between President Clinton and Sen. Bob Dole in late September. But it was canceled -- with just four days to go -- after the two campaigns reached an agreement that called for one fewer debate than the commission had planned. The same thing almost happened this year, when aides to President Bush and Sen. John Kerry came down to the wire in negotiating a debate agreement. One of the problems reportedly was that Mr. Bush's campaign wanted to eliminate the second debate, the one planned for Washington University. In the end, the commission's original debate schedule prevailed. Even when the debate is a go, the host institutions are kept on edge about how many tickets they will get. Admissions are evenly divided among the two political parties and the commission. The commission gives part of its allotment to the host institution, but that number is usually not known until the day of the debate. Miami promised some of its tickets to the Miccosukee Tribe, and the rest, including Ms. Shalala's, were given to student leaders and winners of an essay contest sponsored by the university. Just before the debate, university officials learned that an additional 115 seats had opened up, prompting a scramble to notify students. "The campaigns frankly don't care what problems they cause for the host institution," says Alan Schroeder, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University and author of Presidential Debates: Forty Years of High-Risk TV (Columbia University Press, 2000). "Their objective is to protect their candidate." Getting a Stage Presence Meanwhile, the objective for the host institution seems to be getting its logo everywhere that a television camera might focus. Here, the University of Miami's name is on giant banners outside the convocation center and on posters behind every camera location in the "spin room," where campaign aides and political pundits provide postdebate analysis. It's even on small placards under the television sets in the media center, mainly so reporters don't mistakenly write Miami University (as in Ohio). One place Miami failed to place its name was on the actual debate stage -- but not for lack of trying. University officials wanted the candidates to drink water out of glasses with the Miami logo on them, but debate planners rejected them as not heavy enough. Whether Miami's efforts to publicize itself through the first 2004 presidential debate will make a difference among potential students and donors might not be clear for months, if ever. Wake Forest University, for example, saw its applications rise the year after it held one of the 2000 debates. But Mr. Volkmann, of Washington University, says he has "never seen any data that show a change in enrollment or a fund-raising bounce." Nonetheless, some students at Miami say the debate has focused their attention on the election and given the university bragging rights. "When you say to someone now that you go to the University of Miami, they won't think of us as Suntan U. anymore," says Jack Siragusa, a junior, who was watching the debate on a giant screen at an outdoor party thrown by the university. "We're hosting history in the making." http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 51, Issue 8, Page A25 | |||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education