Four years ago, hundreds of Binghamton University students celebrated Barack Obama’s election with an impromptu rally that swept through campus and fireworks set off near Dickinson Community. In 2012, a subdued campus quietly watched as Obama coasted to reelection.
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 fanfare 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 that inspired students to action, students this time around seemed largely indifferent as they learned the elected president would 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.”