Faculty, staff and students gathered at Benton Chapel for a service of prayer and celebration to mark the inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th president of the United States.

Richard C. McCarty, vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost, opened the service, admonishing attendees to support the new president, even when the winds of popular opinion cast to and fro.

“It is important to reflect on the challenges ahead. … It is up to us to stand firm in our resolve to support this most gifted individual,” he said, adding, “Time will now be measured from this day forward.”

Representatives of various campus organizations imparted personal reflections or read from the speeches of past presidents, including George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Abraham Lincoln.

Brooke A. Ackerly, associate professor of political science, compared the political and economic crisis in America today with the circumstances faced by Roosevelt.

“FDR called for action. … (and) President Obama, a man of faith, calls us to be the action of democracy. It will take all of us – clergy, students, global activists, parent and child.”

Members of student religious groups offered Jewish, Muslim and Christian prayers on behalf of Obama. Music included graduate student Leslie McClure’s English and Spanish renditions of the anthem "If I had a Hammer," as well as the Vanderbilt Gospel choir’s rousing performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Ravieshwar Singh, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science, reflected on his journey to Vanderbilt and his experience as a first-time voter.

“I’m from Brooklyn, the son of immigrants,” he said. “I was skinny kid who liked politics before it was cool to be a skinny kid who liked politics. To be at Vanderbilt, to be here today, having voted for the first time for President Obama – I am honored.”

Frank E. Dobson Jr., director of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center and faculty head of Gillette House at the Commons, shared his insights on the significance of the day, referring to Obama as the “quintessential underdog,”

“I mentor a boy through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and I am always telling him, ‘Get good grades, get good grades, look at what you can become.’ Now he’ll know that’s not a lie. He can transcend his birth. When Obama won, we all won.”

The Rev. James Lawson, Distinguished University Professor, read the poem “Of History and Hope,” by Miller Williams.

Wyatt Smith, a junior and vice president of the Vanderbilt Student Government Association, closed the event with a reading from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address from March 4, 1865.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for us his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Contact: Joan Brasher, (615) 322-NEWS
joan.brasher@vanderbilt.edu