Centre of Attention

It was billed as the “Thrill in the ’Ville.” Two national campaigns, locked in a bitter, to-the-wire race, would send their vice presidential candidates to battle it out at Centre College. Each hoped that their nominee, like Muhammad Ali in his famous “Thrilla in Manila” bout, would knock the opponent senseless.

But a funny thing happened when Sen. Joe Lieberman met former defense secretary Dick Cheney across a table on the Newlin Hall stage. They put aside their gloves and engaged in a polite, thoughtful discussion of the issues. It was as if they had found a Shangri-la paradise right here in Danville, a town so friendly the Democratic and Republican party headquarters had offices side by side on Main Street.

“We set a new standard for civility, for good taste, for citizenship,” said Centre president John A. Roush immediately following the Oct. 5 vice presidential debate.

One might expect Roush, who instigated the whole idea of holding a debate at Centre, to be a bit, well, partisan. But in the end, even cynical political reporters found themselves won over by the place.

“. . . Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney went to Centre College in Danville, Ky., and stumbled into a center of the excellence in education that their principals say they crave beyond all else. The college annually reaps a bumper crop of Fulbright and Rhodes scholarships among its thousand-plus students. It ranks among the 50 best colleges in the world,” wrote syndicated columnist Mary McGrory of the Washington Post.

McGrory’s comments, and hundreds more like it, made the months of hard work, the sleepless nights, the financial investment all worthwhile. To the delight of students and alumni alike, Centre was more than just the center of the state it was the center of worldwide attention.

What does it take to pull off an event of such magnitude? The infrastructure requirements alone were formidable: backup generators, 1,500 additional phone numbers, almost 60 miles of temporary wiring (for phones, computers, and electricity), and 9,700 feet of security fencing. Hotel rooms (2,300, mostly in Lexington) had to be arranged. Volunteers (more than 650) had to be organized. A stage set had to be built and 600 seats removed from Newlin Hall to make room for TV platforms.

Sutcliffe Hall was transformed into media central, with phones, desks, computer connections, and 80 televisions set up in Alumni and Bowman gyms. Two completely soundproof rooms for the Cheney and Lieberman "rapid response" teams were built, overnight, in the ballroom.

Security, of course, was an on-going concern. By debate week, Secret Service agents, including Jon Oldham ’97, were everywhere. The Kentucky State Police, including John Yates ’94, turned out to assist local law enforcement. Dave Marye ’74 and David Ray ’59 also helped with the security front lines. Even the horse patrol from Lexington came down.

As the smallest college (1,050 students) in the smallest town (population 17,000) ever to host a national election debate, Centre might have been expected to stick to the basics. Instead, the College poured on the extras: everything from developing a vice presidential Web site (www.vpworld.net) to providing tours of the debate hall to more than 700 area schoolchildren. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and other scholars lectured on the vice presidency and Centre’s own VPs, John C. Breckinridge-1838 and Adlai Stevenson-1859. There was even a film series.

Planning for the debate really began in the summer of 1999 with a formal proposal to the Commission on Presidential Debates. The CPD has sponsored the nationally televised debates, generally at major universities or convention centers, for the last four general elections. Although the odds seemed daunting, Centre’s president had an insider’s edge since he had worked with the University of Richmond’s presidential debate in 1992. Not only did he know Centre could do it, he also knew the potential payoff. But if Roush took in stride the news that Centre (along with the University of Massachusetts-Boston, Wake Forest University, and Washington University in St. Louis) would host a 2000 debate, others were stunned. At the Jan. 6 news conference announcing the sites an incredulous reporter asked, “Why Centre?” Because, replied the CPD spokeswoman, “Centre College aced it.”

With the debate in hand, work began in earnest. “We decided early on that Centre was going to do more than just provide a space for the debate hall,” admits Richard Trollinger, vice president for college relations and co-chair of the debate planning committee. “We wanted to take the Centre story across the nation.”

Overnight, the communications office began fielding calls from reporters in Boston, New York, Washington, Los Angeles. Religion professor Beth Glazier-McDonald’s opinion piece on the first Jewish VP nominee turned up as far away as the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News.

The stories weren’t just about the debate, either. A suddenly responsive New York Times reporter profiled Rhodes Scholar Michael Lanham ’00 for a feature on graduating seniors in May. An Associated Press story that cited Centre as a leader in higher education marketing ran in at least 59 papers.

Then, a month before debate day, disaster struck. The Republicans announced a new schedule of debates, and Centre was not on the list. But the “save the debate” campaign became a story in itself.

“We determined pretty quickly that most of the world wouldn’t care if the debate did not come to Danville and to Centre College, but that they well might if the debate did not come to small town and rural America,” says Clarence Wyatt ’78, a history professor and debate co-chair. “So we began to position ourselves as the mouse that bit back. And it obviously worked quite well. The director of political reporting for ABC news said it was the best crisis PR campaign that she had ever seen.”

After an informal strategy session on Labor Day, “It felt like a funeral with pizza,” says Patsi Trollinger, who ran the Centre news service, “staffers launched a relentless telephone, fax, and e-mail campaign aimed at the national news media and opinion leaders.”

The pitch? “Don’t cancel a debate that expresses the essence of the American dream.”

It would take a cold heart, indeed, to deny the images they invoked, the enthusiasm of small-town America, the cheers of schoolchildren, the excitement of college students, the 15 months of hard work already completed to bring the debate to Danville, and the media loved it. Within 36 hours, staffers were struggling to deal with a flood of reporters eager to make the story of the little college that could part of their election coverage.

“Almost overnight, we felt transformed from pariah to political poster child,” recalls Trollinger.

The Washington Post, the international wire service Reuters, and National Public Radio were just a few who embraced the story. Best of all was the genuine enthusiasm of Bruce Morton of CNN. He spent two days on campus and produced a glowing, five-minute segment that ran repeatedly for a couple of days. Perhaps it was the media attention.

Perhaps the letters from prominent Republican friends had some influence. But by Sept. 14, the Centre debate was back on track.

Debate day finally arrived, along with the candidates, their entourages, and 1,800 members of the media. A flotilla of television satellite trucks and news trailers took over the field hockey field next to the Norton Center. MTV sent its “Choose or Lose” team to register voters, and C-SPAN sent its voter education bus.

There were teach-ins instead of regular classes, debate watching parties for more than 1,200 alumni and friends in 26 cities, and a six-hour festival on the lawn outside Cowan. A “speakers park” on the football practice field offered a P.A. system and a stage for Green Party vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke and more than 30 other groups. (The CPD determined who got to participate in the televised debate, not Centre.) And Habitat for Humanity volunteers raised the walls on a nearby house, with a little help from Lieberman’s wife, Hadassah, and children and Cheney’s daughter Liz, her husband, and their children.

Even the weather cooperated, with a warm sunny day instead of the predicted thunderstorms. “Mother Nature must be a Centre alum,” declared more than one pundit.

And then it was over. By 4 a.m. the last reporter, David Von Drehle of the Washington Post, had filed his story and left the media hall. Within a week, the fences were gone. Sutcliffe looked like a gym again. The seats were back in the Norton Center, just in time for the Willie Nelson Homecoming Gala.

Although staffers may tremble a bit when they hear the president mention hosting another debate in 2004, almost everyone agrees with Megan Spindel ’02, a government major from Hawesville, Ky., who worked with the Cheney staff during debate week.

“It was an opportunity we couldn’t have missed,” she says proudly. “It was a lot of hard work leading up to it. But seeing my school on CNN was awesome.”

—D.F.J