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When a big debate comes to a small college by Clarence Wyatt and Richard Trollinger, Based on remarks delivered to the Centre Parents Association during
Family Weekend, Oct. 28, 2000
Wyatt: We wanted to do a number of things in going to both conventions. Obviously, to give a small group of students at each place the opportunity to be a part of this kind of atmosphere. Also, we wanted to be able to get Centre College out in front of the news media. At the conventions, we managed to meet Bob Novak from CNN, Chris Matthews from Hard Ball, Cokie Roberts, Peter Jennings, Bob Sheffer from CBS News. But the crowning moment occurred when we were interviewed by Johnny Rotten. On the punk scene in the early eighties, Johnny Rotten was a member of a group with the lovely name of the Sex Pistols. He has now become a political commentator and was doing a documentary for VH1 on why young people do not engage in the political process. Our students were interviewed for twenty-twenty-five minutes for this documentary. Trollinger: And our students, polite as they are, referred to
him throughout the interview as "Mr. Rotten. Our contacts with the media paid off a few weeks later on September the third when Gov. Bush announced that the Republicans would take a different approach to the debates and would not be coming to Danville. That announcement moved us into a whole new phase of activity as we launched what we now refer to as the Save the Debate campaign. Wyatt: A small group of college staff members met on Labor Day to determine what we wanted to do to respond. We immediately decided that we weren't going to take this lying down. We determined pretty quickly that most of the world really wouldn't care if the debate did not come to Danville and to Centre College, but that they well might care if a debate did not come, for the first time in the history of the general election debates, to small town and rural America. So we began to position ourselves as the mouse that bit back. We mounted a campaign to talk about why it was important for a debate to come to small town and rural America. It worked quite well by the time things were over with. Trollinger: One of our successes in taking on this mantle of being the voice of small-town America was the contact with Bruce Morton of CNN's Inside Politics. Morton and a crew came from CNN, spent the better part of two days on the campus and in the community, and then aired about a five-minute section on CNN's Inside Politics about Danville, Centre College, and efforts to save the debate here. The evening of the first day that they were here, Bruce Morton's assistant called, and said, "We've got a problem. We need to find somebody in town who will say a bad word about the plans to hold a debate in Danville and at Centre. We've talked to dozens of people today on the streets, and we can't find anyone who will say a negative thing about this." We came up with a couple of names but their comments were incredibly mild. The airing of that segment on CNN did us a great deal of good in waging our campaign. Wyatt: Probably another highlight was an opportunity to be National Public Radio. I discovered that these interviews that Bob Edwards does on Morning Edition are taped at 4 o'clock in the morning. We were very fortunate to be able to get the story out. Obviously, the media loves an underdog and we were the underdog. One of the highest compliments that was paid to that effort came from the person who is director of political reporting for ABC News. She said it was the best crisis PR campaign that she had ever seen. Trollinger: One of the nice things, if you were watching the debate on C-SPAN ... immediately after the debate Janet Brown, who is the executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, was asked in an interview on camera what events had stood out for her in running the debates since 1988. She hesitated for only a moment, and said, "Tonight, when that ten-year-old boy welcomed the media and the national audience to Danville and to Centre College, that was the most special moment for me." That star was actually born during the Save the Debate campaign. We had a big rally on campus during and had invited the local elementary school to send a representative. Michael Ward's peers selected him to be their spokesman, and he was incredibly good. When it came the week of the debate, and we were told that the president had four minutes to bring greetings. John Roush, in what's very typical of him said, "Well, I don't want to talk for four minutes. You know it might be good if we had one of our seniors and let that young man speak for the community." Michael did do a fabulous job for us, and it did become one of the lasting moments from our debate. Actually, neither Clarence nor I was here when the announcement came that the parties and the commission had re-agreed to the schedule that had been announced earlier. I was in Frankfort at the meeting with the Transportation Cabinet and state law enforcement officers and actually got the call on my cell phone. I asked the Commission if they had called the college yet, and they said, "No, we had your number." And I said, "Please call the president's office. The college is just twelve minutes away from a news conference where we were basically going to announce that we still don't know anything." So the final rally and the crowd came together in less than twelve minutes. I called the college to make sure they got the word, and then I called Clarence, who was pulling into Paducah, Kentucky. Wyatt: Secretary Cheney was scheduled to be at an invitation-only rally in Paducah that afternoon. So we decided to take a group of students to Paducah to say, one more time, Secretary Cheney, we'd love to have you in Danville on October 5. I got Richard's call right on the outskirts of Paducah. When we pulled into the parking lot of the place where the rally was to take place, a pretty hefty fellow who was working as an advance person for Secretary Cheney came up to me and said, "You can't be here. You're a demonstrator." (It said Centre College on the side of the van and that made clear who we were.) I said, "It was never our intention to demonstrate -- we just wanted to say hello to Secretary Cheney and to ask him to come to Danville. But as a matter of fact, now we are here to thank him because the announcement has just come through that all the parties ihave agreed to follow the schedule proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates." The guy said, "Well, I'd better check this out." So he spoke into his sleeve and then went inside the hall . A few minutes later he came back and said, "It's great. Glad you're here. You can stay in the courtyard and Secretary Cheney will come out and say hello to you." I thanked him, and as he stepped away, I told the students, "You wait. We'll get inside and be in the front row." Sure enough, about twenty minutes later, a friend of the College who's active with the Bush-Cheney campaign on a national level had discovered that we were there. He came out and said, "Glad you guys are here. We want to bring you in and put you on the front row." An Associated Press reporter had been witness to the exchange with the first gentleman from the campaign. She saw us later inside and said, "How did you get in here?" I replied, "Well, you know, things just have a way of working out." She said, "You're a faculty member. What do you teach?" And she said, "It shows." So as Richard said, we were both away from campus when the word came
through, and we immediately began thinking about what do we have to do over
the next three weeks to finish getting ready. Logistics and Debate Preparations Trollinger: Part of what we worked on for months was the infrastructure. Some of you may recall in 1976 when Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were debating, there was a blackout at the debate site. Since then, one of the requirements for hosting a debate is that you provide a complete electrical back up system for the debate hall. So we had to essentially create a power substation on the campus that would be a complete backup electrical system to the Norton Center and provide electricity to the 37 satellite trucks and network vehicles that were here as well. We were able to find in Louisville, Kentucky, a company called Wayne Supply Company. They did a masterful job for us. One of the most fabulous things that we had to do on an emergency basis was, in a single night, convert the Sutcliffe ballroom into four soundproof strategy rooms for the political parties. A local contractor, Mark Goggins, brought in a construction crew at mid-day Tuesday, and by 8 o'clock Wednesday morning, the rooms were done, built of wall studs, styrofoam and insulation. His cost was a fraction of what the parties would've paid a national firm for pre-fab walls. Wyatt: Another challenge was putting up about three miles worth of temporary fencing to establish perimeters for various events. The tribute goes to our two directors of public safety on campus, Gary Bugg and Kevin Milby. They took the lead in securing that fence at a reasonable price and installed it on their own. Kevin said they, like many of us, had some sleepless nights running up to this ...and they couldn't even count sheep because the sheep would be jumping over a fence! Those of you who watched the debate on C-Span saw a lot of coverage coming from the media hall. We had to provide work spaces inside the two gymnasiums for about 750-800 members of the news media: tables, chairs, phones, and small temporary workrooms and interview areas. We had to lay about 300,000 feet of telephone line. Trollinger: One of the things we knew from the very outset was
that because a debate had never been held in a community this small, that
if things didn't go right we would be pencil-whipped by all the journalists
who were here. They would say that we never should have come to a place
this small. So as much as it was an opportunity for Centre to put its best
foot forward, it was an equally great opportunity to look bad across the
nation and we were motivated by that on many occasions. We started early
on all infrastructure needs and paid attention to every detail. Trollinger: On October the fifth, the day of the debate, I remember being asked about mid-morning by one of the TV stations that was set up on the lawn at the Norton Center, well what are you worried about today? And I told him, "I really believe that everything we can control is under control. So what I'm worrying about now are the things we can't control. And the number one thing we can't control is the weather."' As you may recall, there was a major front coming across the country, to arrive in Danville by Wednesday or Thursday. By Thursday morning, they were saying that it wasn't going to come in until mid-afternoon, but that it would be accompanied by high winds and thunderstorms. Severe lightening could have disrupted the broadcast, so we were worried big time. I called the control tower at the Lexington airport any number of times that day. A wonderful fellow there was tracking the front. At 3:30 on Thursday afternoon, he said, "Richard, I promise you there is no way it can reach Danville before 11 o'clock tonight." That night it didn't start raining until right at 11:30 and someone observed: "Mother Nature must be a Centre alum." One of the things we were most concerned about with the weather was the festival planned out on the lawn. That was another thing that we did at Centre that none of the other host sites have ever done -- have a special event for the many people who wouldn't have one of the very limited number of seats available inside the debate hall. We asked George Foreman of the Norton Center to help put together a festival out on the lawn, and he decided weeks in advance that he "wanted to put on a festival on the lawn that would be so special that people on the lawn would see people going into the Norton Center and feel sorry for them." And he pulled that off. Nick Clooney (George Clooney's father) was emcee and the nationally known guests included B.J. Thomas , Roger Williams, and Larnelle Harris (a Danville native who is now a gospel singer). The Owensboro Symphony Orchestra played, and community choirs sang. It was a wonderful event. Panasonic and their local affiliate, Matsushita home appliance, provided a huge screen TV called an Astrovision (20 feet by 25 feet) which projected images from the festival and then the entire debate. Wyatt: Leading up to the festival and really leading up to the
whole event, one of the things we were determined to do from the very beginning
was to turn this into an extraordinary educational opportunity for our students
and for area students as well. That occurred over the course of the whole
fall. Wyatt: Three local school systems turned the debate into a great teaching opportunity, and Centre supported them as much as possible. We created a Web site, VPcentre.net, that provided very thorough material on the vice presidency. Centre professors gave debate-related assignments. One English professor challenged her students to compare modern-day political rhetoric with political speech typical of ancient Rome and Athens. Two religion professors assigned projects evaluating ethics and social issues in American politics. And then the opportunity to be directly involved in the debate itself.
We had probably close to 400 students out of our 1,054 who were involved
directly as volunteers, Norton Center ushers, or paid news assistants with
the networks. Centre stayed in touch with members of the Coalition to Open the Debates
during the pre-debate period, and the college chose to create an area that
would encourage free speech.. The practice football field was the open area
closest to the media hall, so we focused on that area and installed a stage,
a PA system, an interview area, and a large-screen TV for debate viewing.
We felt it worked quite well and although not all of the groups were totally
satisfied, we felt pretty good about scoalition members who complimented
Centre and Danville on doing more than required. Wyatt: We were determined that reporters would not not leave Danville wondering why the commission had chosen Centre College, and we believe we succeeded. One staff member was assisting a New York Times reporter and in the middle of the day on Thursday, the reporter said , "You know, you guys are in the middle of nowhere, the motels aren't so great, and you can't buy a drink, but none of us can bring ourselves to say a bad thing about you because you're the nicest people we've ever met." Trollinger: My favorite experience in terms of the accolades that have come to the college following the debate actually occurred on Friday night after the debate. Nobody in my house was cooking that week, but on Friday night we went to The Depot restaurant in Stanford. If you want home cooking and lots of it, you go to The Depot. We took our children and quickly discovered that 15 or 20 Centre students also were there. Wes Fugate, a senior who's active in College Republicans, at some point during the evening went up and told the lady at the cash register that many of the people who had been responsible for bringing the debate to Danville and to Centre were in the restaurant. She announced that over the PA, and to our surprise the farmers and factory workers, and folks who were in The Depot stood up and applauded. That made me realize how much folks in the region had felt positively about the debate coming here. Wyatt: One last word: immediately after the debate was over there was an exchange among some commentators on the air talking about who won the debate. One participant on the panel said, "You know who won this debate tonight? Centre College won this debate tonight." We will take that as the final word. - end -
Communications Office Public information coordinator: Patsi Barnes Trollinger |