About Hofstra
Hofstra University is a dynamic private college on Long Island, NY, where students can choose from more than 140 undergraduate and 150 graduate programs in liberal arts and sciences, business, communication, education, health and human services, and honors studies, as well as a School of Law and School of Medicine. | more |
Events
Dina Santorelli
Graduate Student, Creative Writing
Read More About the Debate
They were about as far away from me as I can throw a baseball.
That’s what I tell people when they ask me how close I was to Senators Barack Obama and John McCain during the third presidential debate at Hofstra.
Looking back, I still can’t believe I was there in the debate hall, sitting on the CNN platform, watching the event live, along with folks I usually see only on TV: Caroline Kennedy, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, DNC Chairman Howard Dean and former Senator Alfonse D’Amato. I remember staring at the candidates as they walked onto the stage, trying to absorb an experience that I knew would come only once in a lifetime and knowing that for the next 90 minutes what the entire world would be watching on a screen I was lucky enough to see in person.
When I learned that Hofstra would be hosting the third presidential debate and was looking to recruit student volunteers, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I had received my bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Hofstra back in 1990 – a time when the University’s series of presidential conferences was going full throttle, and I had worked as a student volunteer during Richard Nixon: A Retrospective on His Presidency in 1987. When I entered Hofstra’s graduate program in 2005 – the semester that the presidential conference on Bill Clinton was taking place – it had been 15 years and three children since I had stepped foot on campus. And with the buzz of another presidential conference in the air, it felt as if I had never left.
I was thrilled to have been selected to work as a student volunteer during the presidential debate and even more so, as a working journalist, to be assigned to CNN as a “runner” – a job that, as I explained to my kids, means you “run” wherever they want you to go. In my case, “running” meant driving the CNN rental car wherever needed: to Home Depot to get equipment, to the Hampton Inn to drop off a producer who had called it quits for the night, to McDonald’s to feed the crew who would be working into the wee hours of the morning. And then being given the chance by CNN to watch the debate live was more than this student, journalist and mother could have hoped for.
