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Edwards courts campus
By David Cardenas
dcarden5@mscd.edu

Photo by David L. Yost • dyost2@mscd.edu 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards spoke March 1 at the Tivoli Turnhalle. Hundreds of students, faculty and other community members attended the rally, and overflow space was made available in two other Tivoli lounges where students could watch the speech on televisions.

Former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards called for transformational change for the nation when he spoke on March 1 at a packed Tivoli Turnhalle.

The charismatic senator took the stage to cheers and wasted no time explaining his plan for the country.

“I want to talk today about change, the change America needs. Not small change, transformational change, a change the world needs,” Edwards said.

Edwards has recently been visiting colleges and universities campaigning on his new slogan for the 2008 presidential race, “Tomorrow Starts Today.”

He spoke on a variety of issues including global warming, the war in Iraq, health care and education.

As the most powerful nation in the world, America needs to be responsible to humanity in using that power for peace, Edwards said. He explained that the most important thing the next president should do is let the world know that the U.S. not only tolerates diversity but embraces it.

Edwards took a firm stance on the war in Iraq, saying the answer is not “to be putting more troops into Iraq, but to be leaving Iraq.”

America needs to be patriotic in something other than war, Edwards said, stressing the importance of fighting global warming and eliminating the need for foreign energy.

“It’s about survival. (There’s) nothing ideological about global warming and climate change,” Edwards said. “This not only will make America stronger, it helps us face a moral issue around the world.”

Edwards also believes a universal health care plan could be implemented in the U.S. with the right funding.

“For those that tell me that the universal health care is too big to do, I want them to tell me which family in America gets no medicine,” he said.

Such a plan could cost an estimated $90 billion to $120 billion a year, but could be paid for by “eliminating George Bush’s tax cuts for the richest people in the country,” Edwards said.

His words seemed convincing to Metro junior Lani Hurd, who is still undecided about which presidential candidate to support.

“He really seems to have a strong concept of the salts of the earth, of the working people,” Hurd said. “That’s a hard thing to go with because he’s (also) going with big business and big money.”

Metro President Stephen Jordan said having Edwards come to Auraria offered students a chance to be involved in the selection of the nation’s leaders.

“It is critical to have students be active in the leaders of the nation, seeing them one on one to hear what they have to say, and form their own opinions.” Jordan said. “This begins to form a lifetime pattern of saying, ‘I’m going be involved with what happens with the country.’”