It was a cold, cloudy Wednesday morning as the Texas A&M University-San Antonio campus watched the 46th president, Joe Biden, be sworn into office.
A large white screen sat in front of the fountain at the West Lawn live-streaming the inauguration. Hula hoops were spread out on the lawn for students to be socially distanced. However, most students stood for a short moment on the sidewalk before they walked away.
Three tents were set up along the brick pathway with the hosting organizations giving hand-outs to the students including hot cocoa and pan dulce. Students stopped to drink their hot chocolate and watch the new president address the nation.
“Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path,” Biden said. “Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war. And we must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated, and even manufactured.”
Student activities coordinator Jarrick Brown said that it was important for organizations like the Campus Activities Board, Mays Center, First-Year Experience and Student Government Association to host the event.
“We need to showcase what’s going on in our world,” Brown said. “This is a historic moment and we just wanted to be a part of letting our students see a historic moment on campus.”
Between inauguration speeches and performances, DJ DoubleOhTevin, whose real name is Tevin Ellis, played music to keep the event alive.
Students huddled next to electric heater towers to keep warm as they watched history being made. Others stood under their tents with their organization, greeting students as they passed by.
Accounting senior Denique Escobedo with the Democracy Fellows, an organization that helps students educate their peers about voting and elections, watched the inauguration from her booth as students passed by and grabbed USA buttons from a bin.
Escobedo said the inauguration watch party was important because it gives students a sense of “togetherness on campus for those who got to vote and those who didn’t – or rather those who couldn’t.”
She captured a video of the projector screen as the youngest poet laureate Amanda Gorman stood in her yellow coat and recited her poem, “The Hill We Climb.”
“We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside,” Gorman said. “We lay down our arms, so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none, and harmony for all.”
Although former President Donald Trump did not attend the inauguration, computer information systems freshman Anneka King and biology major Alaysha Reddit-Castro said it was better off that he didn’t attend because it would have been awkward. King said it was kind of “petty and childish” on Trump’s part but it was good that former Vice President Mike Pence was in attendance.
Redditt-Castro said this was not her first time watching the inauguration; she also watched the 2016 Trump inauguration.
“It’s history in the making,” Redditt-Castro said. “It doesn’t matter who it is.”
Along with handing out buttons and face masks, Escobedo was also helping students register to vote for upcoming Texas elections. The Office of First-Year Experience checked in students for the event and handed out the book “Vote for US: How to Take Back Our Elections and Change the Future of Voting” to students.
The book was this year’s Common Read for first-year students and extra copies were handed out to other students to be educated about voting, accounting senior Valeria Gallardo said.
“It’s important for people to know what to expect,” Gallardo said.
