Category Archive

In 1969, student protesters destroyed a 2500-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus on display at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montreal.

For the last four decades the pieces of the coffin — eight large fragments and hundreds of smaller shards — have been in storage, but three months ago, conservators began the work of restoring it and the mummy it housed. The sarcophagus will be featured in a museum exhibit that opens in December, and will then be returned to the college, now part of the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Google and scholarly searches have turned up no information about the 1969 protest in which the sarcophagus was damaged, or about how the damage took place.

Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give 5 and 10 and 20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy, who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organised and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

–Barack Obama, November 4, 2008.

The president of the University of Florida’s “Gators for McCain,” one of the nation’s largest pro-McCain student organizations, is voting for Barack Obama.

In about eighteen hours I’m flying to Ohio, where I’ll be doing campaign work through to the election, and I’ve got a lot to take care of between now and then, so I’m unlikely to post again before Saturday afternoon at the earliest. 

You leave a link to work that you’re doing or work that you’ve heard about in the comments, and I’ll bump the news up to a post of its own when I get back to the keyboard tomorrow.

Gallup has a long essay up analyzing the data on youth voting in 2008. In short, they’re expecting youth turnout to rise in line with increased turnout throughout the electorate this year, but say that if the youth vote is particularly high, it could represent a 1-2 point shift in Obama’s favor on election day.

The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting on Rock the Vote’s efforts to combat voter suppression among college student voters.

There’s a great trove of data on the youth vote past and present at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.