Lincoln students headed to presidential inauguration

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BY MARGARET REIST / Lincoln Journal Star

The upcoming presidential inauguration will be one for the history books.

And the local footnote?

Ten Southwest High School students and 24 Scott Middle School students will be among the millions of Americans to travel to Washington for the festivities surrounding the inauguration of the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama.

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President-elect Barack Obama (AP Photo)

President-elect Barack Obama (AP Photo)

The students are part of Close Up, a nonprofit group that plans educational trips to Washington for middle and high school students.

The students from Southwest are the only Nebraska high school students participating in the Close Up inaugural trip, said Jalaina Handa, one of the two Southwest social studies teachers planning the excursion.

The 24 Scott Middle School students will also go as part of a Close Up program.

The Close Up program takes students year-round, but also plans trips around the inauguration. The students will see monuments and museums, but will also attend events connected to inauguration, Handa said. The day of the inauguration, the high school students will be up by 3 a.m., she said.

And here’s the great thing for the Southwest students: Mike Johanns, former governor, U.S. secretary of agriculture and newly elected member of the U.S. Senate, managed to get 12 of the 250,000 tickets for the ceremony for the students and their teachers.

“We will be guaranteed reserved seats,” said Alyssa Watson, another Southwest social studies teacher planning the trip. “Whether it will be close up and personal we can’t tell that right now,” she said.

The Scott students are still trying, but haven’t been able to get high-in-demand tickets.

Handa and Watson planned the trip last spring, long before anybody knew who the 44th president would be.

Once Obama was elected they got a barrage of requests. But they’d already finalized plans and couldn’t take any more, the teachers said.

Blake Wewel, a senior, heard about the trip from a couple of buddies at school. He didn’t know how the election would play out, but was excited immediately.

He figured, he said, that either way it would be historical — the first woman vice president or the first black president.

It would be a great experience any time, but the inauguration makes it a once-in-a-lifetime trip, he said.

“It’s kind of cool to think you’re going to be there for a piece of history,” he said.

 Watson said she’s as excited as the students, because as a social studies teacher, she can share her firsthand observations of a moment in history with classes for years to come.

“When I’m still teaching 20 years from now this is going to be something in the textbooks,” she said.

Seeing the nation’s capital firsthand is what makes all the Close Up trips special, Handa said. And to see Obama sworn in gives students something they can’t get in a textbook or a classroom.

“To actually be there and live through the history is so much more rewarding for students,” she said.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.