Obama is coming to MIT tomorrow! Preparation Day

I'm pretty sure most of you guys know this already, but I just want to brag about the fact that Obama is coming to MIT tomorrow! He's giving a speech about America's leadership in clean energy. Even more, he will be speaking in Kresge Auditorium, which is located literally less than a block away from my dorm. Seriously, it takes me 3 minutes max to get there. The most frustrating part: I can't see him live. Only a "select few" among the undergraduate student body is allowed to go, and those select few are big on energy here on campus. This logic is fair, but give the rest of us a chance!! Ok so maybe I'm whining a little bit, but I'm so sad that Obama is 3 minutes away from me and I can't see him myself. Grr. Oh well, a couple of us have a half-serious plan to hide out in the backstages of Kresge and just sleep there overnight. I highly doubt that will happen, but it would be nice....

But this event is really surreal. The MIT community was not notified about it until some of us read the Boston Globe and spread around the campus like wildfire on Tuesday. Then the Vice President of Institute Affairs made a formal email to the campus a few hours later that evening. Then today I'm seeing like a millions barracades stacked in a corner of a parking lot ready to be set up early tomorrow morning. On my way to classes and lab, I see tons of "No Parking" signs, or signs that TV newscasters claimed for the day tomorrow. I see people marking places to set up tents and lines. The last time I saw this much security was last year when the Dali Lama came! What makes the event especially weird to me is that no celebrities ever come to MIT. Yes, we have very important people come to MIT fairly frequently- Nobel Laureates, Muhammad Yunus, etc-and they all have accomplished extraordinary things, but still not "famous" enough to warrant huge media coverage. But tomorrow, the nation's eyes will be on us, and I'm super proud of my school. I will try to take pictures and try to at least see him enter the auditorium. Let's hope the Secret Service won't hurt me. More tomorrow!