With the arrival of President Barack Obama today, Feb. 10, the feeling in the air is that of excitement. Although Obama’s time in Marquette will be short, the fact that he is coming to speak about our wireless technology is great, and it helps to put our town and university on the map. Unfortunately the visit has been tinged by the invite selection process, but we hope that students will look past that and be proud of their university regardless.
Obama’s visit is an indicator of the great work the university is doing in keeping us constantly and consistently up to date with technology, especially in an area that may often be mistaken to be a part of Wisconsin or Canada. The U.P. is a land that has made significant contributions to further Obama’s technological goals, increasing the span of wireless internet to 98 percent of the United States population. His visit will encourage the university to do more to increase its dedication to this ground-breaking technology and innovative steps forward into the future.
The WiMAX network is the first of its kind in the country. Now Obama is recognizing this achievement by coming here and honoring our community. Students, alumni, people in town, and businesses will benefit from this visit for years. When students go to apply for jobs or when we have more visitors come to marquette, there will be name recognition, especially for NMU graduates. The piece of paper they hold when they graduate that says NMU at the top will be more valuable. Companies will be more likely to know that our graduates are more technologically inclined. There’s value added simply because the President of the U.S. thought it was worthwhile to visit our university.
At a time when the feeling on the university is still cautious because of last week’s threat, Obama’s visit will help spur the economy and the spirits of the students of Northern. Although there has been some backlash over the White House’s decision to make the event invite-only, we feel students who feel slighted should focus after Thursday afternoon not on a hard decision the university had to make but the fact that he honored our university at all.
Regardless of party affiliation, we think students of Northern and members of the Marquette community will be able to stand behind President Obama and be proud that he is coming here to Marquette.
