Comedian Rob Corddry, Gov. Deval Patrick and other Massachusetts notables will speak to a congregation of college students tomorrow afternoon at a rally for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
The "Students for Change Rally" will be held at Boston University but will involve students from all across the state.
"It's just to show people our age … are really fired up about Barack Obama and really excited about bringing change to the White House," said junior Shana Hurley, the president of the Tufts Democrats. "It's a massive college student event."
Hurley and other leaders of college Democratic organizations sat in on a Massachusetts Democratic Party conference call planning the event. There, some students suggested inviting Corddry, a native of Weymouth, Mass.
"[The rally] happened to be when he was home in Massachusetts," Roger Fisk, the chair of the Massachusetts branch of Obama's presidential campaign, told the Daily. "He was the first person of all the guests to sign up and confirm his ability."
State Sen. Ben Downing and U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano will join Corddry, who is well-known for his role as a correspondent from 2001-2007 for "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," and Patrick at the event.
The three politicians will discuss "their senses of why it is so urgent that everyone [do] everything possible to help elect Senator Obama," Fisk said. For instance, Patrick will speak about how having Obama in the Oval Office would help him to govern Massachusetts.
Fisk is hoping that between 400 and 500 people attend. "It's college students from across the state that are going to become part of the largest volunteer army ever assembled in Massachusetts politics," he said.
For its part, Tufts will be sending at least a few dozen students. "We officially have an RSVP count of 30," Hurley said yesterday afternoon. "But I'm expecting we're going to send at least 50 and I'm hoping it's more."
The event marks the culmination of a two-week-long push, beginning on Sept. 6, in which campus leaders across the state were challenged to recruit and register as many voters as possible. "We'll continue to recruit and register, but we wanted to make sure people had a compact time frame to get a lot of work done," Fisk said.
So far, he said the response has been positive. "[But] we have more work to do," he said.
