Last Monday, Donald Trump came to Radford University to have one last rally in Virginia before Super Tuesday. After the announcement was made public on Feb. 25, tickets went on sale free to the public. Tickets ended up selling out after a couple hours, and then went back on sale later that night.
So, being a journalism major and writer for the Odyssey, I felt like I should take this opportunity to my advantage and go and report on this upcoming event.
The rally was shown at the Dedmon Center on RU's campus. The doors opened to the public at 10 a.m., and Trump was set to start at around noon.
Now, remember this was still a regular Monday at Radford University. Some teachers cancelled class and other's didn't. I had an early class and a test to take that morning, so I couldn't get down to Dedmon until about 10:50 a.m. However, public transportation methods were blocked from going down University Drive to get to the arena, so I had to walk down there with a huge group of people, who ended up disregarding the sidewalk and filled up the streets.
As we got closer to the entrance, the crowd got bigger and bigger. You can begin to see the crowd getting more compact in this photo I took (above). And it got worse.
My friend and I tried figuring out which part of the crowd was moving the fastest so we could try to get inside before Trump started, and didn't get very lucky. We ended up stuck in this crowd, and it got so packed that we were literally stuck behind this elderly couple for about an hour before we started getting close to the door.
After a while it got frustrating to me and people I met because we're short and couldn't see or hear anything that was happening by the entrance (even on our tippy-toes!). I remember one girl next to me who wanted to put her hair in a pony-tail, but couldn't because she "literally couldn't move my arms" in the crowd.
So, it was getting closer to noon, and you could tell people were getting pissed that they weren't inside. We all were. Some starting shouting certain lyrics of the songs the rally was playing repeatedly, and some even started giving up and tried to snake through the crowd.
At around 11:30 a.m., a police officer stood on a ledge by a tree to the side of the crowd and told us that they were only going to let in 300-400 more people. After hearing this, we all started shoving and pushing more than before.
"When we would move, we would only move a few steps at a time and that was frustrating. I was back to back with complete strangers. It was so disorganized," said sophomore Hannah Rudman.
It seemed as if about 50 more people were let into the building after the announcement when the security guards and police officers closed all of the doors and started shutting down the detectors.
"I felt cheated," said sophomore Jessica Wilson. "So many people got in just because they bypassed the whole line, people without tickets were allowed in, and they didn't even fill the whole arena."
About half of the mob gave up at this point and started walking towards the big screen TV which was just outside of the entrance to Dedmon.
Some people got creative. A big group went on top of the roof of Dedmon (and eventually got caught and was told to come down) others went on hills, and some even climbed trees.
Once Donald Trump came out to the podium, the crowd went crazy. Boos, cheers, and claps were all expressed by the audience outside.
There were a lot of things that struck me that Trump talked about. For one thing, he really expressed how much he didn't like Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. Especially Rubio. He called them rude names and it really wasn't necessary.
The audience wanted to know about his political agenda and what he's planning on doing if he was elected President. All he did was badmouth his rivals, talk about the "Trump Wall", and kick out protesters or people who were raising signs that didn't support him.
To my surprise, there were a lot of people outside who cheered Trump on when he did those things. However, there were a lot of people who expressed why they didn't agree with Trump's ideas, both verbally and physically (through posters or t-shirts).
Not getting inside the arena was a bummer for the 11,000 people stuck outside of Dedmon, but we made do and it ended up being not so bad to watch him on the big screen instead of inside the building. "At the end of the day I'm still happy I went down to listen to Trump speak, whether I agreed with him or not," said Wilson.
Next time Radford University hosts a presidential candidate or any other public figure, I think it'd be wise to try and make it more organized than how this rally ended up being. No one had any direction of where exactly to be, and it would've been a lot more beneficial if either Trump's team or some of Radford's staff made the general public get in single file lines, so they could avoid mobs as much as possible.
It was a great experience for Radford University students, staff, and the Radford community, especially since this was the first time something this big happened in this small college town. Whether anyone agreed with what Trump had to say or not, it was still something everyone outside Dedmon, and inside, will remember for a long time.
