The October 7 presidential debate is being held in the Curb Event Center at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. A confession - I teach at Belmont and I love the place. There are good places to learn about Belmont, but I wanted to provide a summary for everybody here.
Public Attention
Belmont has become most famous recenlty for two reasons:
- A rapidly improving athletic program, including a men's basketball team that in its third consecutive NCAA tournament appearance, lost to Duke by one point last March.
- A large number of country music stars (such as Trisha Yearwood, Brad Paisley, and LeeAnn Womack) are alumni or former students.
History
The Belmont campus sits on what once was the grounds of the Acklen estate. Adelicia Acklen was one of the wealthiest women in the old south. Her Italian style mansion still sits at the center of the campus and is a major tourist attraction in Nashville now. The negative side of this is that Adelicia made her money off of plantation slavery, primarily on land in Louisiana. This makes the appearance of the first African-American major party nominee for president on our campus as historic as it was on the campus of Ole Miss, where James Meredith is an alumnus.
Belmont College was born in 1890, when the campus was purchased and turned into one of the South's leading school for women. The name was change to the Ward-Belmont School for Women in 1913 when it merged with the Episcopalian Ward Seminary. This school existed until 1951, and included Sarah Cannon (more widely known as Minnie Pearl) among its alumnae. Those who do not know should be aware that Ms. Cannon, in some conflict with a stage personna, was a brilliant woman and a great civic leader and philanthropist.
In 1951, Belmont was purchsed by the Tennessee Baptist Convention and became a four-year coeducational college. In 1991 Belmont moved to university status and changed its name to the current Belmont University. In 2007, Belmont separated itself from the Tennessee Baptist Convention and its board of trustees became self-perpetuating. Belmont has nearly doubled its enrollment in the last decade and topped 5000 for the first time this fall.
Hosting the Debate
Belmont applied to host a presidential debate in 2004, and made it onto the short list of about ten possible host institutions. It applied again this election cycle, and it was announced in November 2007 (in the same week that both the women's and men's basketball teams beat the University of Alabama) that Belmont would host one of the debates.
The most underrated aspect of the Ole Miss debate circus last week was the potential damage to the univeristy. Hosting a debate demands an enormous amount of work and commitment of resources. The application process requires months of work for multiple individuals (and you can double that whenever a first, unsuccessful bid is part of the learning process). Hosting the debate requires a full year of work for lots and lots of people, plus raising millions of dollars to pay the expenses. Life on our campus has been significantly disrupted for a month already, and, starting today, became severely disrupted. Given the commitment required to host this event, for one candidate to play around with threats not to show up is destructive and disrepectful.
This AP article provides a good summary of some of the issues involved in hosting a debate. In Belmont's case it describes one of the decisions the host school had to make in order to be the host.
Alcoholic drinks have been forbidden on Belmont University's campus since at least 1951. The small Christian school in Nashville has decided to make an exception to the rule when it hosts a presidential debate Tuesday.
A private school with a self-described "strong commitment to providing a Christian community of learning and service," Belmont is allowing alcohol to be served at a hospitality tent for the news media — one of several substantial changes the college made to land the big event.
The compromise is that the Anheuser-Busch Hsopitatlity tent can not have any exterior signage.
One of the huge advantages of hosting the debate is the vast array of excellent educational opportunities it brings to the campus. A list of speakers who will be on the campus this year includes Ken Burns, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and David McCullough
Site Prep
We were allowed to tour the press tent and the arena on Thursday. The press tent is a stunning sight, inside and out. It is really a temporary building. Unfortunately, our soccer teams had to play most of their home matches this fall off campus so we would have a place to put it. The staging was not fully constructed inside the arena, but the place already has an electricity, and that is not just because they have put about twenty truck-sized generators all around the set-up. They have put up so much chain-link fence and so many barricades around the campus that much of its beauty is spoiled. I hope the cameras can still find some good angles.
Debate Night
Of course, nobody from here is part of the audience in the town hall format. Belmont is, however, hosting a great Debate Viewing Party downtown at the historic Ryman Auditorium, the "mother-church" of Country and Bluegrass music, the former home of the Grand Ole' Opry, and the finest live music venue in which I have ever been. That's where I'll be.
Thanks for Reading
I hope you enjoy watching the debate at Belmont. We are proud to host this event.
Two excellent diaries by former Belmont students, describing rather different experiences, appeared yesterday.
Here
and
here