Nov. 7, 2012: Tommy Lopez reports on students taking to the streets around campus
Ryan Murphy
News Editor
Hundreds of VCU students and Obama supporters flooded the streets of Richmond after major news networks began calling the 2012 election in Barack Obama’s favor around 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 6. A crowd gathered at the intersection of West Broad and Shafer streets, traffic was stopped and chants of “four more years” and “two terms” were audible for blocks around.
The crowd, led by students bearing a huge Obama/Biden campaign sign, proceeded to march down the street, east on Broad, through Monroe Park, through nearby neighborhoods and even through the Cabell Library.
Along the way, VCU Police, Richmond City Police and Virginia State Police stopped traffic and tried to direct the crowd to keep it near campus. There are currently no reports of injuries or arrests, and a broken window on North Pine Street is currently the only known damage caused by the crowd.
The group chanted pro-Obama slogans and marched for over an hour and a half before finally dispersing. Along the way, they stopped in Monroe Park twice, once congregating at and climbing on the little-used security building near North Laurel Street.
As of now, returns from the Virginia State Board of Elections are indicating that Obama has edged out Romney in the state despite the Republican challenger taking a lead early in the evening. At press time, 3o precincts, or just over one percent, still hadn’t reported.
As the night wore on, highly-populated areas in Virginia with high voter turnouts were forced to keep polling places open late, which delayed reporting from Democratic-leaning areas like Northern Virginia and Norfolk. Romney’s advantage, at one point around 10 percent, diminished to nothing until Obama finally pulled ahead, right around the time that major news networks like CBS and CNN called the overall election in the president’s favor.
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