Starting today, buses filled with Boston University students will make the trek from cold Boston to even colder New Hampshire as the democratic presidential primary heats up.
The free buses, sponsored by the College of Communication’s journalism department, begin service today and will run students – mostly from COM – up to Manchester, N.H. to provide students with real-life reporting experience, said Journalism Department Chairman Robert Zelnick.
“They get to cover a real national story and file pieces or photos which are published online and in our special magazine,” Zelnick said.
Buses leave COM at 8 a.m. each day and return at 5 p.m., Zelnick said. The buses will run until Jan. 27 and have been a BU tradition since COM professor Jim Thistle first organized the trips in 1992.
The buses will go directly to the WCVB Channel 5 news bureau in Manchester, Thistle said. Once there, students “will go over the campaign schedule” because “often there are last-minute changes.”
Once in New Hampshire, Thistle said, students can either stay in Manchester or get back on the bus and go to other cities, including Concord and Nashua, to attend different campaign events.
The trip gives students a unique chance to meet the candidates up close, Thistle said, adding that working with Channel 5 lets students see a real newsroom.
“No one has secret service yet,” he said. “The candidates are just walking around, going into restaurants and such.”
Zelnick said the event is “a well entrenched tradition here – and a happy one.”
Provost Dennis Berkey said in an email that the program was “an excellent idea – good experience in on-the-ground journalism and good engagement with the American political process.”
Although the program is open to all BU students, Thistle said the trip “is really designed for journalism students.”
Spots for the trips are given out on a first-come, first-served basis, Thistle said. Because the trip is mandatory for many journalism students, spots fill up quickly, he added.
“Students can also come up by themselves,” Thistle said, noting that Manchester is accessible by commuter rail and car.
Leslie Tokiwa, a COM sophomore with a class that requires the trip, said she thinks the prospect is exciting.
“I’m from California, so this is really the first time I’ve been anywhere near New Hampshire and the primaries,” she said. “One of the people we see there may one day be one of the most important people in the U.S. That’s definitely an amazing thing to think about.”