STUDENT REACTION:Republican cheerleading could not shout down the howls when Obama took Ohio, writes Rosita Boland, in Harvard
EVEN IN two dimensions, Barack Obama was the man of the night at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (KSG) on Tuesday.
Life-sized cut-out cardboard figures of Senators McCain and Obama flanked the lectern in the central forum at the KSG: the world's most famous school of government, which currently has 900 registered students representing 92 countries (but none from Ireland).
From 6.30pm onwards, they packed the forum to watch the returns come in, and there was a constant queue of people eagerly lining up to have their pictures taken with the cardboard Obama.
By contrast, the cut-out image of McCain stood unvisited and isolated under the huge screens that related his losses, state by state, as the votes came in.
The KSG forum is an atrium-type space, with viewing on three levels, and it's the place where students are addressed regularly by international politicians, including Bertie Ahern, who spoke here in May. It was deliberately designed as an inclusive space. No matter where you stand or sit on three levels, you're part of something collective - if you choose to be.
On Tuesday, the Republican supporters chose not to watch the election results in the forum with their fellow students.
After the first televised presidential debate here, they had complained of feeling intimidated by their Democratic supporting peers, and so withdrew to watch the three other key debates in a less public space.
Thus on election night, 60 or so mainly white people cloistered themselves privately in an adjoining lecture theatre, with their own screen, flipcharts and laptops, wearing McCain-Palin T-shirts and baseball caps, and increasingly bewildered, gloomy expressions.
"Keep the faith!" one young man hollered, as McCain took Wyoming, and then Georgia, just as the free ice-cream was being handed round. "It could still switch!"
No amount of cheerleading for Republican faith-keeping could drown out the lengthy howls beyond the door that resounded in the forum when Obama took the key swing state of Ohio. The clapping and shouting was relieved, hopeful and more confident with every minute.
One of the Republican voters slunk out to make an intervention by rescuing the ostracised cardboard McCain and bringing it into the safety of their lecture theatre. The old cliché "it ain't over till it's over" simply didn't apply on Tuesday: everyone knew it was definitely over for McCain at the point when he lost Ohio, although the election wasn't officially called until over an hour later.
Minutes after Obama was declared elected, students in Harvard Yard came pouring out of their dormitories and started racing noisy laps around campus, not quite sure where they were going, but intent on releasing some kind of energy.
By the time McCain had conceded defeat and Obama had made his speech, Harvard Square, a key traffic axis, was impassable to traffic, and remained so for almost two hours. This rarely happens, but neither do Americans often uncomplainingly stand in line at polling stations for more than two hours to cast their vote in a presidential election.
Hundreds, possibly thousands of students, gathered spontaneously at Harvard Square, their local public space, chanting "Yes we can!" over and over again, while African-American students unfolded the Kenyan flag and joyfully posed for pictures taken with hundreds of camera phones.
The few cars and taxis that eventually nudged through, horns blaring, and passengers hanging out the windows frantically waving, were so reluctant to leave the area that they only moved on when the police good-naturedly made them.
If you had been asleep for two years and just woken up on Tuesday night in Boston, you may well have thought the Red Sox had won the World Series again.