The fence
By on
At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania today, President Obama arrived to a greeting painted on "the fence" by a team of students who used a long-held school tradition to welcome the President to campus.
“A long time ago, the Carnegie Institute of Technology was an all men’s school,” Richa, an architecture major explained. “The fence was used as a place for the guys attending the school and the women attending nearby Margaret Morrison to communicate with each other. These days it's still a popular place for students to paint messages.”
Colleeen, one of the students who helped paint the fence added:
“In order to reserve the right to paint the fence, you have to have two people stand guard at all times. We had friends positioned there from 2 p.m. on yesterday. You are only allowed to paint between midnight and sunrise, and have to use hand brushes. There was a big group of us working together in order to finish in time. We wanted to make sure the President felt welcome when he got here.”
Today's event in Pittsburgh was the last stop on the President's Betting on America bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania—you can read the rest of the highlights here.