A line of students wound around the lobby of the Schine Student Center and out the building toward the edge of Bird Library on Wednesday morning as students anxiously waited for tickets to see Oprah Winfrey to become available.

On Sept. 29 at 1 p.m., Winfrey will speak in Goldstein Auditorium in the Schine Student Center. She will be one of many media figures who will be at the dedication ceremony of the Newhouse Studio and Innovation Center, an $18 million renovation made to Newhouse II.

Tickets to the event became available to SU students at 11 a.m. on Wednesday at the Schine Box Office, and all 200 tickets were gone in just 13 minutes. They were free for students with a Syracuse University ID.

Lynn Vanderhoek, Newhouse assistant dean for external affairs, said the upstairs balcony of the Goldstein Auditorium has 500 tickets and 200 of those tickets were available on Wednesday. Vanderhoek said the other 200–300 tickets will be available to Newhouse students through a lottery. All undergraduate and graduate students are eligible for the lottery, according to an email sent from Newhouse dean Lorraine Branham on Wednesday night. The selections will be made on Monday, Sept. 15 and students who were awarded a ticket will have 48 hours to pick up their ticket in the dean’s office, according to the email.

At the front of the line was Taylyn Washington-Harmon, a junior magazine and French dual-major, who got to Schine with her friends at 6:58 a.m. that morning.

“I’m really going for the networking opportunities,” she said. “I’m going to meet Oprah, I am going to make it happen.”

Most of the other students hopped into line between 7:30 a.m. and 9 a.m., still hours before tickets were distributed. Many sat with their laptops and cups of coffee, chatting excitedly while they waited.

“I’m here just because I want the bragging rights, to say that I’ve been in the same room as Oprah,” said freshman Athena Sorrell. “I’ll be able to tell my kids about it one day.”

Vanderhoek said Newhouse knew there would be strong interest in the event.

“(Oprah) has different resonance to different generations,” she said. “But we knew that there was going to be a lot of interest in seeing her because she is by all measures one of the most known, visible, wealthy and influential people in the world.”

While many admitted to wanting tickets purely to be close to a celebrity, some felt a more personal connection to Winfrey.

“She is the reason I decided to major in broadcast journalism. I grew up watching her show,” said Erin Kelly, a senior broadcast and digital journalism major who is also a columnist for The Daily Orange.

For others, it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

“I really just need a bus ticket home and they have them at the box office, but I figured while I’m here I might as well try to get a ticket to see Oprah,” said Tim Scott, a freshman broadcast and digital journalism major.

Bridget Yule, director of the student center at Newhouse, said Winfrey’s appearance at SU shows how influential Newhouse is in the communications field since so many successful people in the business will attend the ceremony.

Yule said she hopes Newhouse students attending the ceremony will be inspired by this, as well as the legacy of the school.

“We’re hoping that the students are going to say, ‘You know, I can take my place,’” she said. “’There’s a place for me in this legacy going forward. I can be a part of tradition,‘ and they can think about what that might be.”

Gabriella Dizon, a sophomore environmental and interior design major, called Winfrey her “idol.” She got in line for her ticket at 8:30 a.m.

Dizon said she was sure the wait, though long, would be worthwhile. It is Oprah, after all, she said.

Said Dizon: “She is my everything.”

Published on September 11, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Chelsea: cmportne@syr.edu
Contact Margaret: mglin@syr.edu