The last year I worked at the University of Denver Bookstore, after it was outsourced to Follett Higher Education Group (contractually obligated to keep all employees for at least a year), DU hosted the first presidential debate of 2012, and the bookstore had a booth outside, close to a free event related to the debate. As I recall, a cold front came in while we were out there, and University of Denver sweatshirts were selling like crazy. I was at the cash register ringing up sales, and none other than then governor and current U.S. Senator from Colorado John Hickenlooper stopped by to peruse our stock. He graciously consented to let me take the above photograph for my blog, which at that time was almost exclusively about DU and the DU Bookstore, to the great chagrin of the Follett people. Those swine! But I digress. The University of Denver spent a fortune hosting the event, allegedly to boost its prestige across the nation. And it worked, for a few days, anyway. This was the debate where Barrack Obama was kind of lethargic in debating Mitt Romney, which Saturday Night Live mocked in a skit the following Saturday that had Obama preoccupied with having forgotten to get his wife Michelle a birthday gift, thinking about what he could quickly pick up to hide that fact. One of his ideas, as Romney went on and on saying outrageous things without any response from Obama, was a University of Colorado sweatshirt. So much for the publicity for DU. No problem. You can always raise tuition to pay for it all.
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