Vigil held for fallen senator

As the rain poured down in torrents last night outside of Houston Hall, there was a warmth that permeated the Ben Franklin Room as dozens of Penn students slid out of their soaking wet coats and huddled together to both mourn the death and celebrate the life of Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash Friday.

Arshad Hasan, a College senior and one of the event's organizers, both began and ended the vigil with heartfelt words that set off a flow of tears throughout the solemn crowd.

Wellstone and his wife "were passion and commitment and principle personified," he said. "They are what few people like to believe exists in modern politics. He refused all the typical trappings of power -- ego, privilege and extravagance. He lived his principles."

The event continued with Hillel President Katie Jorgensen offering a prayer for the soul of the deceased Jewish senator. She brought in a famous statement by the ancient Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachyah who gave advice on how one should live one's life.

"Choose for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend and judge everyone favorably," Jorgensen read, explaining that this encapsulated the life of Wellstone in just three simple phrases. He learned from everyone that he worked with, befriended all whose cause he championed and took up the cry of even the most downtrodden individual as his own.

Over the next hour, everything from Wellstone's first speech on the Senate floor in 1991 to a eulogy for Wellstone on the Republican Web site www.freerepublic.com were read aloud by various students in the audience, each with increasing fervor.

Mental illness and economic justice, two of Wellstone's chief causes, were discussed by two students. Undergraduate Assembly Chairman Seth Schreiberg, a College senior whose father was friends with Wellstone and who said he has a history of mental illness in his family, read the public statement about mental illness that Wellstone issued after seeing the movie A Beautiful Mind.

Immediately afterwards, College junior Aaron Searson spoke out strongly about economic justice and championed the crowd to continue the struggle for economic rights that Wellstone both lived and breathed.

And as the end of the evening vigil drew near, Katie Gordon, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, spoke out with one of the most poignant stories of the night in which she said the essence of the late senator was captured through the eyes of a child.

"When I was six years old, I was brought to a farm rally with a bunch of other children who were also dragged to the event against their will," she said. "We fidgeted in the crowd until we were so bored and cold that we all started to whine and become very agitated. All of a sudden Wellstone took the podium, and his intense enthusiasm that he will forever be known for invigorated us to the point where we all started giggling and jumping around in the crowd to imitate his contagious energy. This was my very first introduction to politics."

Hasan ended the vigil by noting, "He spoke for people who didn't have a voice to speak with. You always knew where he stood -- you just had to ask."

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