Three employees from the cable channel C-SPAN set up and staffed an information table for two and half hours near the Hornet Bookstore today.

The purpose of C- SPAN’s stopover was to educate first-time voters in a non-partisan way, especially during this presidential election year, said Rebecca Stewart, a C-SPAN representative.

The campaign is known as the Road to the White House Tour. It began on January 2007 and will continue until the next president is inaugurated.

Within the past two weeks, the tour have visited Duke, Harvard, Vanderbilt, Texas State and Kansas State University, said Stewart.

There are two buses, one traveling on the East Coast and another on the West Coast. Stewart said each bus is a mobile production studio, which has two cameras contained within a soundproof environment. Everything is taped and sent back to Washington, D.C., to be aired.

“C-SPAN is a great way to get to the source (of the information) and (then) make judgments from there,” said Abigail Bayquen, a freshman criminal justice major.

On the other hand, Avery Howard, junior communications studies major, said, “I don’t really watch (politics) on television, I usually read it on the internet.”

Sac State students, who attended the special event, received a colored flier about programs on C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 as well as complimentary items, such as an ink pen, luggage tag, and a Campaign 2008 T-shirt.

The tour bus promptly left at 11 a.m. to go downtown to the State Capitol.

C-SPAN is headquartered in Washington, D.C. It’s a subscriber-funded, public service network, which covers Capitol Hill, The White House and national politics. A nickel from every subscriber each month creates a $50 to $60 million budget for C-SPAN’s three cable television channels, its satellite radio station and its website, www.c-span.org.

Leonard Low can be reached at [email protected].