Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s presence gathered a crowd of 3,200 at North Carolina Central’s O’Kelly Riddick Stadium Thursday afternoon.

Though the senator was 30 minutes late, he held his audience’s attention.

Ben Mazur, a junior in religious studies, said Obama’s speech was impressive.

“I thought he really connected with the crowd,” he said. “He was funny yet serious.”

Obama told the crowd he was impressed to see the large number of attendees from every background at the rally.

America, Obama said, needs major changes to its policies.

“I want big change,” he said. “I want fundamental change, not change around the edges.”

Mazur said Obama seemed very sincere in his promises.

Obama focused on the need to find alternative sources of energy and have a decreased dependency on oil from the Middle East.

“It doesn’t help when my cousin Dick Cheney is out in charge of energy policy,” Obama joked about the news releases earlier in the month stating he and Cheney are eighth cousins. “You know, everyone’s got a black sheep in the family. Everyone’s got a crazy uncle in the attic.”

According to Obama, he has had Democratic, Independent and even Republic supporters.

“Part of the reason so many of you are here and so many of you are paying attention to this campaign is because so many of you are sick and tired of George W. Bush,” he said.

Obama said so many Americans are sick of a war that should have never been waged, an administration that caters to the wealthy and power holders, and a country that is not making progress towards critical issues like healthcare and poverty.

He was the one candidate who stayed consistent in his views on the war, never agreeing to it in the first place.

Mazur said Obama’s foresight is noteworthy.

“It seems to be the one area the Democratic candidates don’t agree on,” he said.

He said he wanted to change the administration that had a double standard when dealing with the Scooter Libby and Jena Six trials.

“You don’t want to just be against something,” Obama said. “You want to be for something.”

The current administration, Obama continued, is not doing enough for its people. He said that although Cheney met with energy and renewable resource groups once, he met with gas companies 40 times.

“I want to be fighting for the American dream in Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Some of Obama’s opponents claim that he does not have enough experience in politics to run for president.

“What they mean is I haven’t been in Washington long enough,” he said.

According to Obama, the American people have seen that Washington’s politicians with the longest resumes, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are the cause of the nation’s biggest foreign policy disaster, and therefore, it was time for a change.

Obama advocated for decreasing poverty and helping Americans nationally before going overseas, though he said the crisis in Darfur is something America should address.

“We spend $10 billion in Iraq a month,” he said. “We can spend $10 billion in Durham, North Carolina, in Chicago, Illinois, in Nashville, Tennessee.”

The next president, Obama said, needs to listen to dissenting opinions and let Americans know what they need to hear, not just necessarily what they want to hear.

He said the other candidates are running on people’s fear, but that as president, he would abolish the prison at Guantanamo Bay, make torture flights from America to other countries illegal, restore habaes corpus and give back Americans’ their rights.

According to Obama, all change and movements starts with young people.

Sehra Polad, a freshman in psychology, said Obama catered to a lot of young people and after Thursday’s rally, she knew she would vote for him.

“He spoke a lot about the war and how we should have never been there, which is true,” she said.