It was impossible to elbow one's way to the desks and no one could hear anything in the roar caused by hundreds of voices.

Trying to elbow one's way through a throng of jealous worshippers was inherently dangerous.

But as one elbows one's way across the school's teeming atrium these days, past students hurrying to attend the next seminar or to hear the latest celebrity up from Washington, one senses the prodigious energy and passion about public issues that has been brought together in this place.