Some West Virginia University students are getting a history lesson up close and personal if Old Man Winter doesnt pack too much of a punch.

Resident Faculty Leaders David Pariser, an accounting professor, and his wife, Debbialong with six resident assistantsare chaperoning 46 students to Washington, D.C., for inaugural festivities.

The group is scheduled to depart by bus from the WVU campus at 3:30 a.m. Thursday (Jan. 20), weather permitting, and will return Saturday (Jan. 22).

The trip, organized by the Dadisman and Stalnaker residence hall councils, has been months in the making. The presidents of the hall councils applied for grants to help offset student costs and priced hotels, and students wrote to their congressional delegation for tickets.

Preparations also included a day trip yesterday (Tuesday) to Washington, D.C., to pick up complimentary maps, special commemorative guides to the festivities and inaugural handbooks at Union Station.

We went down yesterday to get tickets from Sen. (Jay) Rockefellers office,Debbi Pariser said,and we checked with the metro center and people guiding traffic to find out the best way to get into the city.

The WVU students will be among the 250,000 ticketed guests on hand for Thursdays swearing-in ceremony. The inaugural parade between Capitol Hill and the White House and field trips to various museums will round out the groups itinerary.

Some of the students have never been to Washington, D.C., and they want to do all the sightseeing,she said.We recently took a group of students to that area, and it was just fantastic.

This is not the first trip the Parisers have made to an inauguration. David Pariser took 40 WVU students to see President George W. Bush take an oath for his first term four years ago.