Who knew students could care so much?

When Berklee College of music students found out two of the professors, Jetro da Silva and Donna McElroy, had applied to perform at the presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama, they decided to lend a hand, MarketWatch reports.

The students found a video of their professors performing "America the Beautiful" at the inauguration of the college president, Roger Brown in 2004, and put it on YouTube, hoping that they'll get their teachers "just a little bit closer":

To support the performance application filed with the Armed Services Inaugural Committee, students uploaded a YouTube video of McElroy and da Silva giving a stirring rendition of the piece at the 2004 inauguration of Berklee president Roger Brown.

The students' strategy is to increase the probability of the link reaching the President-elect or his "right-hand ears" by using the same tools and tactics Obama used to win the election. This week the students began email, social networking, public relations, phone, and word-of-mouth efforts to draw attention to the video.

 

Da Silva and McElroy are also certainly no strangers to fame: McElroy is Grammy nominated, and da Silva has performed with everyone from Whitney Houston to Luther Vandross. It's a good thing, too: the video has already reached more than 10,000 views, and more than 100 comments on the page. It may not be the most conventional way to help out, but taking the initiative and a very effective page out of Obama's play book seems like a smart way to go. 

Good luck to the two of them! And mad props to the Berklee students for proving stereotypes wrong and, well, giving a damn.