For an hour Friday afternoon, every student on Kirkwood Avenue stopped drinking. In the heat of Little 500 festivities, on a gorgeous sunny day, students left Kilroy’s, emptied the Upstairs Pub and poured out onto the sidewalks and into the street, all looking for one man: Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. He came, after all.

The Illinois senator crashed the Little 500 women’s race with a surprise appearance on campus and then traveled in his motorcade to Nick’s English Hut, where he shook hands with some of the patrons inside and added his John Hancock to a wall.

Obama was greeted at both places by throngs of screaming and cheering students who crowded in, trying to catch at least a glimpse of the political phenom. The lucky ones got a handshake, a smile or a nod from the senator.

Sophomore Coco Goldenberg did one better. When she held out her pink Alpha Chi Omega trucker hat and asked Obama to sign it, he took out a pen and scribbled his signature across the brim.

Goldenberg, breathlessly excited, posed for photos with her friends, proudly sporting the hat.

“I’m a big, big Obama supporter,” she said. “He’s so tight.”