Photos by Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Chris Cox (left), leader of the Virginia Tech chapter of Students for Barack Obama, shakes hands with Eddie McClain, lead singer of HopeHop, a hip-hop band that was about to perform at an Obama rally Saturday at the university.

Brad Copenhaver, a member of Virginia Tech's College Republicans, works the phones Thursday at Republican headquarters in Blacksburg. The freshman said more people are becoming involved as Election Day nears.

BLACKSBURG -- They don't agree on much, but Virginia Tech student supporters of John McCain and Barack Obama can find common ground on one thing: In this election year, they are important.

With polls predicting a close race nationally and an even closer one in Virginia, students on both sides talk about the historic significance of the work they're doing knocking on doors, making phone calls and recruiting others to their cause.

"Are you ready to undertake what I believe is the defining task of our generation?" Tech junior Chris Cox asked a crowd of about 200 Obama supporters Saturday at a rally in Tech's Squires Student Center.

The students cheered their approval.

Cox, chairman of Tech's chapter of Students for Barack Obama, then asked the group what they're going to tell their grandchildren they did in the 2008 election.

"That's my guilt trip," he said.

Polls conducted by groups ranging from Rock the Vote to the Harvard University Institute of Politics show Obama has the majority of support from young voters. But the Democrats are not the only voice in the campus political dialogue. About 50 people gathered for a College Republicans meeting last week at the Montgomery County Republican headquarters in Blacksburg. After discussing efforts they have planned for the final month of the campaign, talk turned to some of the difficulties of being a conservative on a college campus.

College Republicans Chairman Carlin Crowder explained the initial reaction he gets from some people on campus when they find out he's a Republican.

"There's an attitude that you're not as sharp or you grew up in a cave somehow," he said.

Complaints about liberal professors soon followed from the crowd.

But Brad Copenhaver, a Tech freshman who has been an active member of Tech's College Republicans this past month, said he's seen plenty of evidence of Republican students getting involved on campus. He said most College Republicans meetings are standing room only, and as the election draws closer, more people are becoming involved.

The son of a beef farmer from Washington County, Copenhaver said the idea of making a difference drew him to politics about five years ago. He's been a clerk in the House of Delegates and worked on Kevin Triplett's 2004 congressional campaign. Virginia's swing-state status makes it easy for campaign workers to see the impact of political activism.

"I think if Virginia goes McCain, the country goes McCain," he said.

Copenhaver describes himself as a moderate Republican but said McCain is closer to the center than he is. He supported Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the primaries. Still, a McCain sign, visible from the Drillfield, hangs in his dorm room window.

Copenhaver said he and his Republican friends joke that they need to stick together to defend themselves from Democrats in their residence hall.

"But I think everyone has an understanding that politics is about each person's own personal choice and everyone respects that. Even though there's a big group of Democrats, maybe a smaller group of Republicans, there's not animosity between the two groups," he said.

Copenhaver said he understands why college students gravitate toward Obama. He's young and energetic and has the ability to pump up a crowd with his speeches. But Copenhaver sees leadership qualities in McCain reminiscent of some of his favorite presidents -- Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Democratic icon Franklin Roosevelt.

"It's not about their ideologies, it's about the strengths they showed in leading the nation," he said. "He has the experience serving in the Senate and serving in the Navy to really lead our country in the right direction when it comes to defending ourselves."

For Cox, his involvement in politics began in 2004. A native of Reston, he was at a Catholic work camp in Dayton, Ohio, where he spent a week working at a women's center. One of his tasks was ripping out information about birth control from magazines.

"For some reason my gut told me, 'This is wrong.' There's no reason people shouldn't have access to information. We should trust people to make the right decision and not censor things so they don't know about different decisions or choices," he said.

When he returned home, he became involved in organizing voters for Democrats in the election that November and he was hooked. When he started college, schedule conflicts kept him from going to Young Democrats meetings, but he joined the Obama student group during the primaries and became the de facto leader. Now he works with the Young Democrats to organize events such as Saturday's rally.

Young Democrats President Dan Geroe said he was surprised the rally attracted as many people as it did, given that rain forced a last-minute change of venue and there were no speakers other than students. Putting something like this together a year ago was unthinkable, he said.

But he said Obama's appeal makes it possible. And he told the crowd what their presence meant.

"We hear it all the time from the talking heads on the television that the youth vote can't possibly matter. The youth vote is unpredictable. The youth vote is unreliable. But your presence here today says just the opposite," he said.

"The youth is fired up and it is ready to go and it is hungry for change."

Data delivery editor Matt Chittum contributed to this report.