PROCTORVILLE — When Barack Obama take the oath of office on Tuesday, it will be more than an inauguration of another president. It will be a uniquely historic event as the country watched the first African American take the reins of the country.

To commemorate that, Ohio University Proctorville is organizing a special viewing party to be held on campus. Starting at 11 a.m., the university will open its common room up to the community where visitors can watch the inauguration on a wide screen television.

Organizer of the event, T.J. Bates of Ohio University Proctorville, sees it as a chance to get past any residual partisan politics and move forward with a new administration.

“I want everybody to come. It is a unity event,” Bates said. “It is time to get behind the president, for people to come out and show support, to put down biases and barriers.”

But besides a watching party, Bates wants to turn the afternoon into an opportunity for future generations to discover how their forebears viewed the inauguration. To do that she is asking any who wish to participate to record their thoughts of the day. A video recorder will be set up and individuals can share whatever thoughts or opinions they wish.

Those videos will be compiled into a single film that can be shown at the Proctorville Center and at Ohio University Southern. Then the video will be put into a time capsule.

“It is just for the significance of this day in history,” Bates said. “A lot of people remember where they were at 9-11 or the assassinations of John Kennedy or Martin Luther King, those major events in history. This is a major historical event and I would like to capture this moment in time, and what people are thinking.”