Pace Students Enjoy "Delish" Day at The Rachael Ray Show
Jeremy Kelley
Issue date: 1/28/09 Section: Feature
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Feature Editor
Some three-dozen lucky Setters enjoyed a "yum-o" start to spring semester last Wed. and Thurs. when they were invited to participate in the live studio audience of The Rachael Ray Show.
Organized by Dr. Detine Bowers, a communications professor at the New York City Campus, this unique field trip provided the chance to get an up-close look at what goes into producing an Emmy Award-winning talk show.
But this wasn't just any Emmy Award-winning talk show; it's one hosted by a onetime Pace student. Long before her reign as domestic diva, Ray attended the Westchester campus for two years as a literature and communications major, but did not graduate. In a 2007 interview with Vanity Fair, Ray stated her reasons for withdrawal as a simple quarter-life crisis.
"It was more like I was going to school for hobbies," said Ray. "I didn't know what I wanted to do."
Her days in Dyson were perhaps but a bump in Ray's superhighway towards stardom, but nonetheless, there is great excitement among the campus community to think that she, too, was once a part of the Pace family.
In true spur-of-the-moment fashion, Feature Writer Ashley Bressingham - who I had assigned the story to earlier in the week - informed me at 10:30 Thurs. morning that she had arranged with Dr. Bowers for us to attend the Thurs. taping. We were to report to the show's 44th Street studio by 2 p.m. After a panic over the possibility of not meeting dress code, a serious scare over an almost-parking ticket thanks to Pleasantville's extreme deficiency of long-term spaces, and one mad dash to Metro North, the Paw Print represent was, as Ray would say, "good to go." We arrived just in time to converge with the crowd outside being broken up and ushered into the studio lobby.
Upon entering the building, we were greeted with a Disney World-like queue line leading up to an airport-style security checkpoint. After being cleared of attempting to smuggle in camcorders, meandering through the metal detector and, in my case, getting the wand (thanks, huge belt buckle), we ascended upstairs in an elevator ride overcrowded with excitement…and overly excited people. But who wouldn't be? We were all about to see the Rachael Ray Show, and appear in a live studio audience! Soon enough, the doors opened to an effulgent orange hallway that shined arguably even brighter than Ray's perky personality.
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