VANESSA KERRY SPEAKS AT RALLY ON MERION GREEN

About 200 people attended a campaign and voter-registration rally hosted by the Bryn Mawr College Democrats and featuring Vanessa Kerry, daughter of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, on Thursday, Sept. 30, at 3 p.m. on Merion Green. Kerry, speaking at her third rally of the day (she earlier visited Villanova and West Chester Universities, and is scheduled to appear at the University of Pennsylvania tonight), urged students to vote and otherwise become involved in the political process. After an address advocating her father's candidacy, she answered audience questions on topics including same-sex marriage and the makeup of the Supreme Court. The event coincided with a voter-registration drive as the Pennsylvania registration deadline of Oct. 4 approaches.

Kerry, 27, is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University. During her first two years as a student at Harvard Medical School, she spent several months working for the Vaccine Fund, an international nonprofit dedicated to child immunization, to conduct a study of newly introduced vaccines in Ghana. She has recently won a Fulbright Fellowship to study health policy, planning and financing in a joint program of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics. Kerry has said that her decision to enter the field of global health was inspired by a trip she took to Vietnam with her father.

Vanessa Kerry, along with her older sister Alex, introduced John Kerry before he accepted the Democratic Party's presidential nomination at this summer's Democratic National Convention in Boston. Since the convention, Vanessa has played a public role in supporting the Kerry candidacy, often addressing health-care and education issues.

Volunteers registered voters on site at the Kerry address, said Bryn Mawr Democrats Co-President Rachel Steinberg. She stresses that any U.S. citizen who is over 18 and has been resident in the state for the 30 days prior to the November election is eligible to vote in Pennsylvania.

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