CHARLOTTESVILLE

Erin Garratt woke up Monday morning supporting Barack Obama for president. By late afternoon, the college student was sporting “Hillary” stickers on her coat.

She and other students said they changed their minds after Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed an American Politics 101 class Monday at the University of Virginia .

The New York senator, locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination, answered questions about issues and her background.

“I thought she was amazing,” Garratt said. “I definitely jumped on the Obama bandwagon, but I’m a Hillary person now.”

Clinton, rushing to make up a 13-percentage-point deficit in the polls to Obama before today’s Virginia primary, spoke to about 600 students in a class taught by political scientist Larry Sabato.

Obama did not campaign in Virginia on Monday. He had scheduled a morning event in Roanoke, but high winds kept him from flying there Sunday night.

Across the Potomac River, Obama also spoke to college students. He told a cheering throng of 17,000 at the University of Maryland that he is the only candidate who can lead the country out of an era of divisive and ineffective government.

“It looks like we’re having March madness a little early,” the Illinois senator told supporters at the university’s basketball arena. He talked about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, ending the Iraq war and taking on Clinton.

“We need something new,” he said, dismissing Clinton’s suggestions that he is not tough enough to handle the White House’s rigors.

“I may be skinny, but I’m tough,” he said, drawing loud cheers.

Clinton’s event at U.Va., by contrast, was more low-key. Campaign workers tried to hand out stickers to the students in line outside Cabell Hall as they waited to clear metal detectors so they could attend their class. Many of the students declined the tags.

When Clinton walked on stage, there was no special response from the students – just polite applause.

Clinton leaned forward in her big chair and spoke in a conversational tone, always gesticulating with her right hand.

“Politics, as far as I’m concerned, is really not a game,” she said. “It’s how you make decisions. It’s not who’s up and who’s down. That’s the game. At the end of the day, we have to answer for our decisions.”

After a few minutes of opening words, Sabato invited his students to question Clinton.

“Who wants to be brave and go first?” he asked.

No hands immediately went up.

“Well, who wants an A?” Sabato asked.

Hands rose.

A student in a yellow hooded sweat shirt and jeans asked what Clinton enjoyed most about being in politics.

“It’s the personal experience, being invited into people’s lives,” she said, explaining that people often come to politicians seeking help for deep personal problems.

A student wearing a tie and blue dress shirt asked her position on biofuels. Clinton said she supported research but that the United States must find more efficient biofuels than corn and sugar cane. She called for an end to tax subsidies for oil companies.

One woman asked how she would pay for her universal health care plan. Clinton said she would produce some money by beginning to pull troops out of Iraq. She said she could generate revenue by letting President Bush’s tax cuts end for people earning more than $250,000.

Clinton paused when asked to name the most influential figure in her political career. She mentioned her husband, former President Bill Clinton, only fleetingly and in a list of other Democratic presidents.

Then she spoke for several minutes about Nelson Mandela, who fought against apartheid and was jailed for almost 30 years in South Africa before becoming that nation’s president. She recalled visiting him as first lady and being surprised when he introduced her to several of his guards from prison.

“He said, 'The thing I learned from being in prison all those years is that you have to give up whatever hate you have or you will always be imprisoned,’” she recalled.

Clinton said she is a Methodist but made a strong call for the separation of church and state. She backed embryonic stem cell research. She said that for all the partisan wars in Washington, a lot of Democrats and Republicans in Congress have good personal relations.

“When you get to know the people personally, it destroys a lot of the stereotypes,” she said.

She disagreed with a student who supported the Bush tax cuts, suggesting he favored the rich over the middle class.

“I don’t think rich people make American great,” she said. “I think working people and the middle class makes America great.”

A student from Connecticut estimated his parents pay $500,000 to send their children to colleges and asked what could be done to help them. Clinton called for annual tax credits of $3,500 for each child in college and said the federal government should get back in the business of underwriting tuition loans. The students gave Clinton their biggest round of applause.

Filing out of the class, many of the students said they were deeply impressed.

“I was pulling for Obama to win, but now I don’t know,” said Alan Basmajian, a sophomore from Richmond.

Ross Lawrence, a freshman from Henrico County, said: “I still kind of like Obama’s bipartisan appeal. Hillary is a little polarizing. But I feel better about her now. I think she’d make a fine president.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Warren Fiske, (804) 697-1565, warren.fiske@pilotonline.com