Newsroom Archive for 07/22, 2008

High School Leaders Program Class of 2008
Day 11, Tuesday, July 22
Reported by: Mitch Caudill and Emily Marshall

     Today was definitely the best day so far at Sorensen, if such a distinguishing mark is possible. Nothing beats waking up and seeing the faces of peers who, while tired from a late night of paper writing and revising, are ready for a new day ahead. After arriving to class an hour earlier then normal we were presented with our challenge. Divided into groups to simulate the House and Senate of the General Assembly, we were tasked with balancing a $1 billion dollar budget deficit. There were moments of haggling, moments of bargaining, moments of despair but finally, somehow, after two hours, both the House and the Senate passed budgets that provided not only for the deficit but fixed Virginia’s transportation problem as well. Sadly, they did so in different ways. Thus we divided into Conference Committees to sort out the problem, and after two more hours of negotiation reached a solution and passed the budget with applause. While we may not all have learned how to win friends and influence people, we all did learn the importance of compromise and trade-offs, as well as the general importance of a variety of issues to ourselves and the Commonwealth. Sadly though, we had to say good-bye to Dr. Shields (since this was our last class with him), who had encouraged our thoughts and expanded our knowledge about public policy and the process that forms it. Then utterly exhausted and definitely hungry, we proceeded to lunch where old rivalries still heated up and one could hear the occasional muttering of taxes vs. spending cuts, and transportation vs. education.
     After being nourished, we had a full slate of speakers in the afternoon, each offering a unique perspective. The Charlottesville Chief of Police spoke candidly about his job, and our roles in concept of communal policing. His ideas and points are applicable to nearly all future occupations, as he talked about building relationships and trust within the community, knowing the history and values of an area in order to participate, and the current dynamics of Charlottesville. The city Registrar talked of the current voting regulations and encouraged active citizenship and voter registration. Her knowledge and insight to the job of an election worker on Election Day made all of us appreciate the tremendous amount of work they do. Not only that, Helen was able to fill out her Voter Registration form to be able to vote in November’s election.
     Finally, Dr. Haidt of the University of Virginia spoke about morality as it relates to politics. An Associate Professor of Psychology, Dr. Haidt shared with us his hypothesis that traces certain principles of morality in conjunction with political leaning and found that liberals and conservatives value different principles of the same moral system. His lecture encouraged us to transcend our everyday notions to try and understand others viewpoints in order to collaborate in society, which fits with everything we’ve learned about the value of civil discussion here at Sorensen.   
     Sitting here now, it seems hard to believe that there are only four more days left. Those who seemed so new a short week ago are now close friends who we count on for collaboration in projects, advice, late night conversation and so much more. While it’s hard to imagine Sorensen ending, it’s easy to think of all the things we’ll do together in the future.
— Mitch Caudill of Midlothian, Maggie Walker Governor's School Class of 2010

 
     Today was actually my favorite day in the Sorensen HSLP so far!  My day started off fabulously as I had three bowls of Lucky Charms before walking to class at 8 a.m. although my roommate had to ever so politely get me out of bed like she always does.  Today we ended Lens 2: The Thoughtful Citizen with a fantastic game, the Budget Game.  It was the perfect ending to my favorite class at Sorensen.  Dr. Shields divided the thirty-two of us into two groups, the House of Delegates and the Senate, and gave us guidelines to forming a typical Virginia Budget.  Although my mom is on the School Board in Henrico Country and constantly talked about how difficult forming the yearly budget was in January, I never really thought too much about it.  What could be hard about adding and subtracting some numbers, right? Wrong. 
     Forming Virginia's budget in the Senate, the house I was assigned to, was extremely hard.  We had lots of trouble compromising on where to cut the billion dollars worth of funding to get out of deficit, as we did not all agree on what programs and issues were important.  After almost two hours of debating and compromising we finally reached an agreement that raised taxes slightly, but that did not cut any education or Medicare related programs, staying reasonably close to what the real Senate values to be important.  Once the Senate and the House had made their separate budgets, we had the difficult task of combining the two budgets together.  Surprisingly we had a lot of the same ideas on what was important and what was not as important, although we agreed on many of the same issues. We worked hard and prevailed in the end, and the budget that my team devised was voted the winner.
     Later we had three speakers come talk to us about three very interesting but different topics.  Sheri Iachetta spoke to us about managing elections, as she is one of 134 Registrars in Virginia.  I was surprised to learn how complicated organizing an election really is.  Mrs. Iachetta puts hours upon hours into her job, as well as many very late nights.  We also heard from Jonathan Haidt, who spoke about Moralistic Politics.  This discussion was very interesting to me as we discussed different aspects of conservative and liberal party divides, and tried to understand why good people are divided by politics and religion.  We talked about how America is becoming a nation of separate political cultures, and we discussed Mr. Haidt's five moral mind foundations: harm and care. fairness and reciprocity, in-group loyalty, authority and respect, and finally purity and sanctity.  We discussed how different parties might value each of these differently.  My favorite speaker of the day was Charlottesville Chief of Police Tim Longo.  Chief Longo talked to us about how he was a product of experience.  He really emphasized getting to know as many people in your community as possible, because stopping crime is more than just arresting people.  Chief Longo was very candid with his answers to questions, which I appreciated.
     Today was a great day, and I am looking forward to our trip to the capitol tomorrow.  I have made a lot of friends here at Sorensen that I have become really close with even though its only been a little more than a week.  Although this is a demanding curriculum that requires a lot of hard work and effort, I have loved every minute of it.
— Emily Marshall of Richmond, Douglas Southall Freeman High School Class of 2010