Newsroom Archive for 06/17, 2010

College Leaders Program Class of 2010
Day 17—Tuesday, June 15
Reported by: Ramon Gamble, Virginia Commonwealth University

“The default setting of American politics is conflict.” This is the message our class was left to think about as our session ended yesterday, and it is the one thought that has been running through my head since then.

Over the last two weeks, my classmates and I have been asked to keep in mind the creed of this program, and to continually contemplate the “core” values of the Sorensen Institute: trust, respect, and civility. And upon graduation, exercise these values to make an attempt to move beyond partisanship. I’ve sat through a little over 40 speakers (It’s incredible how many speakers we’ve been able to hear in only 19 days.), and not one has openly talked about the necessity of conflict in politics. In fact, I can’t recall even one who hasn’t insisted that he or she has persistently aligned themselves with the core values we are being taught to manifest in Sorensen. This is interesting. To echo some of the talk I overheard on our bus, as we were leaving the capital this afternoon, “Isn’t it a little weird that every single speaker we’ve had so far fully supports ‘bi-partisanship,’ yet as soon as you turn on a TV, or read a newspaper, or bring up a blog all you will ever hear is how much these guys are fighting with each other?” Yes. It is weird indeed.

I asked Senator Warner what he thought about the confrontational overtones Madison wove into his contributions to the Federalist Papers, particularly No. 51. His response was typical of our speakers thus far. He verbalized that there must continue to be some kind of combative discourse—for opposition is a healthy and necessary part of legislating. The real problem, he said, “is the 24/7 coverage of the media.” He argued that the media was doing our nation a disservice by solely focusing its lens on cases of inter-party strife, effectively demonically distorting day-to-day politics.

There seems to be a consensus among the politicians we have hosted: “the media is bad,” specifically the “24/7” media—referring primarily to TV. Now, I rarely watch TV, so the blatant anti-TV trolling I’ve experienced has been quite shocking. It generally goes like this: “The availability of an incessant news stream forces media outlets to continually one-up themselves. And the only way to continually catch the attention of viewers is to become increasingly provocative. The increased provocativeness consequently transforms political news into entertainment news. And because politics is reduced to entertainment it is viewed as trivial by the masses.” 

But is it really the media’s fault that our generation can’t seem to be concerned with politics? Who knows? This week we start our “Media 101” class modules. Hopefully Coy can impart some substantial information on this subject.  

College Leaders Program Class of 2010
Day 18-Wednesday June 16
Reported by: William Pace, Hampden-Sydney College

Yesterday was an incredible day that I will never forget since I love going to Capitol Hill.  We went to Washington D.C. to meet both U.S. Senators and five of the eleven U.S. Representatives from Virginia.  Since the Sorensen staff thought that we have done an amazing job thus far in our two and a half weeks together, they decided to give us a break for this morning.

Some of us slept until lunch, but I woke up at 8:30 a.m. instead of 6:30 a.m. as I usually would.  Instead of sleeping, I spent my free time catching up on my assigned reading and analyzing the results of the special elections in the 26th and 27th House Districts that saw Tony Wilt and Roxann Robinson win their respective elections last night.  Turnout for the 26th District Special Election was 25% while turnout for the 27th District Special Election was almost 9%, a large difference between the two.  It interested me that one Special Election for a Delegate seat was fairly high while the other was very low.

We all made it for lunch, even though the lunch arrived a little late, but no worries.  We were entertained during lunch about a friend of the Sorensen Institute being mentioned on the Daily Show.  Shortly after lunch, Joe Stanley, the Director of Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, spoke to us about his time as a Legislative Assistant for former Delegate Frank Hall, his college experiences at Virginia Commonwealth University, and how he became a lobbyist.  I wanted to ask him why he was associated with his political party, since I always ask this question to any speaker.  However, one of my classmates stole the question from me.  Joe Stanley explained “my” question by discussing why he was a progressive.  We enjoyed listening to Joe Stanley.

After his talk, Dr. Bragaw lectured us about efficiency and equality and how both relate to the formulation of public policy. One thing that I learned from Dr. Bragaw's lecture was that although everyone has one equal vote, our votes never result in an equal outcome.  Aspects of life might start as being equal, but it rarely results in an equal outcome.  I believe that it was important for us to understand this concept since we want to aim for equality.

Overall, I am enjoying my time at the College Leaders Program.  I cannot believe that we only have ten days left of this incredible journey.