CLP 08 Day 20 Thursday June 19

College Leaders Program Class of 2008
Day 20—Thursday, June 19, 2008
Reported by Hunter Fairchild of Lynchburg College

     With hump day behind us, the 2008 College Leaders Program woke Thursday morning knowing that we were nearing the end of our third week with the Sorensen Institute.  I would venture to guess that none of us are particularly looking forward to the end of the ’08 CLP, given the close friends that we’ve grown accustom to living (and debating) with. However, it’s nice to be able to look back on our accomplishments so far, and know that we’re almost 75% of the way to receiving that prestigious Sorensen alumni lapel pin.
     We started the morning off with a three hour session of “The Informed Citizen.” This marks the 2nd class that we will have with Dr. Shields, a professor from the University of Richmond.  One of the main components of this morning’s class was a discussion regarding who the actual insiders and outsiders of creating legislation are. Another particularly valuable discussion was in regards to the morality of politicians, and where the line is drawn between fully representing your constituents and simply trying to get re-elected. With no surprise, this spurred quite a bit of controversy among class members. Then, sticking with the theme of morality, we went on to define what describes a good lobbyist. And to top off the morning, Dr. Shields finished his material about 10 minutes early, which leads to the real highlight of the day… lunch.
     Our typical lunch normally involves a cold cut sandwich and some potato chips. However, today’s lunch was Thai food.  Several people simply couldn’t get past the way the food looked. Needless to say, a few of them decided that a trip to Chik-fil-A was in order. Some of us, though, (myself included) enjoyed the opportunity to try something new.
     First thing after lunch, we were supposed to hear from a speaker by the name of Don Hall in regards to lobbying. However, Mr. Hall was unable to make it, so we had a brief discussion about our culminating projects. Next we heard from Doug and Peter Easter, a father-son lobbying team. Their talk was quite similar to many of the other speakers that we’ve heard from. However, it’s the way they ended their session that was so enjoyable. They split us into 5 different groups, and gave us each a topic that we were responsible for lobbying to a delegate, and 5 minutes to discuss it. At the end, they acted as the delegates, and we lobbied away. I must say that I think that they were surprised to find that, despite their efforts to throw their toughest questions at us, we successfully covered all the ins and outs of each topic. They seemed impressed.
     Following the Easter’s, we received a very interesting presentation from Dick Lindsay, a gerontologist and medical professor at UVA. In just over an hour, Dr. Lindsay presented a humorous and information-packed power point that opened our eyes to the truth about the aging population that we will soon face. The following are just a few of the many questions that his talk posed: How much will life expectancies increase? Who will take care of these people that live longer? What will we do about the lack of gerontologists? It also made it quite clear that the answer to all of these questions lie within the hands of people our age.
     To finish off the day, Cathy Harding, editor of the C-ville Weekly, spoke about opinion writing. It quickly became evident that a large part of opinion writing, or op-eds, is based upon the audience to which you’re writing. For instance, 95% of the C-ville Weekly readers are college educated. This makes a big difference in the issues that they choose to write about, and the language that they choose to convey their message.
     All in all, Thursday was a pretty beneficial day.  Sure, sometimes we get a little bored sitting in the same classroom all day. But I think that we all realize that each day we’re receiving opportunities that virtually no one else our age gets to experience; or of any age for that matter. In speaking with my family recently, I said, “Sure, sometimes I get bored sitting in class. But I can’t deny the fact that each day I go to bed smarter than when I woke up.”

—Hunter Fairchild, Fluvanna
    Lynchburg College Class of 2010
    College Leaders Program Class of 2008