CLP 2010: Day 7, Friday, June 4

College Leaders Program Class of 2010
Day 7—Friday, June 4
Reported by: Dakota Thomas, the University of Virginia's College at Wise

The day began at a somewhat muggy 9 a.m. for us. It seems, though, that the AC in the building finally works, which means the problem has gone from being too hot in the building to being entirely too cold in the building, but we digress. The first thing we did was have class with Dr. Kidd, which we later continued after our speaker.

Class this morning went along with our readings regarding the General Assembly, the Executive Branch (namely the Governor), and the Judiciary. We discussed such ideas as institutional inertia; the tendency of a legislative institution dominated by one party to diverge from its intended purpose of representing everyone, become dominated by a few elites, and be unable to reverse itself; and the idea of institutional creep–in the same one-party-dominated system, the internal bureaucratic systems expand more than needed in order to make it look like everyone is actually doing some work for their constituents.

We went on to discuss the Republican reforms to the House of Delegates when they took over, from the streamlining of the committee and subcommittee systems to the practical elimination of the seniority system, all of which gave enormous powers to the Speaker. We then delved into the issue of African American members of the legislature, their inability to get anything done early on, and the formation of the Virginia Black Legislators Caucus. We then discussed how the Governor had become more important in recent times due to Federal responsibilities being shifted onto states, and we briefly covered the Judicial Branch.

Our speaker for the day was Andrew Lamar, Special Assistant for Policy Development to Governor McDonnell. What followed was an interesting, although somewhat sleepy-eyed, discussion of the state of the Republican Party in Virginia, and the usual round of intense questions from my classmates.

After dinner, the Youth Programs Coordinators took us all to Fridays After Five, a sort of local Charlottesville tradition, where they introduced us to a group of international students who were studying topics closely related to the ones we are studying. It was an absolute pleasure to meet them; they were all very funny, although it was hard to hear anything over the bands playing nearby. Later, some classmates and I went out for dinner where we discussed some tough topics in politics. And that was today in the CLP.