It's Your Model Congress!

Thirty years ago, I attended my first Model Congress as a Vineland High School sophomore.  I hope I will attend them for another thirty years.  No matter what else I’ve done in my career, I have always made room for Model Congress, and a lot of the reason to do with that very first one.

 

The bill I sponsored didn’t make it to the floor of the Senate or the House.  But one of my classmates’ bills did.  We weren’t particularly close, but we lined up our entire class to help make sure the bill passed.  Everyone had a job to do, and we thought of everything. We left no detail to chance.  We even spaced ourselves throughout the auditorium to boost our chances of being recognized to raise points of inquiry or take the floor.  After all these years, I remember that the bill required drivers to be retested upon reaching 65.  And I still remember the great thrill that came from coming together to accomplish our common goal.  We were underclassmen going up against mostly seniors—very intimidating seniors who were great debaters trying to get their own bills passed.  We lined up people from other schools to help us, promising help in return, and forging new friendships along the way.

 

You could never learn these lessons from a textbook.  That’s what I adore about Model Congress.  Our Model Congress is not the only one around, but we have some very definite elements that make ours stand out:

 

1. We strongly believe that it is our job to organize the days for you, give you the most professional framework we can, and then turn over the keys.  This is a student-led Congress.  We’re here to help, but it’s your Congress.  You make it go.  You give it the qualities and characteristics it takes on.  Each one is different.  This year’s Congress will be exactly what you make of it.

2. We do not make use of adults or college students as chairs.  Every leader you see is a peer.  If there is a position you’d be interested in pursuing next year, let your teacher know, so you can plan to be at our pre-Congress Party Day and Leadership Day.  Again, every year’s class of chairs is going to be different, and that’s part of the strength of our program.

3. We believe that the presence of political parties in our simulation adds a dimension of clash, competitiveness, and ideology.  In fact, we’d welcome thoughts and ideas about building further institutions into our Congress—interest groups and/or mass media, for example.  We’d want to do it in an organized, non-chaotic way, but the widespread use of cell phones and easy availability of blogs or other web tools makes a lot possible.  The sky is the limit.

I guess this blog entry is more reflection than helpful hint, but here’s the point: there is plenty of excitement to be had at Model Congress; it’s up to you where to find it.  We have not told you to put your phones away because we know they can be powerful tools for on-the-spot research and other ways of making the best use of technology.  But that should never, ever be an excuse to sit on your phone rather than participate in debate.  You will only be selling yourself short.  You can either come away from Congress with an experience profound enough to have an impact for decades, or not.  It’s up to you.