Washington, DC
Friday, June 22nd

The first week of the program is wrapping up. This past week was a busy one and as a result the it went by rather quickly. I taught another case study today. This one is called “The Great American Pork Barrel” by Ken Silverstein. It discusses the various threats and abuses of earmarks in appropriations bills. Mr. Silverstein is the Washington editor of Harper Magazine. The kids asked brilliant questions and kept me on my toes. They discussed the pros and cons of getting rid of earmarks as well as possible reform ideas for the earmarks. This was done in anticipation of Silverstein coming to speak to the students right after class. We also passed out His most recent article from Harpers titled, “Their men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.'s lobbyists for hire”. It is a fascinating piece of undercover journalism where he seeks lobbying firms in DC to help improve the image of Turkmenistan. He also appeared today on Bill Moyer’s Journal on PBS to discuss his article. If you go to the link you can watch the portion of Moyer’s interview with Mr. Silvertstein. He truly believes in his role as a government watchdog. I think he and his discussion with the students really help link the role of the print media as public servants in a way many of them did not consider. He also has a very informative blog titled Washington Babylon.

Later in the day we prepped the students for a new feature of the program, the Thursday night debate. We introduced the format today and the first one of three will happen next Thursday. The format is modeled after the St. Albans Government Club. A have a link to a wonderful article by a fellow colleague in the SPS about the history and role of the government club at St. Albans that dates back to the 1930’s and added the girls of the National Cathedral School in the mid 1960’s. I highly recommend that you give it a read. (Gov. Club Story) The topic for the first debate will be immigration. We actually chose that topic well before we realized that it would be the topic of debate on Meet the Press when we are watching the filming.

Later on the evening we gave the students their first unsupervised free time of campus, for a couple hours only. When they returned we watched Black Hawk Down. The testosterone was flowing. The staff hung out for a while after lights out for the students.

It was great Week 1.