Connecticut Students Question Policymakers in Washington
By Emily Beaver
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 -Women with fluffy hairdos, men wearing cowboy hats, boy scouts covered in merit badges, and flustered Washington interns acting as tour guides packed the US Capitol building Tuesday morning. Standing in the center of the Capitol, a group of students from East Lyme High School snapped pictures of the historical statues and murals.
“It’s so beautiful here in Washington,” senior Caitlin Zito said, resting on bench as the students neared the end of their tour of the Capitol.
Jessica Johnston, another East Lyme senior, plunked down next to Zito.
“I’m in heaven right now,” Johnston said, gazing at the elaborate columns surrounding her. “Architecture and government are my two favorite things.”
Johnston and Zito are two of 11 seniors in a contemporary issues class from East Lyme High School. The class, along with teacher Rose Ann Hardy, traveled to Washington, D.C. Monday. The group planned to meet with policymakers and to see President George W. Bush when he is sworn into office Thursday.
The trip was coordinated through a non-profit organization called Washington Workshops Foundation, which runs educational seminars for high school and middle school students. The group will stay at the Trinity College Campus in Washington until they return to Connecticut on Sunday.
After months of fundraising and planning, the group departed for Washington on Monday. However, their Amtrak train was delayed in Milford for two hours after a man was fatally struck by the train outside the station.
“We could tell there was some kind of obstruction,” student Matt Rose said Thursday. “We were stopped for two hours.”
Hardy had arranged for the students to meet with U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd and Rob Simmons. When the students arrived at Dodd’s office Tuesday morning, they were greeted by aides who offered to answer their questions in place of the senator. Dodd would miss the session due to Condoleezza Rice’s senate confirmation hearing, his staff members told the East Lyme group.
The students fired policy questions at two aides: What is the senator’s stance on the death penalty? What about abortion and gay marriage? Senator Dodd went to Venezuela last
week to meet with President Hugo Chavez-doesn’t that cost taxpayers a lot of money?
The senator is pro-choice and voted against amending the constitution to ban gay marriage, one aide said, but could not answer the other questions. Several of the students later said they were disappointed with the meeting with the aides.
“You never got a straight answer,” student Aleks Keser said.
The group got a straight answer from Rob Simmons, however, when student Meghan Purdy asked the congressman about his recent statements about Social Security reform. Simmons was quoted in the Jan. 11 Washington Post as saying “When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead then.”
Purdy told Simmons she would still be alive then and asked what he planned to do about Social Security.
Simmons told Purdy the statement she read in the newspaper was a response to a question about the urgency of Social Security. Medicare reform and relief for tsunami victims in Southeast Asia are more urgent priorities, he said. It will be a long time before the Social Security program fails, he said.
“The point I was trying to make was that that is a long time in the future,” he said. “Too bad for me for being so candid.”
Afterwards, Purdy said although Simmons’s answer “sounded kind of suspect,” she was satisfied with his response. Purdy said his remarks in the newspaper had concerned her, but she understood that the quote was only part of his statement about Social Security.
In addition to visiting the White House and the Supreme Court, the East Lyme students participated in a Model Congress at Trinity College Wednesday morning.
“We divided into groups and wrote bills about issues like the environment and the military,” student Tess Kohanski said.
The group will watch as Bush is sworn in as president today. They also plan to attend the inaugural parade and a Youth Inaugural Ball on the Potomac River. They will return to Connecticut on Sunday.
