Yesterday I had the joy of opening my students' eyes to a new world -- for the second time this semester. We took a "field trip" to the Colorado State Capitol to see a legislative hearing and talk to a lobbyist. We're going back on Wednesday for a legislative tour. Then we'll go back again next week for a meeting with the speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives.
I teach college students who have been exposed to a lot of political ideas, but their knowledge of how politics actually happen is limited to sound bites on TV. By and large, they're more in tune with what's going on nationally, and they have little clue that what happens at the state and local levels actually has more of an impact on their daily lives than anything in Washington. They are all journalism students, and part of my job is to introduce them to the "real stuff" they'll be covering as journalists.
The course I'm teaching is called Contemporary Issues. The course description is vague, and it's been passed around a lot from instructor to instructor through the years. I wanted to teach it, in part, for the challenge of taking something undefined and not only giving it legs to stand on, but making it cool and memorable. I chose to look in-depth at two topics: Religion and politics. Why those two? Because they evoke passion, commitment and controversy. And if journalists don't know how to cover these, they don't know how to cover anything.
For the first part of the semester, we looked at issues of faith and spirituality. I have some expertise in this area because I covered faith issues for seven years. I brought in guest speakers who had some sort of faith story to tell -- a Vietnamese Catholic priest who escaped from Vietnam in the early 1980s, a friend whose brother died in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. citizens until 9/11 (the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland), a representative from a church on campus that feeds the homeless on a daily basis, a woman involved in a fatal shooting at a church.
Too often the media cover faith and religion only during a crisis. (Case in point: How many of us knew much about Islam before 9/11?) I brought these people into my class to show my students that faith happens every day, not just during "big" events. Many of my students have little if no faith background at all, and they were amazed at the stories they heard. They had emotional connections to the guest speakers' stories. Their eyes were opened to things they'd never considered before -- certainly things they're usually not asked to think about for a college class.
Their eyes were opened again yesterday for our first trip to the Colorado State Capitol, which is mere blocks from our campus. I learned from asking them to look up some information related to politics and government that their knowledge of the political process goes about as deep as their knowledge of faith and religion. I'm no expert, either, but I was surprised to find out that I need to go back and cover things they should have learned in middle school social studies -- things like what's in the U.S. Constitution, why there are only two senators from each state and what legislators actually do.
My students aren't alone, however. Much of the adult population in the United States has little knowledge of appreciation of the political process in this country. I know the reasons are varied, and much of it boils down to a distrust in government. It's understandable. So we tune out, criticize, draw sweeping conclusions and forfeit our right to be involved. We depend on political ads to make decisions about what and who we vote for . . . or we don't vote at all because we've decided the system is "screwed up" and our vote doesn't matter anyway.
But our perceptions aren't always right, and frankly, I think we give up too easily. We've become what I call "opinionators," willing to spout off our complaints and what we think, only to those who don't have any part in changing anything. Instead of becoming part of the process, we embrace negativity and pessimism and feel justified in it.
Yesterday I and my students attended a legislative hearing for a bill that involved the college where I teach. The hearing wasn't long, and nothing surprising happened during it. What did surprise me, though, was to find out that average, everyday citizens rarely show up or speak at hearings like that, even though they have every right to. Since I nor my students have ever attended a hearing at the State Capitol, we had no idea that our presence there was . . . unique. The lobbyist we talked to later said, "Did you see the legislators' eyes light up when they realized you were there? They're not used to seeing citizens. Usually people don't care. Government happens because of those who show up."
And who shows up? The reporters are there to cover what happens. The lobbyists are there to defend their clients' interests.
And that's about it.
I'd venture to guess most people don't even know that anyone has the right to attend a legislative hearing -- or a court hearing for that matter. That's what it means to have an open government -- you can show up and be heard and have more of an influence than you think you'll ever have, not just for yourself, but for your neighbor and your community. Yes, you elect people to represent you, but there's also a place for you. It's what our forefathers and mothers more than 200 years ago sacrificed to give us. And many of us, sadly, are too self-involved to care.
I walked away yesterday with a meaningful reminder that we live in a great country. Our political system has its problems. I've complained about it like all of us have. But I shudder to think of what it would be like to live in a system where decisions are made behind closed doors, where there is no consideration for the well-being of the people, where average, everyday citizens cannot just "show up," listen in and speak.
My students weren't the only ones whose eyes were opened yesterday. Mine were, too.
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