Students go to state capitols March 26 for lively debates on U.S. policy On Friday, March 26, high school students in Nebraska and Connecticut will visit their state capitols to debate environmental, trade and other policy issues with elected officials. The students are studying and debating these issues in classrooms as part of the Capitol Forum on America's Future, sponsored by Brown University. The Capitol Forum on America's Future is a program sponsored by Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies that confronts young people with controversial issues and hard choices.
Additional information is available online.
The Capitol Forum educates students about politics and their stake in the political process. Supporters hope the Capitol Forum will help to reverse declining voter turnout and apathy. Nationwide, fewer than one in five people age 18 to 24 bothered to vote in the 1998 mid-term election, according to the National Association of Secretaries of State. The program is presented to high schools in cooperation with Nebraska Secretary of State Scott Moore and Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz and is sponsored by the Nebraska Humanities Council and the Connecticut League of Women Voters. Young people surveyed by the National Association of Secretaries of State say that no one in politics seems to hear their voices.