Political Sightseeing

For the California college students who used politically charged Boston as a classroom during the last two weeks, the details of government and presidential elections were lived as well as learned.

While other young people may have caught glimpses of the Democratic National Convention on MTV or CNN, these students were working at the gathering that nominated Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry for president last week. They worked security at the Fleet Center, served as assistants to newspaper and television operations, checked credentials at a delegation breakfast and helped officials during a golf tournament.

“You learn a lot more about politics when you actually experience the Washington scene rather than reading about it in a book,” said Matthew Delja, a sophomore at Loyola Marymount University. He is one of the Los Angeles-area students who enrolled in the convention program. “Not only do you see how it works, you also affect the way it works.”

Along with 229 other students, Delja was part of Campaign 2004: The National Political Conventions, a program sponsored by the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. The nonprofit educational organization also places college students in internships and seminars in the nation’s capital.

Students from 25 states and six foreign countries participated in the two-week program, including some from Loyola Marymount, UC Davis, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, Cal State Hayward and Cal State Dominguez Hills.

During the first week in Boston, students attended seminars taught by college professors and political figures, including Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, several delegates and the last Democratic presidential nominee from Massachusetts, former Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

Students explored whether elections matter and whether conventions are necessary. They discussed the effects of having television networks sharply cutting back on live coverage of political conventions.

In the second week, they were assigned to complete six hours of fieldwork within the convention -- working with the news media, the host committee, state delegations and other political organizations, such as EMILY’s List, which helps female Democrats run for local, state and federal office, and the National Jewish Democratic Council.

“Being in the classroom is important and the information they learn in the classroom is equally important,” said Matt Streb, assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University, who accompanied 18 students to the event. “But experiential learning is an incredibly powerful way to learn.”

Delja, 19, volunteered to check credentials within Fleet Center. He interviewed a delegate and learned about how one becomes a delegate and the voting process at conventions. He met former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, TV personality Jerry Springer, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and former President Carter -- and that was all in the first day.

On the last night, he worked at the Fleet Center suite for friends of vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards (D-North Carolina) and watched Kerry’s acceptance speech inside the hall. After the convention ended, he stood at the podium and faced the lingering crowd.

“That’d be fantastic to run for president and make policy changes and get people to want to change the country,” Delja said. “I always assumed I’d study law, but now I’m considering going into politics.”

Eugene Alpert, senior vice president for the Washington Center and overseer of the convention program, described the experience as “learning on a need-to-know basis.”

“In the classroom they’re told what they have to know. Here they devise their own learning plan about what they’re interested in and how to learn about what they are interested in. So they need to ask questions, they need to find out how things work, ... they have to be resourceful,” he said.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst and senior scholar at the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development, said the right combination of hands-on work and fun during the convention is as academically important as political theory.

“I don’t think you can really understand politics in this country or state without having a close education in it, even if it is for two weeks,” she said. Jeffe said she has had students enroll in the Washington Center but not in the recent convention program.

Some students in the program received academic credit. For example, those from Loyola Marymount will receive three credits counting toward an elective course.

The program costs students $3,500, which covers housing at a dorm near the convention site and organizing discussions with political figures. Although the program does not give scholarships, many schools assist with the fee.

As a political science major, Johanna Gach Saylor already had studied U.S. government, election policy and the presidency. But the recent Cal State Dominguez Hills graduate said the two-week experience taught her some valuable lessons.

“Politics is a game,” Gach Saylor said. “It’s a lot of swapping business cards and shaking hands. I saw so much politics happening while nobody was looking. It wasn’t negotiating at the statehouse but it was happening all around me.”

So Gach Saylor, 29, who is starting the Western State College of Law in Orange County, engaged in a few political moves of her own. Because the program does not guarantee students credentials to watch the action from inside the convention center, participants had to be gutsy, innovative and in the right place at the right time.

Gach Saylor spent a lot of time at the hotel for the California Delegation and noticed that delegates were using a cork board to leave messages. So she left one of her own: “California Student in Need of Credentials Please Call.” The plea landed her a two-night pass, one for the night of Edwards’ address.

“It’s all about networking,” Gach Saylor said. “Nothing happens if you don’t put yourself out there. You’re not going to get anything if you don’t do it on your own.”

For Arjun Wilkins, 17, the two-week experience brought to life everything he had read about conventions in his American history textbook. Wilkins, who will be a freshman at UCLA in September, met Dean and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and attended the speeches of former President Clinton, Edwards and Kerry. He said the experience reinforced his choice for president in November and solidified his desire to enter politics.

“You learned a lot more here about how we, as a nation, choose our president than you would learn in just a class in high school,” Wilkins said. “We’re choosing the most powerful person in the world in this election, and it’s critical all Americans understand how we do that.”