"This past week at the Sorensen Institute has been filled with all sorts of political fun.

We have been split up into groups to focus on a specific area of Virginia law that we would like to change, or a policy we would like to implement. At the end of the program we will submit our policies to legislators in an attempt to have them drafted into bills that will hopefully pass the General Assembly and change things within the state that young people think need to be fixed.

Also we traveled to Washington DC on Friday and met with George W. Bush’s youth outreach coordinator, and we also met with John Kerry’s deputy outreach coordinator. Unfortunately it appears as though the Kerry Campaign does not want to take advantage of any young people’s help in Virginia by sending an under-prepared college student to speak to other college students. Facing George W. Bush by not even trying to impress some of the most politically aware and politically active students within Virginia is very disappointing and scary that Virginia will not keep turning blue.

The other students in the program felt as though the national Kerry campaign does not care about the help they can reach in Virginia, and the young woman from his headquarters did not even know if the Kerry campaign was ever going to contact VYD Clubs or return messages that clubs have sent the Kerry campaign.

After that depressing event we had the pleasure of a speech writing class taught by our own Greg Werkheiszer who has previously written speeches for both of the Clintons. When Greg was finished giving us a crash course in speech writing we attended a live broadcast of CNN’s Crossfire. Al Sharpton was invited to co-host but was then uninvited after the execution of an American in Saudi Arabia. The producers of Crossfire believed that Mr. Sharpton was unable and not well versed in the subject area to hold a good debate, so no fun times with Al were had.

On Sunday we attended a taping of the American Candidate, a new reality television show that will be shown on Showtime. Montell Williams told us the show was meant to get young people involved and interested in politics again, but from what we saw from the poor production staff and the quality of the “candidates,” I doubt many young people will watch the show or even be interested by the lackluster personalities by the candidates. Other than that the CLP has been very fun and interesting so far, and of course I have to read more tonight for our class tomorrow." (Shawn Healy, Virginia Young Democrats Blog, June 20, 2004)

Editor's Note: See also Participants in Sorensen Institute's College Leaders Program Attend 'American Candidates' Charlottesville Town Meeting.