Georgetown College Students Enact Real Change in Congress
June 15, 2010
While many students were worried about upcoming final papers or final exams, Upjohn Lecturer on Physics and Public Policy Francis Slakey’s students were wondering if their resolution would be introduced in Congress. In his Shaping National Science Policy seminar, students were tasked with designing real world projects that would improve society through science. One of the groups created a Web site, switchbags.org, and wrote a policy resolution which calls for a 40 percent reduction in
plastic bag distribution over five years. The resolution—H.R. 1298, titled Encouraging efforts to reduce the use of paper and plastic bags—was introduced to lawmakers in Congress by Representative Jim Moran, Northern Virginia Democrat and Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee for the Interior and Environment.
The seminar is part of a bigger project, the Program on Science in the Public Interest, which Slakey co-directs. The program works to promote “direct dialogue with the government, industry, and the community on critical scientific issues and helps to develop the next generation of citizen scientists.”
Slakey designed the seminar to “take science outside the classroom and build a better world,” he said. “That's not too much to expect. After all, Rep. Moran was right when he praised the students for making a valuable contribution to the environmental movement and to Congress.”
Students were joined in the classroom by congressional science staffers, journalists and lobbyists. The tactic of connecting students with people working in government has been consistently successful: In addition to the plastic bag resolution introduced by his students this year, students in Slakey’s Science in the Public Interest program have seen three bills they helped initiate signed into law, including one supporting green buildings on university campuses and another granting loan forgiveness to nursing students.
Rep. Moran acknowledged the students from the seminar in his press release on the reusable bag resolution, which as of May 1, 2010 had collected 25 cosponsors. “This resolution was brought to my attention by two enterprising Georgetown University students, Mariel Reed and Brian Lin. Together with their fellow classmates they drafted the resolution in response to a bill I introduced last year to tax plastic and paper bag use. They used my bill as a case study on environmental legislation. Both students are very bright and realized that there is little prospect my bag tax bill would be enacted. My bill does point toward a worthwhile objective, and it builds on the actions of several local and foreign initiatives that have met with success. But, there is no group or organization that has backed it and few Members today prefer to be on record supporting a tax increase…And here is the second lesson these Georgetown students came to realize and what remains a valuable lesson that the environmental community needs to appreciate as a movement. The public and many elected officials are not always in sync with what we need to do to restore the environment and preserve it for future generations.”
One of the students mentioned in Rep. Moran’s press release, recent graduate Brian Lin (C’10), explained how the seminar has expanded his academic horizons: “Professor Slakey's class gave me the opportunity to really explore the American political system in a way that I had never seen it before, and to learn the intricacies of how policy gets turned into law,” he said. “Being able to have an actual, tangible impact, however small, on Congress in the form of our resolution in the House of Representatives was an amazing and empowering experience. It taught me possibly the most important lesson I've learned at Georgetown:(A)ny person in the US can get involved in government and let their voices be heard, and that civic activism is crucial because it really does matter. I'm so grateful for this course; it was definitely one of those opportunities that you can only find at Georgetown.”
For more information, see switchbags.org.
Click here for the full text of Representative Moran’s press release.
Seminar participant Mariel Reed (C’10) wrote an article that appeared in her local newspaper about reducing plastic bag consumption.
-Gabrielle Matthews
Photo of Francis Slakey courtesy of the Program on Science in the Public Interest Web site.
