The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Elizabeth D. during the 2008-2009 League.
Mission: Tactics - Ambassdaor League SSI Experience
I attended Student Statesmanship Institute (SSI) during its 3rd and final week of the summer. The 3rd week, I was told, was considerably smaller, so I was able to get to know a lot of people, which I enjoyed very much!
Upon arrival, a creative ice breaker helped us meet fellow SSI-ers quickly. A sticker was placed on each student's back, which we were instructed not to look at. We each had 30 seconds to ask questions, and find our match! I was Bach, and my 'match' was Beethoven. The next order of the evening was our caucus assignments, with mine being Lincoln Red. The next morning between sessions we had our first caucus meeting, which was quite interesting considering that that we were for 'regulating the local minimum wage' which was really quite hard to understand and new information to us all. After we finally came to an understanding of the bill, (which took many meetings) we looked over the bill we were to adamantly oppose, which was hate crimes. The Hate Crimes Bill would replace the current prohibition on ethnic intimidation with another prohibition on the bias-motivated crimes, which I spoke against at the capitol with 3 other members of my caucus. The other reps spoke on the Minimum Wage Bill on Friday at the capitol.
Other events at SSI were also enjoyable, for example, the sports challenge was lots of fun. I liked ultimate frisbee the best and whoever invented the ridiculous bat game needs to experiment and try it first! Surprisingly, we actually won all of our games, except volleyball.
Another interesting experience were the committee meetings, learning all the positive as well as negative sides of both bills. It was especially interesting to me because I knew 3 out of the 4 lobbyists (Mr. Scott Hummel, Jack Hummel, and Brent Keilen), that came in support or opposition of the bill.
All in all SSI was a very stretching week for me, at the beginning I wasn’t so sure I wanted to spend a week of my summer learning about a bill an defending it. In the end it was so much more than just learning about a bill, with the world view and creation sessions, and amazing new friends. I had a great week.
