The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

Well, I’m now back from Boys State, and it’s now the end of a very long, busy, adventurous month of June. At last, even though a full month of summer has already flown by, it’s now finally starting to actually feel like summer for the first time.

Overall, Boys State was an exciting and definitely eye-opening experience. But this wasn’t some trip or some camp for relaxing and having fun, no, my week at Boys State was probably the busiest week that I’ll have had during this whole summer. The way that I’ve been catching up on sleep these past few days since I got back, you’d think that I had jet lag all over again! Now that I’ve had a day or two to recover, and because my last post didn’t have many details about what the schedule of Boys State would be like, I guess it’s time that I provide a comprehensive review of what I had the opportunity to go through. (Oh, and to prove to all of my new friends from there whom I gave the link to this website that I actually do keep it up to date.)

Saturday, June 21
So as I mentioned in my prior post, I was dropped off at the local American Legion post in San Carlos, where I and about thirty other Boys Staters from my regional area took a chartered bus over to California State University, Sacramento. We got there a little after 10:00 in the morning, and after checking in (where we got our badge, room key, and other supplies), we had a welcome orientation on the outside lawn. After that ended, we had the opportunity to take stuff up to our room.
This is kind of how the setup went. The almost 1000 of us were divided into five different residence halls at Sacramento State, and each residence hall was a particular county (Darter, Haley, Baker, Young, and Chambers counties, which, if you haven’t guessed, are not real California counties at all). Within each county were four or five cities (adding up to 23 in total), with the members of each city living on the same floor or wing of a particular residence hall. Everyone was also assigned to be a member of one of two parties: the Federalist Party or the Whig Party, and within every dorm room, both roommates were in opposite parties. I was assigned to be in the city of Jordan, within Baker county, and a member of the Federalist Party (although being someone who is not a major fan of the party system, I acted as more of a non-partisan person).
After we got into our rooms and got to know each other a little bit, we went to lunch in the Sac State Dining Commons. Now, the food that we were served throughout the week, which was food that was identical to what was being served to regular Sac State students (according to flyers which were posted in the Dining Commons), was okay, and certainly edible, but something that I wouldn’t want to live on day in and day out if I was attending college there. And for Pete’s sake, someone should really tell them to cook breakfast with real eggs, not powdered ones.
After lunch and some extra free time to study for the Bar Exam (more on that below), we had our first City Meeting, where we met our city counselor, Nolan, and went over some general rules and information. Afterwards was the Bar Exam for those of us interested in taking it. While I personally wasn’t strongly interested in taking it, they recommended it for someone who would be remotely interested; passing it meant that you could practice law or hold a position involving attorneys or justices. When we checked in earlier that morning, one of the things we were given was an orange Manual of California Government to study, and only about five hours later was the exam. The test was about thirty minutes long and had 138 questions which were either fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, or true/false. The scores were curved so that the top 68% of exams passed (apparently the same pass rate as the actual three-days-long California Bar Exam has), and I managed to pass, giving me a little badge and some bragging rights.
After that was the recreation period, but because I had brought my laptop along and was remotely interested in possibly working with the newspaper (they had a daily newspaper called The Boys Stater), I went to the newspaper room to apply. It turns out that a good number of people had shown up to apply for one of the many editor positions, which is someone surprising in retrospect, but I guess that most of them did not know that being an editor meant that they would be staying up every night until 5 AM-6 AM. After a little while, I made the wise decision to drop out of the running for the editor positions, but after they were all assigned, they started looking for volunteers to do certain stories, and I popped my head right up and volunteered, hence earning me the designation as Staff Writer for the rest of the week. My story for Saturday night was the Bar Exam, and so during dinner, after eating, I went around asking for people to share their thoughts (in quotes) on the exam. After the rest of the evening’s events, I had the opportunity to interview the counselor who proctored the exam (thanks to the aid of my laptop and WireTap Studio for recording purposes), who interestingly enough took the bar exam so long ago that he has one of the lowest Bar numbers in the state.
After dinner, we walked the mile-long hike (I’m not kidding, it was like a fifteen-minute one-way walk there) to the University Union, where they opened Boys State with a General Assembly involving mostly speakers, and that’s pretty much it. After we returned, we had another city meeting where the Election Boards were appointed, and in which we were all given $100 in fake money (which they called “philos”) to use as the “official tender” of Boys State, and was pretty much the only money that we used for the rest of the week with the exception of getting extra food from the supply store, which was still done in regular dollars. The candidates for city offices paid their filing fees and circulated nomination petitions; the positions of five City Councilmen, City Clerk, Superior Court Judge, and Treasurer were open. Our Lights Out time was 11:00 PM, but as a member of the press (with a badge and everything), I had the privileges to stay out past that time at the newspaper office in order for me to have the time to actually write my story. After submitting it to the editors, I got back to my room just before midnight and that concluded my first day at Boys State.

Sunday, June 22
After breakfast on Sunday, we had a city meeting which involved our official city photograph (which I did end up purchasing a print of), as well as other general information, which was also where we were given information on the Oratorical Competition and Oral Advocacy programs, as well as the sign-up forms (which we were to turn in that night if we were interested). The Oratorical Competition, which I entered but for some reason didn’t get very far in, was a multi-level competition where entrants wrote an up-to-five-minute oratorical speech on a particular prompt, which this year was on the subject of illegal immigration. The Oral Advocacy program, which I didn’t enter, was for anyone who had passed the bar exam in which they would have the chance to argue one side of a hypothetical civil rights case at multiple levels, beginning in front of the elected city judges, followed by the next round in front of the elected county appellate judges, and the final round in front of the Supreme Court. In other words, kind of like a mock trial thing. During the meeting, we also heard short speeches from the candidates for city offices, and afterwards, the election was held in the common laundry room of our wing. (Actually, that was our city’s polling place for all of the elections throughout the week.)
After lunch, we had another city meeting, in which the city officials and city council were installed and the city council selected a mayor, along with appointing the City Attorney, Police Chief, and Fire Chief. After that, we had a short county meeting, in which they give instructions on how to complete the county nomination petitions, and then the candidates for the county petitions circulated and filed their nomination petitions, similar to what the city candidates had done the night before. The available County positions were five Supervisors (one from each city), County Clerk, Recorder, Treasurer/Auditor, Tax Collector/Assessor, three Justices Court of Appeal (with the Presiding Justice being the one with the highest vote), District Attorney, Sheriff, Superintendent of Schools, Coroner/Public Administrator, and Board of Equalization.
After all of that was out of the way, it was Recreation time again, which for me meant the time in which I went to the newspaper office to get my assignment. I had a bit of an easier assignment that day, which was for me to interview our Chief Counselor, Jim Alcorn, about his attempted 3,000 mile hike that he attempted last year from the California/Mexico border to the Washington/Canada border. (Spoiler: He didn’t make it due to health problems.) Still, it only involved one short interview that I recorded and then transformed into an article, which I had finished before dinner time, my earliest deadline of the whole week.
After dinner, we had a short city meeting, and then were divided into our two parties which each held rallies, mostly consisting of a bunch of ridiculous cheers, along with the selection of the Party Secretary and Party Chairman. In each case, whoever wanted to do the job went up to the front, paid their “filing fees,” and gave a speech, and then we “elected” them based on whoever got the loudest applause. Kind of a strange way to do it, in my opinion, but that was it, and that marked the end of the day.

Monday, June 23
Monday started out after breakfast with another city meeting, but from this time on, it was the city council that began running the show, and doing things like passing strange ordinances, collecting taxes, etc. However, my city didn’t pass laws quite as strange as most, and our taxes were reasonable, partially aided by the fact that one of our city members had brought his Verizon Broadband card and an AirPort Express with him, and had essentially set up a wireless Internet Cafe in his room with three or four laptop workstations available, and was selling internet access for $5 (in philos, of course) for 10 minutes on the workstations, or bring-your-own-laptop with wifi at the rate of $5 for 20 minutes. That proved to be a great money-maker for our city, especially given that SAT scores came out on Thursday, but since it was run as a “private business,” it was also able to make campaign contributions as well up to the amount specified by Boys State law (aka $20 per candidate max).
After the city meeting, we had a county meeting where all of the county candidates were introduced, which was followed by the elections for these offices, and then after the election, another county meeting was held in which those of us interested in a state office got instructions. After that, the county clerks offices opened for the opportunity to file and circulate the nomination petitions for the state positions.
Now, the state positions were a bit different than the city and county ones because all of the city and county officers were non-partisan. However, at the state level, the 23 Senators (one per city), 46 Assemblymen (two per city), Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Controller, Treasurer, Attorney General, and Insurance Commissioner were all partisan officers, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction and seven Supreme Court Justices were all non-partisan officers. As such, the partisan officers had to have signatories on their petitions be within their party, while that policy didn’t apply to the non-partisan officers. Based on my past set of experience and expertise coming in to Boys State, I ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and got all of the signatures that I needed within my own county, paid my $85 (philos, again) filing fee, and was ready to roll and to start campaigning.
After lunch and another city meeting, a General Assembly was held that afternoon on the Dining Commons Lawn in which the non-partisan candidates (Supreme Court Justices and Superintendent of Public Instruction) read their speeches. There were a whopping forty candidates for the seven Supreme Court slots, and going through all of their speeches was quite a draining experience. After them, the five candidates for Superintendent (including myself) read our speeches, and I got a pretty good applause and lots of compliments after-the-fact for my speech (which I probably will post on here sometime soon, along with my other publications from Boys State).
Recreation time followed, which meant (as usual) that I went to the newspaper office. My story that day was similar to the one I had done the previous day: it was a story on counselor Ryan Silver, who was the counselor of the Whig Party for the first time. In fact, the hardest part of the story was finding him, since he was also the football coach, and it took me about 40 minutes of getting lost trying to find where the football teams were playing at until I did an interview with him (recorded, again) right in the middle of the very loud football game.
After dinner, we had another short city meeting, and then split up once again into our two parties for another party rally, this time, for all of the other partisan candidates to give their speeches (including 11 candidates for Lieutenant Governor and 16 for Governor within my party, and I’m told that the Whigs had more than that). After a long day of listening to speeches, I went back to the newspaper office to finish up my story, and I also put together a campaign advertisement for the newspaper (thank you, Pixelmator!). Our newspaper did actually have charges (in philos) for anyone interesting in placing ads in the paper, with different prices for different sizes. Yes, the fact that the prices were somewhat high and went up every night did make some people grumble, but as a member of the newspaper staff, I had the opportunity for a 50% staff discount, plus the fact that I got paid for each story that I wrote for the paper helped too.

Tuesday, June 24
Tuesday was a long day in which I had set a number of goals for myself, which I was able to successfully accomplish. First off, I had been given my newspaper assignment for that day on Monday night: write an article on what the “ideal” Boys State delegate was like. Second, my Oratorical Competition reading was Wednesday afternoon, and so I wanted to write my think for that. Third, I had purchased some supplies from the Supply Store for campaign posters (again, purchased with philos), that I had to put together and post. Luckily, I was able to score enough free time that day to accomplish all of those goals.
After our normal city meeting, we had a county meeting in which the county officers were installed and sworn in, and afterwards, the city councils, boards of supervisors, superior courts, appellate court justices, district attorneys, police chiefs, and sheriffs met in their respective groups, and the first round of Oral Advocacy took place. Those of us that were left had free time to work on campaigns or speeches, or we could go watch the Oral Advocacy things that were happening. I took advantage of the time to work on my to-do list as I explained above, and during lunch, I stalked the lunch line with my laptop asking people to share what they thought was the most important characteristic of the “ideal” Boys State delegate, and then got some interested stares as I typed their responses on my laptop while balancing it on my legs while standing up. Yes, I’ve got talent.
We had a short city meeting after lunch, and then voted in the Primary Election for State offices. This worked pretty much like a real-life primary, but for those of you who don’t know how that worked, everyone got to vote among the offices within their own party, and the winner from each party faced off against the winner from the other party in the general election on Wednesday. The two non-partisan races, Supreme Court Justice and Superintendent of Public Instruction, appeared on both ballots. For the Superintendent race, if one candidate got more than half the vote, then they would immediately win, otherwise the top two finishers would go into a run-off in the general election. For the Supreme Court Justices, the top seven would automatically be given the position, with the one Chief Justice being voted on in the general election. I later found out during the recreation period that I had come in second place, but made it to the runoff election the next day.
After the voting period finished, we had a General Assembly on the Dining Commons Lawn in which one of the head counselors (who was also from the Boys State in Illinois, the first state to ever hold one of these things) gave us a long talk about the importance of being involved in politics, community affairs, and other issues of importance to students. As someone who works with that stuff all of the time in my PTA involvement, this was my personal favorite part of the week. Afterwards, I spent the recreation period working on transforming my tremendously long list from lunch into a comprehensive article, and stalking the area for any word on results from the primary election. After that ended and dinner was over, the two parties again split up with us Federalists in the University Union and the Whigs in the Dining Commons, where we adopted our party platforms and did some more crazy cheers and stuff. Then, the Whigs came over to the Union for the General Assembly, which began with the Whigs making a big presentation of a pep rally, and then the Federalists did the same. Finally, after party counselors and chairmen spoke and the party secretaries presented the two party platforms, the candidates for each party each gave speeches. Then, for the Lieutenant Governor and Governor candidates, for the first time in Boys State history, they did a short four-question debate between the candidates (two questions for each position), which was quite informative and interesting. After that was all done, we poured out of there and headed for lights out, except for me who went over to the newspaper office to make sure that they got my story and to put in one more advertisement for the next day.

Wednesday, June 25
Wednesday was quite a long, involved day, with some extra fun added to it when I found out that I hadn’t won the Superintendent of Public Instruction job outright, so I had some extra campaigning to do. Luckily, after breakfast and our city meeting, I had another nice chunk of free time as Round 2 of Oral Advocacy and the other miscellaneous meetings took place, allowing me to put together some campaign signs and post them. Then, during lunch, instead of traipsing the line for a newspaper article, I shook some hands to tell others about my very valid qualifications for the position, you know, a little campaign meet-and-greet. We had a short county meeting after lunch, and then the general election took place.
After the general election, we had another General Assembly on the Dining Commons Lawn, in which two assemblymen (one Republican and the other, a Democrat) came, spoke a bit, and answered some questions. But it was interesting, because if you hadn’t been told their parties ahead of time, you might have mistaken them, particularly on the question of education funding, an issue that I’m personally interested in. The Republican was a former teacher, and so he was completely in support of ensuring that education was funded, but the Democrat was either the chair or vice-chair of the Budget Committee, and was a little more of the “Well, we are in the middle of a major budget crisis” type.
After the general session, I went to read my speech on illegal immigration for the Oratorical Competition, which I did, and that was the last I heard of it. (I later found out that it had multiple “rounds” which I did not move on to. Based on the fact that the winning two speeches were a bit on the more conservative side compared to my speech, I have my suspicions, but I’ll leave it at that.)
However, after that was out of the way, it was Recreation period again, or for me, newspaper time. I was given a major story to do: the front page headline story covering the election results and interviewing the winning candidates on their success and their plans (due to space restrictions, it ended up being restricted to the governor candidates, more on that below). So, while the rest of the candidates awaited the results of the election, I also waited as an interested member of the press, and as the person waiting to find out if I had won my seat as Superintendent of Public Instruction. They ended up calling all of the partisan candidates (meaning, not me) into a room to announce the results to them privately first, and then the winners immediately got together and had a planning meeting, and then left before I could get ahold of them. During that time, the results finally became available publicly, when I found out that I had lost with 41% of the vote. (The race for Governor had been really close, with only about 50 votes separating the winners.) Interestingly enough, the Whigs took four of the seven offices, as well as a majority in the Assembly and Senate, but the Federalists earned the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Treasurer positions, making for quite a bipartisan government.
However, after all that excitement (and finding out that I wouldn’t be able to snag any of the newly elected officers until later that night), I went over to dinner, and then, since I was one of the candidates for Superintendent, both myself and the newly-elected Superintendent was asked to go to the Union early to help out with the College and Career night that night. It turns out that we were only asked to help fold and then pass out programs (lame!), and that College and Career night was also pretty lame, since the colleges pretty much consisted of the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems and one or two other random California colleges, and the Career night was exclusively armed forces and ROTC programs. Needless to say, it was by far my least favorite part of the week.
After that ended, I got back to Desmond Hall (where the newspaper office and all other administration was located at) and waited for the opportunity to interview the winning candidates, the Governor, and the losing candidate for Governor who ended up being appointed to be the Executive Secretary, the closest aide to the Governor. Unfortunately, they were still in planning meetings and stuff. However, I found out that night that Comedy Central apparently airs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report at 10 PM over here, so I spent the hour with others watching some of the political humor that I had been missing, from Be Patient. . .This Gets Amazing to John McCain Doing the Vogue, all in the name of working on my newspaper article. But anyway, after Colbert went off the ert (mistyping intentional, if you don’t get it then re-read it a few times), I did have the opportunity to snag the candidates over and do some short interviews with them, which I attempted to use in two different stories, but which ultimately got cut from the paper due to space restrictions. (If any of you guys are reading this, I’m sorry, it wasn’t my fault!) Then, finally, at a quarter after midnight, I was able to get Armen Hazarian (the Governator) and Grant White (his former candidate and new Executive Secretary) to sit down with me for an interview which was the most awesome interview I’d done all week, particularly given how late it was. I’ve actually edited it and posted the interview on my website for you to take a listen to if you’re inclined; it can give you a good idea of what was going through the heads of the almost 1000 Boys Staters after five days of this stuff. After the interview with them was finished, I sat down in my quiet spot listening to the interview again a few times, figuring out the best way to weed out a coherent article from the interview. I finished my article at 2 AM, and after waiting awhile for the editors to find a spot on their computer for them to get the article imported and on its way to InDesign, I got back to my room at the crazy hour of 2:45 AM, and enjoyed only about four hours of sleep. That may not seem like much, but it was more than any of the other editors had gotten any night that week up to that point; those editors were the #1 purchasers of the Monster energy drink being sold in the Supply Store (for real dollars, not philos).

Thursday, June 26
Thursday was a much different day than the rest of the days in the week as far as the pace was concerned, primarily because it represented the one day that we got to step off of the Sacramento State campus during the week. (Not that stepping off was that easy, that campus is quite big.) The day started as usual with breakfast and a short city meeting, and then afterwards, the Senate, Assembly, and Supreme Court had organizational meetings. Since I had lost in my quest for Superintendent of Public Instruction, I was still in need of a job, so I wandered down to the Assembly meeting and told them that I had a lot of experience with parliamentary procedure (which is true, I totally love Robert’s Rules of Order), and so I got appointed to be the Parliamentarian of the Assembly, which pretty much meant that I advised the Speaker or Speaker Pro Tempore of the Assembly on questions of how to run the meeting, which there were plenty of. The hardest part for me was trying to hold my own tongue and speak only to the Speaker.
But after that short organizational meeting, we all went to the University Union for the Inaugural program, in which all of the newly elected officers were sworn in by various counselors, and the Lieutenant Governor and Governor were sworn in personally by California’s real Lieutenant Governor, John Garamendi, who gave a speech right after our Boys State Governor was sworn in and gave his inaugural address.
After that ended, we walked back to our corner of campus and boarded a bunch of school buses for our trip to the State Capitol. We were given sack lunches when we got there, and then had free time to do whatever in the Capitol building, including visiting our legislators’ offices, touring the building, etc. Unfortunately, neither Senator Leland Yee nor Assemblyman Gene Mullin (my two representatives) were present, but the staff in their offices both gave out Certificates of Recognition that they had printed up for me (and everyone else from my area), along with some other goodies. In addition, the members of our Assembly and Senate, along with the Governor and his Cabinet, had the privilege of going on the Assembly floor and sitting at the desks, and got to hear some welcoming words from a few members of the legislature, followed by our Governor getting to give the State of the State Address from the Assembly podium. (Those of us who weren’t elected to a State office had the option of watching from the gallery.) I do have some pictures from the Capitol trip which I’ll try to get up soon.
When we got back, it was Recreation period, but unfortunately the Assembly had scheduled an extra meeting in the middle of it, and so I wasn’t able to do the story that I’d been assigned, an interview with another counselor who turned 80 during the week, because he and I couldn’t find a common time to do the interview.
After the Assembly meeting ended, we had dinner and then another short city meeting before we trekked back to the Union once again for the Boys State Jamboree, which was pretty much a Talent Show. Highlights from the show included a song that one person had written which was essentially an ode to a brand of maple syrup (“Oh, you’re so syrupy!”), and our Attorney General’s awesome impression of George W. Bush (“We’re gonna smoke ‘em out!”).
After that ended, I went back to the newspaper office for another assignment, and partially based on an idea that I came up with, my article was one all about the newspaper staff and the miserable life that they had to work under during the week. After getting some fairly-sarcastic quotes from the newspaper counselors, the idea generated to make it a somewhat humorous story, and so I was able to glean a number of sarcastic quotes from the different editors to put together a fairly good article to close out the week with. I finished this article at 12:45 AM and was back in my room by 1; still fairly late, but a good improvement over the night before, I enjoyed my five and a half hours of sleep that night.

Friday, June 27-Saturday, June 28
Friday was the last full day of Boys State, and it was the day that the state government part rolled along into overtime. After breakfast and our usual city meeting, all of the state government groups split up into their respective meeting places, which meant that I went over to the Assembly for about an hour and a half, root beer in hand, to do my Parliamentarian thing and watch them pass plenty of legislation. More of it continued in the afternoon, after lunch, with another city meeting and another hour-long Assembly session. Between those two sessions, a good amount of legislation got passed, some of it good (like universal healthcare), some of it not as good (like legalizing marijuana). The Governor vetoed two bills which were both overridden by the Assembly and Senate, and in the afternoon, the Governor personally showed up to present his budget, which was an awesome budget in that it had public education as the #1 thing on there. (I guess my speech from Monday stirred a few things up.) That budget got passed in five minutes, which is a far cry from the months and months that it takes the real California legislature to get that thing over with.
I enjoyed a nice dose of free time during the Recreation period, thanks to the newspaper being done with, and I actually got to try out billards for the first time. Then, after dinner, we went to the University Union for the closing program, which wasn’t that much to write home about, primarily the awards for Model City and Model County, the Oratorical Competition awards, other miscellaneous awards, etc. After that, we had a short closing city meeting, and then about 2/3 of the Boys Staters packed up and hopped on buses for the very long bus ride back home. The rest of us (including myself) stayed overnight and hopped on our buses on Saturday morning after breakfast.

So that’s pretty much everything that I did during the week at Boys State, which as you can see, was quite a bit. (I’m not sure if I’ve ever written a longer blog post than this!) Overall, it was a good experience, if you ignored the fact that the guys in charge were a little overly patriotic, in my opinion. It was also kind of annoying that simply because there was a county Coroner, a bunch of people got the crazy idea that they could assassinate people, and indeed, they attempted assassinations on the Governor, Federalist Party Chairman, Newspaper Editors, and others. Unfortunately, assassinations were not offically allowed, and could not be done without the permission of the “victim,” plus the Coroner would have to make the certification that the person was actually dead and had the “power” of resurrecting someone if needed. So it was mostly a bunch of baloney that clogged up the second half of the week. Plus those city ordinances, which were quite crazy–apparently one city had one where every time you walked five steps forward, you had to walk one step backward, and things like that caused some controversy, especially when one anonymous naughty person decided to go to every city and break every ordinance possible. Those who broke ordinances were fined, and those who didn’t pay the fine were taken to court. You can get a sense of the crazy commotion that swelled up by the middle of the week in that interview that I linked to earlier.

But despite those inconveniences (and the okay food), Boys State was a great experience, and certainly gave me a new level of insight into politics. As the saying goes, “poli/poly” means “many” and “tics/ticks” means “tiny, blood-sucking creatures,” and that gets quite obvious when you’ve participated in politics the way that I did last week.

But now, at long last, the month of June is over, which means that the traveling stops and summer can really begin!