CAP Congress

In CAP, this past week has been fully dedicated to CAP Congress, which is exactly what it sounds like.

We were assigned to be either a MOCWA (Member of Congress with Agenda) or a MOCO (I don't know what this stands for).  You were a MOCWA if your assigned debate topic was chosen to be a discussion of our congress and they had to write a bill supporting their debate topic.  MOCOs had to write a page of notes on each of the six topics that were chosen.

The topics that we chose are Plan B in high schools,  the use of recreation marijuana, random drug testing for high school athletes, the death penalty, the dream act, and stem cell research.

I was a MOCWA arguing against the random drug testing of high school athletes. 

On Monday and Tuesday we did some additional research to support our bill of banning drug testing for high school athletes and we made our presentation.  On Wednesday all the MOCWAs presented on their assigned issues.  Afterwords, we lobbied to everyone else with food we had brought to try to get them to vote for our bill.  On Thursday, we were split into the Senate and the House of  Represenatives; I was a Senator.  Inside the House and Senate we were split into committees, just like in the real House and Senate.  I was on the Education Committee, looking at the bills about drug testing and Plan B.  My bill made it through the committee, however, my partner's in the House got killed in committee.  After the committees finished looking at the bills and deciding which to bring into the full House or full Senate, we gathered as either the full House or Senate and began discussing the bills that the committees passed.  If either the full House or full Senate decided to pass one of the bills, it was brought to the other group.  On Friday, we finished discussing bills and then all the ones that were passed were brought to the president.  The bills that were signed by the president was the the one allowing for embryonic stem cell research, the one allowing for Plan B in high schools, the one abolishing the death penalty, and the one allowing the DREAM Act.

This assignment allowed me to greater appreciate what really goes on in the House and the Senate and how difficult it is to pass a bill.  It also increased my understanding of different governmental process.  While I got bored sometimes discussing the issues, I thought this assignment helped me a lot.

The basic proponents of my bill.
My presentation.