Revamping PAC

How does one resurrect a club? Do you dig the corpse out of a fresh grave, or do you build up operation and function from scratch? For the leadership team behind the newly revamped Political Awareness Club, the answer is analogous to policy preference; it’s complicated, and a combination of old and new.

Within a classroom in Old Luck, while teaching the summer session of God’s Call, Reverend Evans was called up to bat. He was listening to Ayden Lucas ’27 and Brodie Schlobohm ’27, two of the four current PAC heads, discuss their passion for politics and political involvement, as well as PAC’s loss of the necessary faculty sponsor. Kindly, Reverend Evans volunteered to serve as PAC’s faculty advisor.

John Milton, in his 1644 work “Aeropagitica,” asserted that “by licensing and prohibiting [we] misdoubt [Truth’s] strength,” stating that in the confines of a “free and open encounter” truth will always prevail. This idea of truth prevailing in an open setting was later coined by Justice Felix Frankfurter in United States v. Rumely as the “market place of ideas.” In today’s America, political conversation is shunned due to increasing extremism and growing intolerance of those with opposing views. As Grant Hewett ’27 told me, PAC endeavors to create this marketplace where “members can express their political opinions” as well as “listen [to] and gain a greater understanding of… opinions that differ from their own.” In this way, PAC resists the echo chamber present in many political discussions in the modern world.

But one might ask, despite all this, how will PAC succeed where past iterations failed? According to Lucas, the answer is simple. The organization as a whole is far more “standardized and robust,” holding regularly scheduled meetings during FLEX. A sharp divergence from the inaccessibility of afterschool meetings of previous years, allowing for many more people to participate in the free and open discussion.

Clubs like PAC and Geopolitical Debate Posse represent a great opportunity to be involved in and stay aware of the events happening around oneself. PAC is open to all students, regardless of membership status; everyone is welcome to attend all meetings. The members of the PAC leadership team, Grant Hewett, myself, Ayden Lucas, Brodie Schlobohm, and faculty advisors Mrs. Baker and Reverend Evans, are also open to discussion and questions about the club, policy or politics.