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Some colleges and universities observed Constitution Day last Sept. 17 by having someone give a talk on the Constitution.
At USC, faculty and students launched something more ambitious that will serve as a learning and teaching device for years to come.
It’s called The Spoken Constitution, a link on the John C. West Forum on Politics and Policy Web site (www.westforum.sc.edu) that features 10 students engaging in brief discussions with political science professor Blease Graham about the first 10 amendments, also known as The Bill of Rights.
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| Blease Graham |
“The whole spirit of the West Forum is to get students involved in politics and that was the impetus for it,” said Graham, who also is director of the West Forum, which was established in 2002 as a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic leadership incubator in the Department of Political Science that works to enhance the quality of South Carolina’s political environment.
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| Robert Angel |
The discussions were recorded and placed on the forum Web page by associate professor Robert Angel, political science director of undergraduate studies, West Forum Web page administrator, and associate director.
The site includes separate Flash movies, said Angel, “and 10 of them offer video. Each Flash movie has an audio track of the program, the text of which is presented on the page. The site offers hundreds of photos of our students and the amendments.”
The long-range plan is to have The Spoken Constitution as an ongoing project with selected amendments to be discussed in future years until the complete Constitution is covered. The material is presented so that it can also be used by teachers as an instructional aid and by lay people who want to learn about the Constitution or merely reflect on it, Graham said.
“A lot of students study the Constitution in class and we thought this would be a good way to get them to tell other students about the part of the Constitution they worked on,” Graham said. “We first thought we could do the entire Constitution but then reality sank in when we had a time getting all 10 amendments done in the month to six weeks we worked on them.”
The project has its roots in passage of a recent Senate resolution introduced by Robert Byrd of West Virginia that designated Sept. 17 as Constitution Day.
Byrd’s idea was that colleges and universities receiving federal funds should provide some instruction on the Constitution each year on Sept. 17, the day the document was signed in 1787.
“Professor [Harvey] Starr (department chair and Dag Hammarskjold Professor in International Affairs) was interested in the department doing something and this seemed the best way we could think of on a budget that was meaningful for students,” Graham said.
The students’ discussions of the amendments are designed to encourage further study and examination of the Bill of Rights. Angel has begun a search of the Web for Constitution-related sites that might be interested in including a link to The Spoken Constitution and is buoyed by the early number of hits the Web site has received.
Graham said the discussions of the amendments were kept brief and explored their “plain meaning” rather than attempting to interpret them in ways that might be controversial. “The discussions aren’t intended to indoctrinate anybody about the Constitution, but rather to just call attention to it, renew knowledge about it, and encourage respect and discussion,” he said.
The 10 students who took part in the project were all enthusiastic about their roles and researched each of the amendments individually before talking about them on camera, Graham said. The ambition over the next five or six years, he added, is to get all the amendments read and posted on line.
Angel said his test for whether the project is a success would be what he imagined John West would say about it.
“I think he would have liked it. He loved the students and respected them. He realized their potential and encouraged them and I think he’d say if we reach 10 South Carolinians with this it might inspire them to do just a little bit more thinking about their role in the civic life.”
11/05
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Students taking part in The Spoken Constitution Project at USC with political science faculty members Blease Graham and Robert Angel included, from left, Mark McLawhon, Jonathan Lounsberry, Tyler Elmendorf, Rebecca Spencer, Nicole Young, and Elizabeth Harvey. Not shown are: Jenny Fehr, Nicole Stein, Ashley McDowell, and Tiffany Caroffino.
