Fewer schools to participate in Model Congress

When the Princeton Model Congress holds its annual conference this fall in Washington, D.C., fewer high school delegations will attend than usual.

Five or six schools — representing about 10 percent of the attending student population — have withdrawn from the program following the events of Sept. 11, according to PMC's co-director of program Jen Carter '03.

The conference, which usually hosts about 900 high school students over one weekend, mimics the national government with a president, cabinet, House, Senate, Supreme Court and press corps.

Princeton, Carter said, is the only school that hosts its Model Congress in Washington. The event's proximity to sightseeing in the nation's capital is an added attraction.

This year, however, PMC's location — the J.W. Mariott Hotel, two blocks from the White House — is a cause for concern rather than an advantage.

"It's basically the same story," Carter said of the withdrawals. "The advisers tell us, 'The school board decided no field trips.' "

In some cases, she added, the schools decided to cancel all school field trips and, in others, only those trips to New York or Washington.

Barbara Pringle, the faculty adviser of the Model Congress club of the Potomac School in McLean, Va., a Washington suburb, said the recent terrorism has not affected her delegation's plans.

"If anything else happened," she said, "there might be a real issue, but for now, we're certainly all going."

Pringle said that her school's proximity to downtown Washington — approximately a 20-minute drive — probably has something to do with continuing plans to attend.

"As people from the Washington area, most of us are doing the same things we always do," she said.

According to Pringle, parents have not asked to remove their children from the program, and because of the late withdrawals, the Potomac School delegation has been allowed to increase its numbers to about 30 students from the previous cap of 25.

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This is one of the ways PMC has been filling the spaces left by the withdrawn high schools, according to co-director of program Brian Pick '03.

By the time the other high schools had withdrawn, it was too late to extend invitations to the almost thirty high schools on PMC's waitlist, and the staffers were forced to find ways to fill the holes in committees, the cabinet and the press corps.

"Overall, hopefully [the absences] will not have much effect," Pick said. He added that some students might even benefit.

"It will make it a smaller conference . . . there will be more personal attention for the delegates. We are in the process of working out refunding the money," Pick said. "We're trying to be sensitive to parental worries and to school board decisions."

Pick added that PMC is "more flexible with the student fees" — the amount paid by the individuals — than the delegation fees, paid by the schools.

Joanna Ganson '02 and Courtney Mills '02, PMC's executive directors, issued an e-mail statement in which they said the presidential cabinet's annual mock crisis "to stimulate creative thinking about the government's approach to national emergencies" will be replaced by a mock 'diplomatic reception' out of sensitivity for the delegates.

They also quoted a high school adviser, who in withdrawing from the event, wrote, "We regret this decision, and our students and I are very disappointed about not attending the best educational and well organized Model Congress in the nation. We hope that everything will run smoothly as usual and that next year we will be a part of this activity once again."

Ganson and Mills said that despite the absences they "are sure that PMC 2001 will be a fun and successful experience for all involved."