Five Freedoms: A Week in Washington D.C.

April 1, 2010  
Filed under Feature

Mary Koppy|Editor-in-Chief

Fifty one strangers, two guides and one gigantic chocolate colored bus made for an unbelievable week in Washington D.C.

I travelled there as a wonderful segment of the Al Neuharth Free Spirit Scholarship, a journalistic scholarship given to one student from each of the 50 states as well as one from the District of Columbia. The winners then travelled to D.C. by plane, train and car for a week long convention running from March 13 to March 18.

The trip provided totally new experiences in more than one sense. As a typically ground bound Montanan, I had flown only twice before in my adult life, and never alone; navigating airports offered a whole new spectrum of challenges and made me grateful for Great Falls’ small building and friendly staff.

The novelty of meeting so many strangers struck me early on, when the delegate from Wyoming approached me on my first layover and introduced himself. As more and more teenagers trickled in to our hotel I began to realize to unique opportunity the scholarship offered us. Unlike travelling with a group of well worn companions, our unit had no pre existing relationships; we sat with a different person every time we got on the bus.

Because we all knew only one or two other people from travel arrangements, most of the long bus rides to and from locations were spent discussing everything from weather in our hometowns to the types of papers, magazines and websites we produced. (That’s a tabloid sheet paper and WordPress website for all of you non-journalism students out there.)

Nonetheless, our guides and hosts expected us to acclimate quickly and bright and early the next morning we took to the road to begin a mind boggling week of interviews, tours and Q and A sessions with reporters, executives and activists aboard a brand new, ligt brown bus nicknamed Chocolate Milk.

All of our events emphasized the need for First Amendment Rights in the 21^st century. One of our first stops, the Newseum, a five story museum devoted entirely to the history of news, confronted our group with a sad fact: less than a third of the people polled could name all five rights, slightly more could name one or two and over half could name all five members of the Simpson’s family.

Every person we spoke to that week had one thing in common to say: protect the right to free speech, to free press, to freedom of religion and the freedoms of petition and assembly. (For anyone not paying attention, those would be the five freedoms that under 30 percent of people could name.)

Even though we eventually traded Chocolate Milk in for Two Percent, we all left with 50 more friends that we brought with us and we took home the drive to make a difference and the determination to be together again someday, motivating others as we were motivated.

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