Nearly 200 of Oregon’s budding leaders put their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution and American history to the test Saturday at the Multnomah County Courthouse during a statewide high-school civics competition.
Students who participated in the event said it was about much more than memorizing facts. It was about understanding the building blocks of American democracy at a time when the country faces turmoil and division like never before, they said.
“It’s extremely important for us, especially as young people emerging as adults, to learn about the Constitution and the laws of our nation,” McDaniel High School senior Simone Michaels told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “However, I find it very ironic that, in our current day and age, it seems that this document is being trampled instead of being amended or discussed.”
Students from the six high schools in the final round, all from the Portland area, converged on the courthouse for Oregon’s “We the People” civics championship, an annual competition. Teams took up complex legal and moral questions in simulated congressional hearings spanning topics such as freedom of speech and the First Amendment, congressional powers and societal change.
Rapid-fire hearings filled courtrooms on the upper floors of the building, with judging panels that included lawyers, college professors and federal judges, among others. U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut and Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Chanpone Sinlapasai both made appearances on the panels.
In each round, a team of students was given one question to discuss, with 20 minutes to answer and take any follow-up questions from the panel. The competition’s judges came away impressed by the students, who had spent months preparing for the civics bout.
“If these students are any measure of our future, I feel a lot calmer in my retirement knowing that this group of young people is out there working so hard,” said Paul Robeck, a former federal administrative law judge and IRS special trial attorney.
The competition was filled with laughter and camaraderie, but the undertones of the current political climate couldn’t be ignored, students said.
“It’s definitely gotten a bit more difficult in such a turbulent political landscape,” McDaniel senior Lucas McCall Petke said after getting a question about the limits of state and federal power. “It seems like basically every week now, there’s a new state that the National Guard or ICE or some other federal forces are being deployed to.”
Last weekend, during a preliminary round of the competition, which included 13 teams, students had to process the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration-enforcement officers in Minneapolis right after it happened.
“As the competition was happening, the news was breaking of Alex Pretti being killed,” Civics Learning Project Executive Director Sam Kang said. “And they were doing exactly what we [taught] them to do — use their training from this program to make sense of things that are happening in real time and being able to convey that in a way that’s poignant.”
Kang, whose nonprofit sponsored the event, said that while the bleak political environment can be difficult, giving students the tools to understand the American system and its limitations can help in processing current events.
“They learn about U.S. history, political philosophy, but more importantly, how to assess and discern their own values and how to engage others in talking about those values and why they matter,” he said.
For Ozy Paternoster, a sophomore at Lincoln High School, learning about those values has been empowering, she said.
“There’s a lot of reasons that people are losing hope in our government and our world,” Paternoster said. “One thing this competition has really taught me is that we can make a difference in our government, in choosing policies and showing up to the polls once we can vote.”
Grant High School took the gold at this year’s state competition and will be moving on to the national “We the People” competition in the spring in Washington, D.C. Lincoln High School, which tied with Oregon’s Sprague High School last year for the national championship, took second place and will also be eligible for nationals.
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