Diatribes 謾罵 : (Badger) Boys State

Do not go to Boys State! It's a summer program for high school juniors purportedly about leadership, citizenship, and government. When I was nominated by my school to attend, an older friend warned that it would be best to make up an excuse and not go. Unfortunately, that warning went unheeded, and I lost a week of my life at the miserable and pointless Badger Boys State. Hopefully, this post will save others from making my same mistake.

Boys State is supposed to teach students about government and democracy. There is also a corresponding Girls State, but the fact that these two are separate should have been a hint to me at the juvenile, conservative nature of "Boys State". After all, this is for students between their junior and senior years of high school, and yet the organizers still feel a need to segregate the two genders?

Boys State's idea of intellect and wit is apparently splitting all the students arbitrarily into two "political parties" and then rooming each student with someone from the opposite party. You'd think a camp about citizenship would at least give some thought to George Washington's warnings on political factions. This idea, though, is even more insipid than it seems on the surface. The political parties have no meaning, there is no pre-defined platform, nor are there even any real issues to argue. One party platform (decided on at the camp) includes such items as, "We believe BBS needs more girls" and lights out should be at 11:15 instead of 11. And that's the more intelligent of the two platforms! (Check pages 3 and 4 of this pdf.)

"Elections" for the different positions are equally inane, and predictably so. When campaigning for a party's nomination, each person gives a recitation of how they'll beat the other party, and so on. Of course, when it comes time to the general campaign, both sides talk about how they'll bridge the divide and how people shouldn't just vote for their own party.

There are also "classes" on different subjects. Despite being the most educational thing at the camp, these too are completely worthless. I learned nothing from the "law" class I sat in on. The whole thing was pointless charade. There was a final multiple choice "exam", which I randomly filled in, yet of course later, in some general assembly, one of the organizers made a big deal about how everyone in the law class passed their bar!

Spare yourself the misery and skip Boys State.