"Model United Nations"

By JMora

   Model United Nations is a simulation program for college students in which they participate in model sessions of the United Nations in an effort to advance their understanding of the principles and means by which international relations may be maintained. The program helps students develop a greater understanding of the nations of the world, the relations between them, their policies, and the nature of their work in the United Nations. The first session of the Model United Nations of the Far West was held at Stanford University in 1951. http://www.munfw.org/mun/about.htm

"A Conversation With The General"

By Reg NYC

Reg: Hi, I'm Reg. I'm here with General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and 2004 Presidential candidate. First, I'd like to thank you for your work with VoteVets and stopiranwar.com.

General Clark Thank you.

Reg: Everyone please go and sign the petition-

General Clark Please.

Reg: -at stopiranwar.com, all one word. But I also know that you're more well-rounded than that. So, I wanted to ask some questions you are not ordinarily asked about.

"Professor Clark Lecture II: Just War Theory"

By the Generation Whatever Team

General Wesley Clark at UCLA
January 22, 2007

Click to listen to the lecture    Click to download audio file (mp3)

Thank you very much for that- Thank you very much for that warm welcome, and thank you very much Dean Schill for your kind introduction and the opportunity to speak here. Now, someone asked me when I was coming up here today was I going to announce for the Presidency. (laughter) The answer's no. I haven't ruled out something like that, but I'm not here today in a political purpose. If you want to see the latest, go to my website www.securingamerica.com . You can see the speech I gave in Alabama last Monday, and it will- that, that's the Political side. I'm not here to talk politics.

I'm really here in an academic setting, in a policy setting and a legal setting, because I think that war and law are two critically important regimes of study and practice in The United States of America, and it's very difficult to find people who really do the crosswalk well. And yet, the failure to do the crosswalk can lead to enormous policy failures.

"All Civic Duty is Local"

By the Generation Whatever Team

"Professor Clark"

By the Generation Whatever Team

JMora's Story

On Tuesday, November 21, 2006 I had the great opportunity to see General Wesley Clark in a somewhat unfamiliar role, as of recently anyway. On Tuesday Gen. Clark was Prof. Clark, where he lectured to about 300 students at UCLA in a lower division Global Issues course. This was a great opportunity for the Generation “Whatever” students to get introduced to the General and see him in a non-political environment.

This was Gen. Clark’s first lecture since joining the UCLA Burkle Center last month and I was very fortunate to be able to attend the class. General Clark is no slouch when it comes to teaching a class, he even joked (which I think he was being serious) about giving the whole class a test on the required readings that were supposed to be read before class.

"The View from the Bottom"

By the Generation Whatever Team

Every four years (sometimes two years), people always ask what can be done to increase the political interest of college students. While certain institutional barriers exist in getting these students to the polls, such as voter registration deadlines, across the country there are thousands of student activists organizing their campuses around issues and political campaigns. Each year the College Democrats of America and its chapters across the country organize tens or hundreds of thousands of student activists on hundreds of campuses for progressive political causes. Despite being heavily outspent by their Republican counterparts, the CDA has been much more effective at turning out college voters for Democrats. (In 2004, the CDA received less than $100,000 while the CRNC received several million dollars.)

The Stanford Democrats have been a very active group over the last several years. Despite being a relatively small campus, in 2004, they had hundreds of students canvassing and phone banking in swing states. Their efforts in California’s 21st Assembly District also proved key to the narrow victory for the Democrat who was greatly outspent by the self financed billionaire Republican.

During the 2005 special election, the Stanford Democrats registered the second most people of medium sized schools in California. Additionally, many Stanford Democrats alum helped to found the “first student think tank”, The Roosevelt Institution .

We chatted with the enthusiastic president of the Stanford Democrats, Bobby Lepore, to find out what they were up to this election year.

"Your call cannot be completed as dialed.... "

By the Generation Whatever Team

Here’s a short story about voting that might give us a little further understanding maybe why the younger citizens of this country are apathetic and may not vote. The subject in this story wanted to remain namless, so for the purposes of the story I will call him Mark.

Mark was entering his 2nd year at UCLA when the 2004 Presidential Elections rolled by. He was very excited about being able to vote, even more excited about casting a vote against the Incumbent President. Mark, as a high school student, saw that the U.S was mistaken by invading Iraq. He, unlike many others of his age, knew this war had nothing to do with the War on Terror. Surely the rest of the country understood that. He thought it was going to be a year of revolution, a year to get rid of the President who lost the 2000 popular vote, and won the presidency by a 5-4 SCOTUS vote. But, it was time to get over that and vote this President out.

The GateCrashers

By the Generation Whatever Team

Uber-bloggers Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD made an appearance in Manhattan recently for a signing of their book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics , hosted by Drinking Liberally.

The Generation Whatever team was on the scene to get their view on how the Democratic establishment can reach out to the youth vote.

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

The Word on the Street

By the Generation Whatever Team

This week we venture out into the streets - well, actually the parks - of Manhattan to find out what's on the minds of your average young person. Our intrepid reporters went to Union Square Park to ask young people about their attitude towards politics and the issues of the day.

After many unsuccessful attempts to get people to talk to us and making a few goth kids paranoid (I'm not a Fed. Really.), we finally got the hang of approaching people. Of course, we realize that the people who would be open to talk to us are the ones who do vote and care about the issues, but we think we got a pretty representative cross-section.

Kristen, 30

Reg NYC: Do you volunteer or organizations or participate?

Kristin: : No, I just make sure to go to the polls.

Reg NYC: What sort of issues do you care about?

Kristin: I care about social issues when it comes to women and equal rights. Those are probably the two main issues that I strongly feel about, I guess.

The View from the Top

By the Generation Whatever Team

In this installment we talk to some prominent political figures to get their view of the role of young people in politics and what they, themselves, can do as leaders to reach out to young people.

General Wesley Clark

We caught up with General Clark during his live blogging session for a quick Question.