Along with poets, junior high boys are truly unacknowledged legislators of the world, but our St. Bernard’s lads have gotten quite a bit of acknowledgement from the Packer Model Congress these last five years.

Packer Collegiate in Brooklyn Heights is host every April to a Saturday gathering of several hundred sixth, seventh, and eighth graders from as many as twenty schools. Having spent most of the year preparing for the day, the boys and girls have their bills ready for debate with marshaled facts and crushing statistics. Each delegate has a bill that has been devised, written, debated, and sharpened over the course of the school year. There are always the hot topic bills: repeal the electoral college, legalize marijuana, remove bans on same-sex marriage, raise the minimum wage, end long-line fishing. Then there are the passionate oddball ones: cease trading with countries that kill whales, make all school lunches vegetarian, shut down NASA and use the money to improve inner city schools. And then they are the waaaay-out ones: abolish the postage stamp, bring back crucifixion, begin all school days with prayer to Mother Earth.

St. Bernard’s sends eight or ten delegates every year who have earned disproportionate honors, strengthening the argument that our boys really like to argue (and are skilled at it), but it is really of more significance that nearly all of them have had a cracking good time. The food is good, there are girls, and it is, in the end, fun to stand up and lay out ideas that could change the world. One of our boys got so deep into his bill (to abolish the inheritance tax) that he sent his speeches to a United States senator, a real one, who read several paragraphs into the Congressional Record. Even those for whom fame is more fleeting find it an activity well worth the considerable time they have spent.

No. 33, Fall 2005, page 11