Boys Nation is an annual civic training event run by the American Legion.
Each year, two delegates in the summer after their junior year of high school are selected from each of the forty-nine American Legion Boys State programs in the U.S. (Hawaii does not host a Boys State). These delegates attend the week-long event in Washington, DC.
The event endeavors to teach delegates about the processes of Federal government of the United States through taking part in a mock Senate and mock elections of a Boys Nation Senate President Pro Tempore, Senate Secretary, Vice President, and President. Senators also attend lectures and forums, visiting governmental institutions and historical sites. Tom Brokaw and former president Bill Clinton have been involved. It is a tradition for the student senators to take a private tour of the White House and be received by the current president.
Students assume the role of a United States Senator, representing their respective (Boys) State. They write and introduce bills and debate in the senate chambers. Delegates are split into political parties and draft a party platform as well as perform usual party duties like nominations for president and vice-president, along with elected party leadership.
Senators tour D.C. memorials, get private tours of the United States Supreme Court, Congress, and State Department.
The American Legion Auxiliary runs a similar event called Girls Nation.
Read more about Boys Nation: Executive Branch (2012), Executive Branch (2011), Executive Branch (2010), Political Parties (2012), Political Parties (2011), Political Parties (2010), Senate Leadership (2012), Senate Leadership (2011), Senate Leadership (2010), Senators (2012), Senators (2010), Former Senators (Notable Alumni)
Famous quotes containing the words boys and/or nation:
“This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His style of conversation was coarse and plain enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis and Mnasilus, who listened to his story.... There was a strange mingling of past and present in his conversation, for he had lived under King George, and might have remembered when Napoleon and the moderns generally were born.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children’s children who may perchance be really free.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)