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:
“All night in the unmade park
After the railings and shrubberies
The birds the grass the trees the lake
And the wild boys innocent as strawberries
Had followed the hunchback
To his kennel in the dark.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“It was a time of madness, the sort of mad-hysteria that always presages war. There seems to be nothing left but war—when any population in any sort of a nation gets violently angry, civilization falls down and religion forsakes its hold on the consciences of human kind in such times of public madness.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)