WASHINGTON — On the agenda for discussion: alternatives to drilling for oil, AIDS prevention in South Africa, improving access to health insurance for children.
But this meeting was a bit different from most on Capitol Hill, because many of the activists in the room pushing for major public policy changes were not yet old enough to purchase an alcoholic beverage.
About 200 college students gathered last week in the Cannon House Office Building to celebrate the first issue of the Roosevelt Review, a journal from one of the nation's newest public policy centers, the Roosevelt Institution.
The group -- which describes itself as the "first progressive student think tank in the nation" -- is using its new publication as a catalyst to influence public policy and to demonstrate that college students' intellect is a resource to be harvested by policymakers, national leaders and the media.
"We like to say that colleges are effectively think tanks; they're just not effective think tanks," said Quinn Wilhelmi, 21, a junior majoring in religious studies at Stanford University and the institution's executive director.
"Every college student has an idea of great caliber or a late-night dorm conversation that produces something of excellence," he said. "There should be a repository for those great ideas that happen every day on our campuses."
Created at Stanford in November 2004 by students disappointed with the outcome of the presidential election, the Roosevelt Institution was named in honor of Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, who "represent the great bipartisan progressive tradition of America," and Franklin's wife, Eleanor. (The name also plays off another Stanford think tank -- the Hoover Institution, a renowned center of conservative thought founded by Herbert Hoover in 1919 before he became president.)
As the Stanford group was forming, across the country, students at Yale University were working on something similar. The two groups linked up and coordinated their efforts, creating a forum for research and discussion by some of the nation's brightest -- and youngest -- thinkers.
The first issue of the Roosevelt Review, available at http://rooseveltinstitution.org/roosevelt_review, includes articles on solar energy, military use of uranium, AIDS and genetic testing. The articles were selected by student editors and policy experts from among 200 submissions. Nine of the contributing authors are pursuing their bachelor's degrees; several others are in graduate school.
