THIS is in response to Ms. Catherine Cepeda’s letter to the editor on June 28. Realizing that some comments she made needed to be refuted, I felt obliged to sit down and write yet another letter to your newspaper. This is again in regards to the Junior Statesmen of America Program.
As she stated, Ms. Cepeda did not “want to make this a big issue,” but she did not realize that she opened up a huge can of worms by responding to Mr. Torres’s letter. Because, dear readers, the JSA program means so much to a handful of CNMI students, and many of whom I have spoken with felt insulted because JSA has made them into the people they are today, and I am one of them. It is not only an insult to us, but to our parents and families for sending us there. Seeing a student who has not yet experienced this program say that she can get just as educated as a JSA student by taking advantage of the local community college and her parents by learning from them is an insult to its participants and degrading to a 70-year-old program. Nothing can compare to the education received at a JSA summer school.
I want to take the time to refute some comments that Ms. Cepeda wrote last June 28. She wrote:
“The fund that the government donated…could be better used to assist our school system. This way more students can benefit rather than selfishly thinking of my ‘once in a lifetime opportunity.’”
The CNMI government is currently on a continuing budget and in that budget there is a budget for PSS and a budget for the Junior Statesmen Program. That money will always be there until a new budget is passed.
Also, the leaders of any nation or region have never been “just another face in the crowd.” They’ve learned to stand up above the rest and become leaders. The JSA program was first introduced to the CNMI in 1990. Since then every single Attorney General’s Cup winner has attended at least one Junior Statesmen Summer School, some even longer, such as Kekoa Castro Cabrera, the 2002 AG Cup winner—he is a three-time JSA graduate like myself. And do you call that a waste of money? I guarantee you that future governors of this island will be JSA graduates.
The CNMI is actually investing well in its future, because JSA college credit transfers into high school credit, which alleviates classes in a high school student’s curriculum, opening the door for them to take other advanced courses. Imagine the look on the college admissions officers’ faces.
Also, when you say that the money could be used to help PSS instead of selfishly thinking about a once in a lifetime opportunity—I take it that you believe that people who take the JSA scholarship from the CNMI government are selfish and don’t want to share educational opportunities with the rest of the CNMI students. Like you, Ms. Cepeda, JSA students want to further their education and take full advantage of every educational opportunity available to them. They want to better themselves by attending the JSA program, and if the money’s there for them to do it, they take it.
“I also believe the JSA program offers subjects that could be learned locally…the only thing I would miss is the ostentatious setting.”
Learned locally?! A local community college has lecture style classrooms, an 8-story library with over 8 million books, the fastest Internet and search engine connections in the country, lectures and speakers programs where former presidential staff members (like Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry) speak to the students, and a handful of experienced college professors, some with two Ph.D.s, have been on educational and political task forces organized by the President of the United States, and have been teaching for over 25 years in college classrooms? No Way! If NMC had that, then I wouldn’t be attending the JSA program every summer. But it doesn’t so JSA students see what Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern and Georgetown offer and so off they go.
And how about the word “ostentatious”? Do you, Ms. Cepeda, believe those who attend the JSA summer school only do so to show off and hold bragging privileges? Well that’s what you make it seem when you describe JSA as possessing nothing more than an “ostentatious setting.” And, of course, this is all coming from a person (Ms. Catherine Cepeda) who has not even attended a summer school yet feels she has the authority, the right and the basis to insult a program about which she has no first hand experience.
If you saw a school that was run-down and didn’t have running water, has flickering lights and not enough textbooks, would you like to attend that school? I think not. The reason why prestigious colleges are called prestigious is because They Are. Because they are financially stable, they can offer the best education to their students, hire the best college professors, and place the students in a comfortable environment so learning is easier.
“My focus at this point in time is to learn the basic essence of government, and that I could learn from our local instructors, politicians and my fascinating parents.”
I don’t doubt that your parents are fascinating, nor do I doubt that there are a number of very educated and dedicated teachers here in the CNMI, but learning from our local politicians?! Some don’t even possess college degrees, let alone heavy concentration studies on actual law. For example, a certain representative who introduced a proposal about allowing only local people to run for public office. There were extreme fallacies in that legislative initiative, and you want to learn from our local politicians?! I hope he wasn’t one of them. I have an idea—why don’t we send our lawmakers to a JSA summer school? Now that would be a REALLY good investment in CNMI public funds.
My point is that the JSA experience goes above and beyond any kind of formal education available on this side of the world. And having high school students be a part of it, especially CNMI students (since we’re so far from the U.S. mainland), is a blessing.
This is for all JSA graduates—be proud that you were ambitious enough to attend JSA and for making it through a rigorous educational program. Leaving our families for the summer was sometimes difficult, and we had our share of homesickness, but we stuck it through and became better people. To the readers—believe me when I say that JSA has been active in molding the future of the commonwealth.CHRISTINE TORRES
Capitol Hill, Saipan
