When we saw this news story about the Congressional Youth Leadership Conference (CYLC) planning to refund $1 million to irate parents for bungling their kids’ big trip to Obama’s inauguration, we wondered if that was the same trip that our correspondent Tess Langan had been on. Indeed it was. We asked Tess to tell about her CYLC experience:
To be honest I was not at all surprised that many parents were dissatisfied with the CLYC program and were seeking refunds. The group had a very impressive itinerary: captivating, distinguished speakers, and theatrical performances from Capitol Steps and a Shakespeare Company. But the program lacked the facilities, transportation and staff to accommodate the 15,000 students on the trip. It was because of the huge numbers on the trip that it took at least a half hour to find your bus every day in the cold, that my unlucky Polk group always ended up in the rafters, and that at the closing Gala we we waited in lines for about fifteen minutes just to exit the building.
I overheard many students warning of their parents’ wrath. One girl claimed that the information provided before the trip had been misleading, “They made it seem like we had tickets to the Inauguration and that we would be going to an Inaugural Ball where we could see Obama, ” she said.
I had heard many complaints throughout the trip and had formed a diplomatic opinion on claims of a “rip off.” On the one hand, poor organizing had led to missed plays, meals and speakers. And the meals were often not worth eating. My personal lowlights were when my bus arrived at our night of theater so late that we were just in time for a rowdy standing ovation. Not only had we missed the entire performance of a modern day Shakespeare interpretation, but the audience’s exuberance left us with little doubt that we had missed something good.
On another occasion, I ate a bagged lunch of a near petrified muffin and slimy turkey sandwich that would have had trouble passing any health inspector’s evaluation, and it did not sit well with my stomach. So while the first blind man to summit Mount Everest spoke I lay on a gurney in a closet of a room alternating between lucidity, retching and sleeping. These were the lowlights, but the highlights were in abundance.
Yes, problems arose on the trip because of the sheer numbers of people attending. But those numbers were also part of what made the weekend so exciting. Overall, my rumbling stomach and the biting air did little to taint the sweetness of being there to hear the stirring words of the Inaugural Address of the first black president of the United States of America.
Want to hear more? Pissed-off parents are blogging about the over-priced, over-hyped organizational fiasco, here.
A blue porta-potty nightmare.
Can we anticipate that many voters will soon be echoing the sentiments above on a larger scale?
Can we expect that many will come to realize that they have been misled, that they were too willing to believe in fantastic promises of affordable college tuition, green energy independence, employment opportunities, a world free from conflict, and end to global warming*, fiscal restraint, an end of cynicism or at least those in power making an attempt to follow the same laws they try to impose on the rest of us…..?
YES, WE CAN!
* I’ll give them this one this week.
Heaven forbid that we actually try to believe in “an end of cynicism”. What is wrong with people that they feel the need to try to bring other folks down? Is positivity such a bad thing?
Welcome the the world.
Sorry. Welcome to the world.
Seriously. I feel about what happened to you and the others, Tess. I read some of the comments on the blog, too. Since the parents did pay nearly $3,000 for the privilege of having their kids being treated like cattle, I would recommend contact the folks in charge, as a group. If this is not effective, I would go to small claims court and try to get my money back. That IS a lot of money and you all deserved to be treated better than what you describe. At the very least, for that amount of money, they should have made more of an effort to keep their promises to you.
“recommend contacting”
“At the very least, for that amount of money, they should have made more of an effort to keep their promises to you.”
Well said, especially if the money is what you paid in taxes and the promises are….(see my post above.)
Yes, well, 5 executive orders in 8 days…that’s kinda scary, too.
“Heaven forbid that we actually try to believe in “an end of cynicism”. What is wrong with people that they feel the need to try to bring other folks down? Is positivity such a bad thing?”
Positivity is not a bad thing, however sheer stupidity is.
Would YOU give money to an organization named Congressional Youth Leadership Conference? I mean, come on, don’t you learn anything from watching what the Congressional Adults do with our tax dollars?
“Heaven forbid that we actually try to believe in “an end of cynicism”. What is wrong with people that they feel the need to try to bring other folks down? Is positivity such a bad thing?”
Positivity is not a bad thing, however sheer stupidity is.
Cheap jokes aside, I gotta give Ms. Tess a world of credit for those words. I doubt that I’d have been as gracious. Cheers, & thanks for striking a note of hope for the future.
I was a Faculty Advisor with the Jr High group. While some of the parent’s claims are legit, most are not. It hurts to read the parent blog and see familiar last names, knowing I have pics of these kids laughing and having fun. It was not a complete disaster and I feel sorry for the kids bc their parents are going to overshadow all the good memories they have from this conference.
In training we were warned that some parents had been calling in asking, “ohhh when my child meets Barack can you take a pic…” etc. Envision was beginning to realize that the information they gave parents was very ambiguous and parents were reading into it what they wanted to hear (I mean, obvi your 10 year old is not important enough to dance with the president on inauguration day).
My group did not make it on the Mall on inauguration day. We were on Independence Ave looking on to the Mall. People with tickets from their congressperson couldn’t even get on the Mall; it was very crowded. We heard the oath and the speech and everything, just didn’t have a view. The previous day we watched the I Have a Dream speech in honor of MLK Jr day. On the bus after the inauguration I explained that back then, everyone came to see MLK Jr but they had no jumbo trons or modern day sound equipment. Just like everyone back then was proud to just be there, we can be proud that we experienced this event. I explained this much more eloquently then than I just did typing it out, haha.
Envision should refund the parents who want a refund. Everyone who attended this conference is an alumni of a CYLC conference, which means they had a good time before and came back for more. Unfortunately, there were just too many people to ensure that everything ran smoothly. Envision learned to cap enrollment from this, and that sometimes you just have to turn people away. I had a great time working (stressful but great) and it makes me want to quit my office job and do this all the time.