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CLA students travel to West Point for Student Conference on U.S. Affairs

Students in the College of Liberal Arts were offered the chance to expand their policy discussion skills with military cadets and students from around the globe at the United States Military Academy at West Point's Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA).

SCUSA is a four-day conference held at West Point Military Academy in New York. The conference is aimed to give students, political experts and military cadets the chance to discuss complex issues of foreign policy. This year, the conference focused on the discussion of multilateral institutions in the multipolar world.

Peter White, a political science professor, was contacted by the head of West Point's Department of Social Sciences to invite Auburn to attend the conference. Auburn selected four students who would benefit from the experience and serve as positive representatives of Auburn.

"This was a fantastic opportunity for our students and that Auburn was specifically invited to send a student delegation speaks well to our student and program's reputation," White said. "Our students got to showcase their skills and expertise and develop professionally as the next generation of national security and intelligence professionals."

Students from different universities and nations all over the world were divided into roundtable groups to focus their discussion. Led by a cadet and a political science expert, each group was given four, four-hour time blocks to talk through their topics and draft a policy brief.

During the rest of the trip, students toured West Point, heard lectures from guest speakers and spent time with their cadets.

Political science senior Sutherland Wood attended SCUSA to learn more about the military side of policy discussions and see how West Point cadets live. Through this experience, Wood found a new found appreciation for what West Point does and gained exposure to people from different countries.

"I was pleasantly surprised with how much I really learned from engaging in the perspectives of the cadets and the other students in my group from different parts of the world," Wood said. "When you're talking about something like politics and policy, not everybody's going to agree all the time, obviously, but everyone was very respectful and agreeable, even if to disagree without being disagreeable."

With a veteran father and a concentration in international affairs, Ainsley Braswell, a political science junior, was excited to attend SCUSA. She found the West Point trip especially insightful because she got to examine the day-to-day life of a cadet at West Point compared to ROTC students at Auburn.

"It got me thinking about how although these students are being trained differently than I am, we are still able to combine our talents to create a policy memorandum that can be presented to our government," Braswell said. "At the end of the day, even though we are having very different college experiences, we care about the same issues and have similar opinions in areas where I expected us to differ."

The students' travel was made possible by charitable contributions made by alumni, friends and faculty to the Political Science gift account.

Learn more about the Department of Political Science in the College of Liberal Arts.

Tags: Political Science Students