NEW PALESTINE — When the Indiana Bar Foundation’s We the People competition was completed earlier this month, the overall team from New Palestine High School finished in fourth place, with one of their team units — Unit 2 — capturing a first-place trophy.
“It felt really good when we found out as a team we finished in fourth place because there were a lot of ups and downs during the competition,” NPHS senior Evan Nelson said.
His group, Unit 5, wrote a paper on the Second Amendment, book burning and the searching of schools and then had to answer questions about their research in a simulated Congressional hearing format.
“We had to be prepared for all three of those topics,” he said. “It is all very relevant with what is going on nowadays.”
The 2023 Indiana Bar Foundation’s We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution State Finals was held in Indianapolis last week as students from across the state gathered to display their constitutional knowledge.
According to a bar foundation news release, more than 600 middle and high school students competed in the 2023 championship, which will be held at Historic Union Station and Crowne Plaza Indianapolis Downtown.
Classes from 14 middle schools and 14 high schools from across the state qualified by finishing in the top three in one of four regionals or were granted a wild card entry based on regional points.
New Palestine High School teacher Gina Iacobucci taught and coached the NPHS team and said she was incredibly proud of the students who represented the district well.
“They scored higher than we did last year, which is always good,” Iacobucci said. “This group was very good on having inter-unit disagreements and presenting their views respectfully and we were judged on that.”
Last year’s team also finished fourth, but this year’s overall team was closer to finishing in first place than they were fifth place.
“That gap between the top four teams is closing as our units are learning more and more every year,” Iacobucci said. “We’d love to win it one day, and seeing the gap close is really good and credit goes to this group who were very good researchers.”
The unit 2 team composed of seniors Matthew Spears, Matthew Everett, Anne Bauer and Lauren Appleby finish in first place. Their task was analyzing the Federalist and Anti-Federalist arguments over the constitution and applying the knowledge to their arguments.
“We basically specialized in The Federalist Papers, how the founding fathers framed the Constitution,” Everett said. “We met a ton after school and at coffee shops to study and work on our papers together, sharing what we found about the Constitution and court cases to prep for the judges who could have asked us any question.”
Everett noted the class and “We the People” team as been a fantastic way to learn about the political processes, and his teammates agreed.
“This year has been one of the most rewarding of my entire young life,” Bauer said. “The fact that we gained so much knowledge about not only about the Constitution and the government, but also about ourselves was really rewarding.”
Bauer said that heading into the government class she didn’t have a strong grasp where she stood politically but now feels better about that.
“I feel like I found a new sense of belonging to a philosophy, and this class and competition, it helped me align myself politically as to what I want to do with my life,” Bauer said. “It reinforced the goals of wanting to vote and uphold my civic duties and that is the cornerstone of our government — We the People.”
Lauren (Unit 2) and her twin sister Emily Appleby (Unit 6) were both on the “We the People” team and said growing up in such a stressed political environment and learning all one can about the U.S. Government and the Constitution is just a must.
“Sometimes you feel pulled to go to one side or the other to stay on the extreme side of a view, but this class taught me it’s good to have ideas from both sides and that we don’t have to stay on one side of the spectrum,” Emily Appleby said. “It makes me feel more comfortable in my own views.”
Lauren noted she loved the class and the state competition was a blast. The teams submitted papers they had written for a panel of judges who the fired questions back at them on their specialized topic.
“We had to answer their questions based not only on our papers, but on our research.” Lauren Appleby said.
The students say taking part in the class and doing the extra work of being on the “We the People” team has better prepared them to understand more about the government and their rights.
“I feel like I do know more because instead of just finding out about things on the surface level I now know more about why things happen coupled with the history of the issues,” Lauryn Hulet said. “Our unit, (Unit 6) talked about how the things of the past did have an influence on the 21st Century.”
Kate Poorbaugh noted the “We the People” team and government class is her favorite of all the classes she’s ever taken.
“It’s kind of a fun atmosphere because not only do you get to learn and focus in on a specialty about our government, we have a fun group of people too,” she said. “Everyone really cared about what we were doing.”
She noted from where the students were on the first day of class to the knowledge picked up about the U.S. Government at the end has been remarkable.
Senior Vivian Hart, who wants to be a lawyer said, “We the People” has been the “perfect” class and fellow senior Joshua Klein felt the same.
“The opportunity of ‘We the People’ gives us the chance to be the future educated vote,” he said. “We are the ones who in the future can be vocal about the issues we believe in.”
The full list of team members were Isabel Abbott, Emily Appleby, Lauren Appleby, Gavin Bannon, Anne Bauer, Audra Bloomer, Addison Bowers, Chloe Buchanan, Daniel Davis, Matthew Everett, Liam Fuller, Vivian Hart, Kaylee Holtsclaw, Lauryn Hulet, Joshua Klein, Evan Nelson, Katherine Poorbaugh, Maliah Ringham, Eleanor Shanahan, Matthew Spears, Madison Stone, Ellie Strong and Carter Willey.
