To the listserv community:

First of all, I promise to be more technologically savvy in the 21st
century. Yesterday was the second time
in two weeks I clutterd this forum with a private note. I apologize for
that and promise to pay closer attention.

Regarding our extremely successful trip to Cleveland, here is the
summary:

Because I write about religion in American culture for the New York
Times Syndicate and now for ENI,  a wire
service in Geneva, Switzerland, I needed to attend the National Council
of Churches conference in Cleveland
this year. Seven students accompanied me from Wednesday through Friday,
and the goals were hefty:
    * get experience in a national conference environment.
    * assist the wire service staff produce copy.
    * experience an extremely diverse cultural environment.
    * understand the link between religion, culture, social reform and
politics.
    * prepare for and carry off an on-the-record private lunch with
former UN ambassador Andrew Young and former congressman Bob Edgar. King
is the new president of the NCC, Edgar the new secretary-general.

The students who attended include Melissa Titus, Adeyemi Oshodi, Jon
Sergent, Josh Knight, Megan Atkinson, Andrea Cole and Phaedra Solomon.

NCC is an organization that brings together about 35 Christian
denominations in the U.S. with a goal not only
of strengthening relationships between these denominations but also
strengthening the relationships between
religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc.

This meant that in our stories we had to explain the difference between
an Orthodox view of the birth of Christ
and a Baptist view, and we had to write it in a way it could be read by
anyone.

We arrived at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and by 7 p.m. the students were working
on their first rounds of interviews. In fact,
all together, this group completed -- in just under 48 hours -- more
than 40 individual interviews. They also
covered about 25 different speakers and produced at least ten stories
that were used on the wire service, on the web
page and as press releases.

In addition to the private luncheon, they attended two press conferences
with Ambassador Young and Congressman Edgar, met political refugees from
Sierre Leone, experienced a mildly mentally ill resident of Cleveland
who
proclaimed in one press conference that the world really IS going to end
at midnight on Dec. 31st and heard speeches by Jesse Jackson and Marion
Wright-Edelman.

They observed heated exchanges between speakers and audience members.
They watched support groups fan out
constantly at the conference to pass out rainbow pins and scarves
endorsing the ordination of gays and lesbians.
They heard from people who openly oppose such ordination.

My favorite moment of the entire trip happened during our lunch with
Young and Edgar. Two or three students had
asked about student apathy and about the general goals of the NCC. These
brought about wonderful responses
from both men.  Then I pointed to Melissa Titus, and with remarkable
elegance for a young journalist, she looked at Andrew Young -- the man
who marched with King and held King while he died -- and she asked in
essence, "You talk about him a great deal. It makes me wonder what
Martin Luther King, Jr. would say about how life has turned
out for you and all you've achieved. What would he say about all the
social reform issues on the plate of the
NCC right now?"

Young really appreciated the question also.

To read just a sample of the students' work, go to

    http://www.wfn.org/newsearch.html

enter the words "Miami University" in the "search" slot and hit enter.
You can limit the field by clicking on the box for November, 1999,
though I doubt that matters much.

Cheryl