Local Youth Finds Inspiration
In 'World Affairs Seminar'

A gathering of 1000 high school students, including several hundred foreign students, makes one enthusiastic and knowledgeable about foreign affairs, according to RUHS senior Kris Minsinger.

Still, he told the Randolph Rotary Club last week, it was the exchange of ideas in small groups that was most stimulating.

Minsinger attended the World Affairs Seminar at the University of Wisconsin this summer, sponsored by the Randolph Rotary, and he reported on his experiences at the club's meeting at Grant Camp.

Minsinger's friend Brendan Mollica, another RUHS junior, also attended the Seminar on his own, but he was not able to attend the Rotary presentation.

The week-long gathering, that included talks by international experts, "allowed me to understand much more about the world," Minsinger said.

The speaker who impressed him the most, he said, was a man who had been able to start a company in Africa. "He gave me an idea of how to help people in the Third World," Minsinger said.

He also noted that among some of the foreign students, he encountered a "strong Islamic viewpoint" that gave him a better undestanding of the worldwide politics of that issue.

Being around such a diversity of students for a week, and talking constantly in small groups about their concerns, exchanging ideas, was the most valuable part of the World Affairs Seminar, he said.

He noted that since he has returned, he has corresponded with new friends from all over the world.

Every year Randolph Rotary sponsors one student to the World Affairs Seminar, which usually falls the week after school gets out. The student should be a high school junior with a strong interest in foreign affairs and a desire for new experiences. Any interested student could talk to Kris Minsinger or RUHS teacher Brian Rainville, or they could contact Dick Drysdale, who coordinates the program for Rotary.