About The Forum

For a period of eight weeks, America’s Youth Forum participants were asked to identify and research a public policy issue of interest to them. Topics selected included (but were by no means limited to) education, affirmative action, campaign finance reform, terrorism, gun control, Iraq, the budget deficit, healthcare, abortion, drug policy, social security, corporate fraud, environmentalism, immigration, employment and more. (For a list of topics by school, please reference the Tell Us Your Topic page of this website). The use of USA TODAY as a primary source of news and information enabled students to comprehend the candidates’ platforms on their topics and to develop questions to potentially be asked at the forums.

Each participating class had the opportunity to submit two questions to be addressed to the candidates. Questions submitted were reviewed and pre-selected by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and USA TODAY. They were then provided to the moderator. This allowed for the forums to raise issues of real interest to young people and to put the spotlight on student participation.

On November 20, 2003, Governor Howard Dean and Representative Dennis Kucinich participated in town meeting-style event hosted by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and USA TODAY. The event was held in the New Hampshire Institute’s state of the art facility at Saint Anselm College. Dean participated in-person, while Kucinich joined via conference call. Over 250 AYF students and educators (some from as far away as Texas) filled the audience, while classrooms from across the country participated via webcast. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Executive Editor Jon Greenberg facilitated the event, which provided a question and answer session between candidates and students.

On December 2, 2003, General Wesley Clark participated in a similar forum with AYF participants. Jon Greenberg served as our moderator for the evening again, and thanks to our friends at New Hampshire Public Radio, the audio from General Clark’s appearance is available at http://www.nhpr.org/view_summary/1464/. The exchanges throughout both forums were lively and stimulating.

Overall, the presidential forums raised issues of true interest to young people and put the spotlight on the youth vote!