Alicia Weston is going to Washington. Not as an elected
official, as in
‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’, but as staff, representing young
voters. The Morgan Hill student leaves Aug. 26 to spend about four
months as an intern with the Richard Gephardt presidential campaign
in Washington, D.C.
Alicia Weston is going to Washington. Not as an elected official, as in ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’, but as staff, representing young voters.
The Morgan Hill student leaves Aug. 26 to spend about four months as an intern with the Richard Gephardt presidential campaign in Washington, D.C.
Weston, 20, and a junior at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, sees this as the first step to a public sector career.
“I’d love to go into public service,” she said, “the State Department or United Nations, something international.” Before that she intends to get her feet wet volunteering.
“Either the Peace Corps or Teach for America – something to give back to the community.” Weston said she’d be happy working in an inner city area or a third world country.
And, before that, Weston will have the sojourn in Washington, D.C., Gephardt signed her up after a multi-part application process and after meeting her when he gave a speech in San Jose recently.
Weston explained why she finds Gephardt’s political future appealing.
“A lot of youth my age say Richard Gephardt is really boring,” she said. “I was definitely engaged and inspired (hearing him speak). I wanted to be on Capitol Hill.”
She said she was impressed with his brief analysis of government.
“His rhetoric wasn’t just rhetoric, but actually a proper analysis of what’s going on in government,” she said.
Weston heard the congressman from Missouri speak at a San Jose Trial Lawyers luncheon in early June, just after she returned from school. She was part of a group offering opinions on how to reinvigorate California politics in general and his campaign in particular. She offered her opinions on how to reinvigorate young California’s interest in politics.
“Yuppies think they aren’t adequately represented by government,” she said. “I got caught up in this idea to represent the student constituents. Most of my friends are disinterested in government; they aren’t really engaged.”
Gephardt, she said, really seemed to understand.
So, Weston is now off to Washington, D.C., to interpret the interests of California youth for the congressman’s campaign and, she hopes, get more of them out to vote.
“They usually take four interns,” she said, “but this time I will be the only one.”
Intern duties include answering phones, mail, talking to constituents.
“They said it would be great if one person could do all of it. It will be a challenge. I also might be writing things for the Congressional Record,” she said. “It’s a really exciting time because he is running for president. He supposedly gets two-feet of mail a day.”
The office has only 10 employees, she said.
“I’ll be living with my best friend – who has yet to get an internship,” she said.
Weston’s parents are not worried that she is going off on an adventure. The sent her to the the private Mount Madonna School in Watsonville from preschool through high school. Mt. Madonna has tiny classes and encourages independent thinking. Weston graduated in a class of seven.
“She’s very unique with a good head on her shoulders,” said her father, Charles Weston.
Her mother, Lesley Miles, explained further.
“Alicia is good at speaking extemporaneously, bringing people together – and – being able to express her views and make them happen,” she said. “She’s always been interested in politics and particularly the government. And right now our government is in need of bright new thinkers.”
The family business is Weston Miles Architects, a long-established, local firm.
“I don’t think Washington, D.C., is an environment of people who are power hungry,” Alicia said. “They’re there because they’re working for the public good, to do something good.”
Politics have been a particular interest of Weston’s for several years and the Gephardt gig is not her first experience with government.
There was the memorable morning while she was still in high school, her father remembers, when he was calling to Alicia to hurry up or she’d be late for school.
“I’m talking to Donna Shalala,” she called back. Alicia had met the Secretary for Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration during a class trip to the Capitol. The two were discussing a project Alicia suggested.
This summer she is working for Assemblyman Simon Salinas and for Congressman Sam Farr, besides taking a class in the philosophy of human rights at Stanford. Before that, for two summers in high school Weston worked for “Vital Voices,” a democratic Initiative that promoted democracy through women. And last year she went to India to work in an orphanage.
This is not the first time she has lived in Washington, D.C., since she took classes at Georgetown University during her first college summer.
Alicia is not the only adventurer and independent thinker in the family. Where her mother was Alicia’s age she was in Guatemala’s backcountry teaching modern farming techniques to the rural population, dodging guerillas and trying to stay alive and healthy.
One day, staying alive and healthy involved ripping the skin off a very large snake – thankfully dead at the time. The local people, she said, might have been impressed a little bit.
Alicia’s father’s early adventures include an arrest after chaining himself – with others – to a fence, protesting the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant and winning a Soldier’s Medal in Vietnam for saving lives, a feat involving a forklift and a burning trailer.
Alicia might find the nation’s capital mild in comparison.
“My parents have always supported me in what I’ve done,” she said. “They never said ‘you need to do this – now,’ Mostly they wanted me to find my passion but, for a long time that was difficult because I didn’t have a focus.”
Her younger sister Madeline has horseback riding.
“That’s what she does all the time,” Weston said. “What ultimately engaged me was an intellectual study of government. I’m not a nerd at all but I think government is important.”
“Ignorance isn’t bliss,” she said. “I want to know what’s going on and, as an informed voter, I can contribute to the process.”
Weston began college at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles but transferred to the much smaller Claremont-McKenna after her first year.
“I love college,” she said. “I went to USC at first and hated it. It was a combination of being too big and being a research university.” She prefers Claremont-McKenna where teachers are engaged with their students and where students are interested in learning, not just in the party scene.
While working a 40-hour week for Gephardt, Weston will take two classes and write her thesis – she is a double government and history major, a traditional career path to politics and government service.
For now, though, the journey takes her to Washington.
