On Monday, Sept. 17, American River College organized an event dedicated to Constitution Day.
A small tent decorated with balloons in the Rose Marks Pavilion drawled students in. Once inside, students were asked to answer a set of questions regarding the Constitution. By correctly answering several questions, a respondent could get a prize.
ARC student Jaime Concepcion, a 31-year-old majoring in electrical engineering, won a paper bag with small-sized toothpaste, deodorant and other fun gifts. Concepcion said that it wasn’t too hard to give the answers.
“I had to get my mind thinking that to recall things I knew from the high school,” Concepcion said. He added that considers the Constitutional Day event as very important for the students. “Nowadays most of the students would rather go online instead of keeping this knowledge in their minds. But it’s important to know these things.”
The original constitution of the United States did not set forth requirements for the right to vote, and there was a long way to get this right for African Americans, women and Native Americans. The Civil Rights movement went through hard steps to make the 12th Amendment that defines thee current system of choosing the President of the United States. The 15th and 19th amendments guarantees modern people the right to vote for each citizen, including those of any race, color or gender.
On Sept. 25, members of Political Science Department of the American River College held an event, which gives all the U.S. citizens an opportunity to celebrate their constitutional rights by exercising their right to vote. The purpose of the event is to help ARC students prepare now for the general election in November by becoming informed about the issues and candidates.