The C-SPAN Campaign 2016-Bus Tour is visiting western New York today. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley was there as it rolled up at the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts School Monday morning.
“How many of you heard of C-SPAN? It’s okay if you haven’t," said La'Shawna Saint-Preux, C-SPAN Bus Marketing Representative. She gave students a quick lesson about C-SPAN and how it provides extensive, bipartisan coverage of government and politics.
This year's theme for the C-SPAN bus is "Road to the White House", which has been providing access to all the presidential candidates and their events.
“You know, this election year I do find a lot more young people are involved, just because the news, you know. It’s been all over the television, it’s been all over the papers, so I do find they have a little bit more knowledge about the election process. They still may not know exactly what C-SPAN is but it’s a great opportunity for us to tie that in together because they may have been watching the coverage but they don’t know they can watch it on C-SPAN without the commercials, without the commentary, so I think it’s a great time to tell the kids about exactly what we do," Saint-Preux stated.
For Performing Arts juniors Corinne McLoughlian and Kayla Riley, it was the first time they learned about C-SPAN. Both were intrigued about learning how important it is to be an informed citizen
“Especially knowing that, like, our next president will be around for a while, like, I just want to know what’s going on," said McLoughlian.
“I thought everything was based off of like, you know, the usual CNN or Channel 1 News but it’s not. It’s like on C-SPAN and then what C-SPAN actually stands for which is Cable Satellite Political Affairs Network," Riley replied. "I kind of like sometimes follow the political views. I don’t really all the time but when I do it’s just like, well, there’s some issues that need to be addressed".
“I learned that I can have a say in what happens in this country and I think that’s pretty cool, like, and it’s easy to like, get confused with all the information that’s being thrown out but like C-SPAN gives us like, an easy way to access it and understand like, what’s going on. I think that’s really cool," McLoughlian remarked.
The bus also traveled to Maryvale High School in Cheektowaga. Local students are encouraged to enter CPSAN's video competition. This year's theme is what's the ‘most urgent issue for the new president’. The top prize is $5,000.00.
