Courting fun with the mock trial team

Although they’re not real, the trials by the Texas A&M mock trial team are no kangaroo courts either.

Part theater and part law, the mock trial team competes against other universities though as if they were facing off in an actual court of law. Real judges sit on the bench, grading the performance of all the participants from prosecution and defense, to witnesses and defendants.

Ethan Kidwell ‘27, a political science major, said the American Mock Trial Association, which governs competitions in high schools and colleges nationwide, gives each team a 200-page case outline at the beginning of the school year and the competitions are built around that information.

“We read all of it, and we formulate a case based on what we’ve read,” he said. “And we divide into prosecution and defense. And basically, at these tournaments, we’re either the prosecution or the defense. If prosecution, we go against another school’s defense, and if we’re defense, we go against another school’s prosecution.”

Evelyn Chew ’25, the team’s president, said members follow one of two tracks through the season.

“We have the attorney specific, the usual things that you think of when you think of mock trial …. But we also have a witness track,” she said. “These are the people actually playing the characters in the case. We’ll have the plaintiff, the defendant, we’ll have different eyewitnesses or people who investigated the case. … But then you also have to sort of come up with a character or something to make it more exciting, more interesting, more digestible for that three-hour round that you’re in.”

According to team publicist Ashley Benedict ‘26, an economics major, the team consists of about 30 members who are divided into three teams for competition. She said the student-run organization attracts participants from different backgrounds and majors, but noted many of them come with theater and/or speech and debate experience.

“It’s really interesting to see how people can come from all these different backgrounds and all contribute to mock trial,” she said.

Chew said there are a lot of pre-law majors in the group, but many come from STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) backgrounds. She is studying biomedical science.

“Diversity is one of the biggest points of mock trial in terms of the different talents that you see and the different people that you interact with,” said Jakob Zertuche ’27, a political science major. “Me coming from high school and middle school, I had theater experience, I had speech and debate experience, but I find a mock trial sort of is at the intersection of presentation skills of public speaking of acting as kind of an amalgamation of all of those.”

The TAMU mock trial team was established in 1991 and reestablished in 2015. They participate in several weekend tournaments working up to a regional competition at the end of the year. Most of the tournaments are against other Texas schools such as Baylor, Rice, and Houston.

The trials are never the same twice. Coming into a tournament, the teams find out if they are prosecutors or defenders. They find out which defendant(s) are being prosecuted and for what crime. The case this year is from the fictional state of Midlands. The State of Midlands v. B.F. De la Porta and Poe Cameron is a criminal case centering around the heist of artwork from a hotel during a fundraising gala for a children’s hospital. Cameron is alleged to have stolen the artwork and assaulted a guard in the process. The artwork was found in the home of De la Porta, an eccentric millionaire.

A trial could center around either defendant or both. The charges could be related to the theft, conspiracy, or the receiving of stolen goods. It could also be about the assault of the guard.

“We just have to run with it and make whatever case theories we want to think about and whatever witnesses we want to call, whatever evidence we want to choose to bring forward,” said Benedict, who plays an attorney. “We had to write all of our material, practice it, prepare characters in different ways.”

Another wild card in the contest is not knowing what the judges are looking for.

“It’s very subjective,” Chew said. “Sometimes the judge will really like when you play into a character, sometimes they love the entertainment value … and sometimes they really love an aggressive attorney, or they really want that attorney to go really hard on a witness on cross. But sometimes judges are like, ‘you’re badgering the witness; you look really mean.’”

Each member of the team gets to participate in at least five tournaments a year. Since most tournaments are on the road, expenses add up quickly. To offset the costs for the students, the team relies on donations. One of the biggest comes from The Association of Former Students, which gave $3,000 for the 2023-2024 season.

“I’d say the ability to sort of relieve some of that burden off the students is a huge thing to make sure that everyone who wants to participate and wants to compete is able to,” Zertuche said.

Aside from getting an inside look at how the legal system works, the team members build their interpersonal skills and develop long-lasting friendships.

“Were very tight-knit group and make a lot of really close friendships there,” Kidwell said. “You spend a lot of time together, you know, whether it’s after meetings, just writing directs, or during the tournaments, which lasts like three days. I think it’s a good opportunity to form a lot of good connections.”

“I’ve always valued the skill of public speaking, and presenting,” Zertuche said. “I really believe in the power of rhetoric and narration to make a difference and communicate, right. In an era where communication is very much lacking in our political world or social world, I think public speaking and presenting is something that helps facilitate communication, both professionally but also socially.”

Benedict said the connections and friendships made in the organization are deep and lasting.

“Last year was my first time on the team, and I’m still in connection with a lot of those members,” she said. “I’ll run into them on campus, off campus, and it’s like seeing an old friend, you pick up right where you left off … I feel like I know everybody so well and my closest friends are on the mock trial team.”

Chew said the meetings are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8:30-10 p.m. “But we’ll have like a

late meeting. They go until midnight if we’re being honest,” she said. “And then after the MSC closes, we’ll go to Dollar Slice or something just because we love the conversation. We love being around each other.”

“It’s the perfect balance between hard work and fun. Yeah, work hard and play hard,” Benedict said.

Aggie interns impact public policy

Texas A&M Aggies impact the world in many ways but some are influencing public policy at its basic level through internships supported in part by The Association of Former Students.
Every semester Aggies staff government offices and agencies in Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas, or at U.S. embassies in Europe. They help lawmakers and government officials in the creation and implementation of policies that impact lives worldwide through A&M’s Public Policy Internship Program (PPIP).
Policy Internship Programs Director Stephanie Webb ’07 said the PPIP and the Agricultural & Natural Resources Policy (ANRP) Internship Program usually send 24 to 28 students to Washington each semester and 30 to 40 to Austin every other year when the legislature meets. Currently, only two to three students intern in Europe.
“One of the key features of our program, especially when you compare our program to other universities … is that our students intern full time,” Webb said. “They serve as full time members of whatever team they’re on. We’re expecting them to be fully immersed in all of the activities. That ranges from doing research, to attending meetings, taking notes, working on projects with staff members.”
The programs put Aggies in positions of influence in all corners of society.
“Our students work all over the city. They’re in federal agencies, which are responsible for policy implementation. They’re also in nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, law firms, and all these players have a role in the entire process from beginning to end,” Webb said.
Some Aggies move into higher levels of government. According to Miranda Henderson ’09, director of advocacy and legislative affairs, ANRP alums Trent Ashby ’95 (HD-57) and Andrew Murr ’99 (HD-53) and PPIP alum Brian Harrison ’04 (HD-10) are serving in the Texas House of Representatives and Leighton Schubert ’05 served HD-13 from 2015-18. Additionally, PPIP alum Elizabeth Alexander ’01 is the communications director for the office of the first lady.
Webb said the PPIP is funded by a quasi-endowment established by A&M when the program began in 1999, along with staff support and donations. Webb is a beneficiary of the program. As a student at A&M she did three internships, one through the PPIP and two through ANRP. She now oversees those programs.
PPIP is housed in the Division of Academic and Strategic Collaborations and ANRP, which started in 1990, is housed in the Dean’s Office for the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences (COALS). The ANRP is only open to COALS students, but the PPIP is open to all majors.
“We recruit students from all degrees,” Webb said. “Often students are pursuing a variety of career paths. Obviously, political science, international studies, economics, and public health students have the most interest in our program and there is a direct connect to careers in public policy from those majors. However, we also see students from engineering, science, education, etc., apply to the program as a way to enhance their studies and explore a different career path.”
Alexander Volpe ’25 of Fort Worth, Texas, is studying political science and German. This fall he is on his third trip abroad. His first was in Bonn, Germany, in the summer of 2022 in a language and cultural immersion program. He spent the summer of 2023 in Berlin as an intern for le CIFE, a private institution of higher education and research. This fall he is in Salzburg, Austria, honing his German language skills.
“As in intern for le CIFE I had an opportunity to work in a German speaking office that was focused on issues inherently European. The context gained from a fundamentally different work environment and the expectations in an office of a different culture offered endless opportunities to gain new perspectives,” he said.
Austin Kees ’23 of Austin, who earned his degree in industrial engineering but is taking “a victory lap” at A&M this year, spent the spring of 2023 in Madrid, Spain, at the U.S. embassy there. He worked with the U.S. Commercial Service.
“I got to go in and see how visas are processed. I got to see a lot of the diplomacy. I got to write briefs for the ambassador. I got to sit in on these high-level meetings with diplomats, both of the U.S. and of other countries who are coming to the U.S. embassy trying to ask for U.S. support. I got to go to a lot of trade shows advocating for U.S. brands and companies,” Kees said.
Webb said domestic interns are provided housing but do paid internships, so the rest of the expense is up to them. The international students are not allowed to be paid for their work, so scholarships are provided to offset the expense. The Association contributed $2,500 to Kees and $2,000 to Volpe.
“The money from The Association of Former Students helped to pay for the tuition TAMU required to get college credit for the internship and covered a little bit of rent,” Volpe said.
Kees said he used his scholarship to cover transportation and housing costs.
“The only thing I had to pay for was my food. And that was huge, because otherwise I would not have been able to afford the experience,” Kees said.
Webb said about 40% of the interns go on to take public policy jobs, sometimes in the offices where they worked. In most cases an internship isn’t required for employment, but it helps when it comes to hiring.
“If students don’t get a job in the office in which they are interning, they might pick up jobs in other offices or organizations in those cities,” she said.
Another benefit to the program is networking.
“Networking through our internships is one of the biggest benefits that students can take from this experience,” Webb said. “The program provides an opportunity for students to take the knowledge and skills learned in the classroom and apply it in a high-stakes environment alongside full-time professionals. Students not only get to know their peers, but they meet people from all over the world who have taken various paths to get where they are in their careers.

Sailing team competes at nationals

Coming in as underdogs, the women from the Texas A&M sailing team upped their game at the highest level in the sport last spring when they took on traditional powerhouses at the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association’s College Sailing Nationals in New York.

The student-run club faced club and varsity teams from the Ivy League and East and West Coast universities. Although the Aggies failed to make the finals, they discovered they can compete with the big dogs.

“Despite coming from a region that historically hasn’t performed at the same level as the East and West Coast teams, we didn’t notice an unbridgeable gap between us and those who placed above us,” said skipper Kate Hennig ’26.

The accomplishment shows how far the sailing team has come since its founding in 1990. The trip to nationals was made possible in part from a $1,250 grant from The Association of Former Students.

“We paid for our Airbnb in the Queens area with the $1,250 grant,” Hennig said. “The Association of Formers Students essentially gave us a home while we focused on doing well at nationals. The contribution took a great deal of financial pressure from us in the most important aspect of our stay: Our safety in the Big Apple.”

The peace of mind enabled the Aggies to focus on the regatta.

“We came, we sailed hard, but we did not make it to the finals,” Hennig said. “For our first year competing on that level, we weren’t upset with this result. We had two great days of racing that we could be proud of.”

The 2023 nationals were held May 23-26 at Kings Point, New York, hosted by the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

Crewmember Emily Davison ’24 said the experience was intense.

“The first race was nerve-wracking but, we quickly saw that we were meant to be out there competing at that higher level. A club team against varsity teams was intimidating, so to prove that we belonged there made me feel proud of our team.”

The A&M sailing team is a student-run club with about 30-40 male and female members. They compete in about 5-7 regattas each semester. The team practices at Lake Bryan on Mondays and Wednesdays and more often as needed for specific regattas.

Noting that there is an ebb and flow of enthusiasm and support for the team, Hennig wants to take advantage of the experience at nationals and build the Texas A&M sailing team into a strong national contender and up the program’s profile. That’s something she can’t do without alumni support.

“Our goal is to use the momentum we have to develop a sustainable training program so that we can continue to improve … We want to do better in connecting with Aggie sailing team alumni to extend our community beyond graduation,” she said.

Team member Katy Heaney ’23 said the experience at nationals is crucial toward that goal.

“Sailing among the best collegiate sailing teams from across the U.S. allowed us to learn many different tactics from other sailors and determine what we are needing to implement into our weekly practices to benefit our team as a whole,” she said.

Hennig said the team needs improved infrastructure for its training. She would like to put in another dock and purchase a motorboat and a rigid inflatable boat.

“Practicing at Lake Bryan with the infrastructure works perfectly well except in the case of extreme winds when we need a motorboat on the water to manage safety risks,” Hennig said “Our main struggle happens when we want to fulfill our obligations to our governing organization, SEISA (Southeastern Intercollegiate Sailing Association), and host regattas in which other schools compete on Lake Bryan. Every regatta should have two launched boats – one for the starting line and one for safety. As it is, we have to ask friends and other clubs to borrow a motorboat for this purpose.”

For other team members, better training and building on the experience at nationals will help make the team better. Skipper Hanna Progelhof ’25 said nationals helped build community and gauge improvement.

“Nationals was a great opportunity for us to get to compete at the highest level there is in college sailing,” she said. “It was also amazing for me to be able to see and race against a lot of my friends I have previously made doing youth sailing in Texas.”

Crewmember Maggie Menesee ’25 said the experience at nationals was a confidence booster.

“Overall, it was super intense being on a huge start line like that. It’s something we’re not super used to but it was fun and we learned how to keep our ground,” she said.

Hennig said there are as many reasons to participate in sailing as there are sailors, ranging from competition to recreation.

“For some, participation on collegiate sailing teams is additional training for their Olympic bid... For an Aggie sailor, sailing is just one part of his or her identity, albeit one that I believe will stand the test of time for most members, even past graduation,” she said.

Entering her sophomore year at A&M, Hennig said her experience with the team has been life-changing.

“When you spend this much time with people doing what you love, it's an inescapable reality that you will become close. This team was the place where I learned to be an Aggie.”

Hennig encourages fellow students to consider joining, even if they don’t have sailing experience.

“Sailing is a sport for all ages. It’s something we can do together,” she said.

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