by Marty Green ·
Friday, March 7, 2025
– PHOTOS –
All 19 teams of students competing in the sixth annual Civics Cup last Sunday afternoon could name at least two of the four presidents whose faces are carved on Mount Rushmore. That was a question in the fourth and final round of the contest, which is organized each year by the Harvard League of Women Voters. The focus of this year’s questions was on the presidency and the executive branch of government.
Another final-round question proved to be a stumper for many: Match at least two presidents (from a list of six) with their Secret Service code names. Figuring out that Jimmy Carter was code-named “Deacon” or Ronald Reagan was “Rawhide” required knowing something about a president’s background or personality, not just facts from his time in office.
With 71 students from the Bromfield School and the Francis W. Parker Charter School taking part, this was the largest Civics Cup yet. Each student team had two to four members who gathered around a table in the upper Town Hall meeting room. Every team was joined by an adult scribe who recorded the team’s answers on a white board.
When the final scores were displayed on the video screen, only two points separated the top three teams. The Electoral College Dropouts stood in first place with 44 points, followed by Blue Skies with 42.5 points and Team Teal with 42 points. The top eighth-grade team was the Grandmaster Governors with 39 points.
The four members of the first-place Electoral College Dropouts were Bowen Clarke, Evan Gill, Michelle Xu, and team captain Emma Nguyen. Xu and Nguyen had also been members of the first-place team in the 2024 Civics Cup, when they were freshmen.
Runner-up Blue Skies members were Leah Eidelman, Sabina Haley, Grace Li, and captain Natalie Guilmette. Third-place Team Teal was a two-person team of Cadyn Glynn and captain Isaac Lee. The eighth-grade Grandmaster Governors were Blake Coyne, Michael Mao, Tony Xu, and captain Parth Dwivedi.
Town Moderator Bill Barton emceed the event. He read out each question, which was also displayed on a video screen at the front of the room. Then, as the timer ticked, teams had 30 seconds to agree on an answer, which they held up on the white board when Barton called, “Pencils down, answers up!”
The questions opened by asking contestants to state one requirement the Constitution sets for a presidential candidate. There were three possible answers: being a natural-born citizen; at least 35 years of age; and having lived in the United States for at least 14 years. (At least one person in the audience noticed that the background music during the answer period offered a hint; it was “Born in the U.S.A.”)
A later question presented students a list of governmental powers and asked them to identify a power the president holds (to make treaties with foreign nations). They were also asked to identify a power the president does not hold (the power of the purse).
After two rounds of questions, everyone took a break for pizza and an impressive collection of homemade cookies and pastries. And Town Administrator Dan Nason delivered a brief keynote address. He explained he had gone from being a civil engineer to taking a role in town government, in part because he liked seeing people use the infrastructure he had helped to build.
Then the teams regrouped for the last two rounds of questions. The third round was titled “Presidential Highs and Lows.” The lows included various impeachments and scandals such as Watergate and Iran-Contra. The highs focused on presidents who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Nobel Peace Prize, or a Pulitzer Prize. And the fourth round was somewhat more whimsical, including the questions about Mount Rushmore and code names.
Besides winning the Civics Cup trophy for a year, members of the first-place team will get a tour of the Massachusetts State House and share in gift cards from Apex Entertainment and Harvard Lanes. They were also given individual gift cards from the Harvard General Store and the Silver Unicorn Bookstore. The second- and third-place teams also received gift cards.
– PHOTOS –