It was about 7:45, and there is no reason it should have been that cold and that bright at the same time. The van had been parked in the lot behind the DMV where I had taken my driver’s test, and we were legging it up sidewalks and across streets. The cold was seeping into my clothing and the light bled through my eyelids. We power-walked past some men at the edge of the parking lot, and I heard Jon Harris make some kind of greeting to them. It wasn’t an especially formal greeting, inasmuch he didn’t slow down to give it. He asked me if I’d seen the men he was talking to. I had; they had been black silhouettes with badges, shapes cut out against the snow.

“Yes.”

“That was the added security.”

And then we were inside.

There were nine of us: Jeremy Ayotte, Krista Wendling, Brian Merrill, Emily Hamlin, Meghan Kelly, Arian Bates, Ashley Favreau, and I in a “team” helmed by SGA President Jon Harris and driven by George Black. Over the course of the previous hour we had driven from Johnson to Montpelier, rocketing over the half-plowed ground in a white van, watching the sun rise and set and rise again as we passed mountains and trees and occasional buildings.
I had badly underdressed because we had all been promised commemorative VSC sweater vests. I had stumped around in the cold, waiting for the others in the Bentley parking lot, only to find out that we were only going to get our vests once we got there.

Wonderful.

But the state college system was good to its word, and shortly thereafter I was suited up in finest dark-green polyester. Jeremy had been cynically betting that the vests would be made in China; I later checked and found to my amusement that they were made in Vietnam.

I had no idea why we were doing this. I was doing this because I wanted to see my state’s government in action. And also because I wanted a commemorative sweater vest.
Harris later explained the trip as being fourfold. We had come to ask for money, enjoy ourselves, and “to tell our own personal stories to legislators.” He also said that “we were there to demonstrate the VSC as a driver of economic development in the state,” although I’m not entirely sure how a group of bleary-eyed kids mooching donuts off the cafeteria demonstrated this. We did, however, end up giving the Vermont government $25 when we went back to the van later on and found out we’d been ticketed for parking illegally.

We suited up in Room 10. It was well lit, and featured rows of chairs facing a weird arrangement of lobed desks that had come together like lumps in a hungry snake, curled into a loose “C”.

We were inundated with paraphernalia. We were given identical VSC folders, which we all set down on the table so it that immediately became impossible to figure out whose was whose. These folders held a battery of pamphlets detailing things I found I could not understand. Like the drunk who feels fine right up until he gets off his barstool and face-plants, I was rapidly discovering that the two hours of sleep I’d gotten were not nearly enough. With the haze closing in fast, we went to breakfast.

The Capitol Building seems to be substantially larger on the inside than the out, and seemed uncannily like the castle from “Super Mario 64,” which consisted of endless tiled hallways with endless paintings. Here, the paintings were not of fantasy landscapes but of men and women, many of them former governors. They were useful in orientation, and I soon became familiar with the piercing glare of Madeline Kunin, the wind-driven wraparound muttonchops of some long-dead fellow, and the cheerful ambiguity of one governor who looked like he was being played by Peter Sellers.

The floors were white marble, tiled into a checkerboard against some gray stone in which was visible the fossilized remains of sand dollars and ammonites, laid down in seafloor strata several million years before.

The cafeteria was just up a ramp from a dark, greenish room where people seemed to be holding diorama presentations for some reason. Breakfast was donuts, bagels, and a few other bread-based things I was too logy to examine. I ran into Robert Clarke, chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges, who was standing in front of another diorama. Clarke was in high spirits, and seemed very proud of the VSC. I realized I should probably ask him some questions, and, though he declined a full interview, he took a moment to champion the system he oversaw.

“It’s a great system,” he said. “The VSC’s critical for the state’s future.”

Back to Room 10.

The boxes of sweater vests had been packed up and spirited away by our own Dean of Students Dave Bergh, save for a few that had been set aside as gifts. Rows of be-vested students formed a lush educational forest. Green is a good color to brood in.

People came in. They were the speakers, as evident by their lack of commemorative sweater vests. One by one, they took the floor, spoke, and took questions.

Gaye Symington, then Floyd Nease, then Bill Doyle, then Kristen Carlson, a reporter from WCAX-TV, the regional CBS affiliate. None of us from JSC had known until that day that we would be meeting her, and there was some antsiness on the bus because we weren’t sure what to expect. But she was simply there to speak about the relationship between the state’s political process and the local media.

The questions they all took were varied. Symington took questions about political issues; Nease took questions about political process. Symington took questions about political issues; Nease took questions about political process, and I took pictures of Carlson.

We then entered into the “freestyle” part of Legislative Day, wherein we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. I attached myself to Jon Harris, because if I didn’t have someone to follow I was sure I was going to get lost. He gamely put up with me.

Tracing his way through the Escheresque layout of the building, Harris finally found what he was looking for. The whole building seemed to be comprised of medium-sized rooms behind ancient, regal wooden doors with job descriptions on them. The door we walked through said 42, and, below it, APPROPRIATION$. They really did spell it with the dollar sign.

The people here were happy, active, and intense. Harris took a seat at their table and began exchanging fire with them.

Harris had come to ask about funding – both to get an understanding of the current situation, and to ask for more. They asked him what additional funds would be used for.
“Faculty,” he said. “Faculty and grants.”

Tones and chimes, accompanied by blinking lights built into the wall near the switches, informed us that the House was going into session. Nobody seemed to regard this as remarkable, and I gradually gathered that the large legislative body took some time to come up to operating speed.

“This is very simple.” This was a man called Bob. “We have over here” – he gestured with his right hand – “a pile marked ‘income’. And we have over here” – left hand – “a wish list.” Bob was detailing the existential crisis of financing: there is never enough money to meet all the requests.

“If I had thought of it,” Harris told me later on, “I would have mentioned that the state charter establishing the VSC says that the state shall fund the system ‘in whole or substantial part,’ and that I didn’t think around 17 percent of the VSC’s budget was anything close to that.”

Still, Harris was happy as we left.

“I didn’t expect a miracle,” he told me as we clomped down a staircase floored with some kind of industrial plastic, pale green made paler by the salt film.

We joined a separate group, wearing maroon, and the rest of the VSC battalion on the balcony overlooking the House floor. I had rarely had the experience of watching many people mill about from a good height, and I was given the impression of an anthill as the officials scurried around. The layout consisted of several concentric horseshoes facing a large podium and a battery of antique-looking chairs. The horseshoes were desks, and behind them were the neurons of the legislative brain. I was literally watching Vermont think.