One of many great things about living in DC is that you are often only a subway stop or two away from history in the making. Just ask Environmental Health Science and Policy MPH Student Lucy Brainerd, a Colorado native who regularly takes advantage of the opportunities available to her as a GW student. This includes when she recently attended a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee titled “Making EPA Great Again.”
For Lucy, who completed her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies at Vassar College, the experience of attending the hearing was both “incredibly interesting and wildly infuriating.” Although she attended the hearing to fulfill a requirement for her Management & Policy Approaches to Public Health (PubH 6006, a required core course) class, Lucy had begun following the hearing schedule before the class even started.
“As soon as it became clear the Trump Administration was going to be targeting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I knew I wanted to find/attend an environment hearing,” Lucy says. Her interest in the links between science and policy dates back to her undergraduate days as an Environmental Studies major at Vassar College in upstate New York, where her senior thesis project on Lyme disease in New York’s Hudson River Valley ignited her interest in public health.
Getting from GW on the Metro to the Rayburn House Office Building where the hearing was held took Lucy only about 10 minutes.
Lucy has decided views on the events of the hearing. Only two of the four panelists had science backgrounds (the others were a lawyer and an economist). Members of Congress and their staffs accused EPA of skewing data to tailor the results to the agency’s benefit. These political leaders and aides ignored or contested statements by The Honorable Dr. Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which they didn’t agree with or didn’t like. “Attending the hearing made me hyperaware of how unqualified many congresspersons are for their various committees, as well as how unwilling they are to take advice from experts,” she summarizes.
It was a lesson in political science that is furthering Lucy’s MPH studies. In addition to getting class credit for attending the hearing, she credits it for inspiring the topic for a policy memo assignment for the class. After the argument about increased incidence of asthma among children came up a few times, she says that she realized it would be a good topic for the assignment. “Hearings are also a great opportunity to earn Professional Enhancement Hours if they’re relevant to your concentration,” she adds.
Lucy encourages anyone who attends a Congressional hearing to consider visiting the gorgeous Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building while in the area. “I have gone there a couple of times before to study for finals and do homework. It is an incredible place to study, and getting a library card is easy. It's a really unique resource that we get to take advantage of while living in DC,” she says.