On October 14th, five Periclean Scholars from Elon attended a conference in New York City to help design a new program coming to the university, Debating 4 Democracy (D4D). These students are Ashley Barnett (’09), Maggie Zimmerman (’09), Alli VanKanegan (’08), Amanda Kendall (’08) and Tesla Mellage (’08). The conference was also attended by students and faculty mentors from five other Periclean institutions including Bates College, Bethune-Cookman College, Pace University, Wagner College and Widener University. Pace University hosted the event at their New York City campus. Along with Elon, these schools have elected to pilot the D4D program and next year, using feedback and assessment data from the pilot programs, D4D will be added to other Periclean institutions around the nation. The D4D initiative encourages student involvement as well as aiming to educate students for responsible citizenship and strengthen the voice of America’s youth. D4D emphasizes dialogue, civic engagement, and collective action among the student body. Some topics that are going to be focused on by other universities include voters’ rights and privacy issues regarding Facebook and Myspace. The students from Elon have formed an alliance with the students at Wagner College to raise awareness on the topic of immigration over the next year.