During the second week of February four Texas State political science students traveled to Texas A & M to participate in the 64th annual Student Conference on National Security Affairs (SCONA). This year’s team consisted of three undergraduate students – Preston Nieves, Kenadie Cole and Jacob Dowdell — and one graduate student, Ashlyn Scott.
The theme of the conference was “Extinguishing the Flames of Fury: U.S. Strategy and Response in the face of Global Terrorism.” The keynote address was delivered by former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who shared an hour-by-hour account of the excruciatingly difficult decisions President George Bush took in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Preston mentioned how his understanding of President Bush’s foreign policy shifted based on this first-hand account of those initial days after 9/11. The students agreed that the keynote speech was perhaps the major highlight of their four-day trip to College Station. Other speakers included Lt. Gen. Marshall Webb, USAF, Commander of the Air Force Special Operations Command and Ali Soufan, an FBI agent who specializes in counter-terrorism.
As Ashlyn put it, “my experience at the SCONA ’64 conference was invaluable… I walked away with a better understanding of terrorism and what we can do as the next generation of leaders to counter the threats we face as a nation and in our world.”
With Mr. Card’s personal testimony as the background, each of our four students joined small teams (assisted by military and civilian expert facilitators) and produced policy briefings addressing contemporary real-world issues pertaining to the war on terror. For example, Jacob worked on cyberterrorism, Kenadie on humanitarian assistance to the crisis in Yemen, and Preston on North Korea’s role in supplying WMD technology to terrorist cells and other state sponsors of terrorism such as Syria and Iran.
Continuing a proud tradition of Texas State students winning awards at the conference, Preston’s policy team won the First Runner-Up for their briefing! Their project created a plan of action to negotiate with the Kim Regime, offering the regime legitimacy if it halted its sponsorship of terrorism and continuing or increasing coercive steps if it did not.
The Texas State students also greatly enjoyed the presentations and chance to interact with guests from the military, CIA, FBI, State Department, and other parts of the U.S. government, as well as with other college students who attended from around the country. Preston, who is hoping to become an intelligence analyst, was particularly grateful for the networking opportunities. And as Ashlyn put it, she formed “relationships that will benefit me both personally and professionally from now on,” one of the reasons she enthusiastically described her participation in this event as “truly a life-changing experience.”
