UW-RF Home > University Communications Home > This Month's News Releases University CommunicationsFor more information contact mark.a.kinders@uwrf.edu or brenda.k.bredahl@uwrf.edu. Constitution Day Celebrated All WeekSEPT. 14, 2007 -The University of Wisconsin-River Falls will recognize National Constitution Day, Sept. 17, with a week of planned activities Sept. 17-21. Events are free and open to the public. The week-long celebration opens with Constitution Jeopardy on Sept. 17, from 1 to 2 p.m., in the Kinnickinnic River Theater, University Center. A team from River Falls High School will compete with a team from UW-River Falls. Each team is composed of four students and one teacher or professor, and teams will answer three rounds of questions related to the Constitution. Members of the winning team will receive a $20 gift certificate to the UWRF bookstore. In its third year, Coffee with The Times is a series on current topics that uses articles from The New York Times as a starting point for conversation. The first of the 2007-08 conversations, held Sept. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in the 1874 Room (room 044) of the University Center, will focus on the tenure of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and recent Supreme Court decision. The discussion will be led by Neil Kraus, assistant professor of political science and Daniel J. Singel, UWRF alumnus and an attorney at Goetz & Eckland, P.A., in Minneapolis. Refreshments will be provided. Four television programs about the Constitution will be aired at various times throughout the week on River Falls Cable Channel 19 and campus cable channels 19 and 23, including "Key Constitutional Concepts," "A Conversation on the Constitution: Judicial Independence," "Our Constitution: a Conversation" and "A More Perfect Union." The first three programs, produced by the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands in Radnor, Penn., will be broadcast on channel 19. "A More Perfect Union," produced by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, will be broadcast on campus channel 23. UWRF's Constitution Week is co-sponsored by the American Democracy Project, the UWRF chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, and The New York Times. Constitution Day (also known Citizenship Day) is a federal holiday that recognizes the ratification of the U.S. Constitution at the Constitutional Convention on Sept. 17, 1787. The law was created with the passage of an amendment to the Omnibus spending bill of 2004 by Senator Robert Byrd, (D-W. Va.), who is the longest-serving and oldest current member of Congress. The act mandates that all publicly funded educational institutions provide educational programming on the history of the Constitution on Sept. 17. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Education announced the enactment of the law and its application to any school receiving federal funds of any kind. For more information contact: Blake Fry, UWRF special assistant to the chancellor, at 715-425-3711 or email blake.fry@uwrf.edu. -30-
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