As part of the
application process for
admittance to
Simon's Rock College as of
1994,
prospective students were required to write a
letter to the
head of a
major corporation,
non-profit organization, or
holder of an
elected position. In
January of 1994, I began the application process, and wrote my letter. I chose to write
President William Jefferson Clinton, then in the middle of his first
term of office. Since the
exploration of
space has always been a
topic near and dear to my
heart, one which I have always felt passionately about -- and argued rabidly in favor of -- I decided to write a letter concerning the present state and possible future of
America's
space program.
I spent several weeks working on this letter, sending it through several drafts, until finally I'd crafted it into one of the finer pieces I'd written up to that date. I stuck it in an envelope and sent it off to the White House, sending another copy to Simon's Rock for my college application.
I eventually (in June of that year, shortly after I got chicken-pox, took the SATs and was accepted by Simon's Rock) got a response back. My hands trembled as I opened the envelope. Had I gotten a real response? Or just a form letter? Glancing at it, I saw that, sure enough, it was a form letter, with the copied signature (I could even see the pixels) of President Clinton at the bottom.
Composing myself, I read the opening lines:
Dear Bjorn,
Thank you for your interest in the topic of affirmative action...
I couldn't believe it. I was absolutely shocked. Sure, it was a form letter. That wasn't what suprised me. I had expected to get a form letter. No one can possibly be expected to answer all the mail that a person as prominent as the President of the United States of America. But what really hurt, what forever destroyed my faith in the American government as a reasonably competent body, was the simple fact that they couldn't even send the right form letter!