Student government’s Drew Carson will head to Washington, D.C. to accept an award on behalf of Sam Houston State University for SGA’s collaborative efforts regarding the forthcoming railway system that will connect Dallas to Houston.
The award, given by the National Association of Railroad Passengers, will be presented April 22 on the front steps of the Rayburn House Office Building. Vice President Joe Biden will be in attendance as well as Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
“The award is for Sam Houston’s collaborative efforts with UNT [University of North Texas] and Navarro [College] and our continued efforts on infrastructure changes within the United States, starting in Texas,” Carson said. “They’ve been giving it out for the past 20 years, but they haven’t given it out 20 times. Some years they just didn’t give it at all. The last people to get it was Princeton [University].”
According to Carson, the ceremony will be covered by a national media outlet.
“I don’t know what media will be there, but I have been assured that it’s national media of some kind,” Carson said. “That could be a blog, The Huffington Post, I don’t know.”
As far as funding for the trip to D.C., Carson said Student Body President Spencer Copeland is reaching out to student services and the like.
Carson originally became involved in advocating the railway system because he says the future of transportation depends on activism of the millennials.
“I really don’t have any expertise about trains, but…what I would consider myself well versed in, is student needs and how millennials are,” Carson said. “We’re children of the Internet, we’re a community that understands activism, we understand power in numbers. Sometimes it never gets past a couch, [someone] likes something on Facebook and it never gets past that, but sometimes it gets much bigger. We’re going to be the ones to either make big change or ruin everything.”