To
commuters in and around the nation's capital, it's just a strip
of asphalt, a means to get from home to work and vice versa. But
to the rest of the country the Washington beltway has come to
symbolize something much more. It is the borderline between us
and them -- us being the American public and them the out-of-touch
politicians, the special-interest lobbyists, the faceless bureaucrats,
the media elites.
Since the Republicans wrested Congress from the Democrats in the 1994 elections, the debate over the role of Washington in our lives has been hotter than ever. With the 1996 elections approaching, the Ithaca College Quarterly decided to give names, faces, and voices to at least a few of the Ithaca alumni who make their living "inside the beltway."
Glenn Saunders '92 and A. J. Balliette '94 work for two very different members of Congress, but they share a discouragement with the way Congress operates and don't see improvements likely in the near future.
An unabashed liberal, Christy Manso '94 is working for Clinton/Gore '96, the organization formed to run the president's reelection campaign.
In the eyes of many, Rick Otis '76 has found a despicable way of making a living. Otis is director of federal government affairs for the American Plastics Council. In other words, he's a lobbyist.
Geographically, Rich Mills '91 hasn't traveled very far from his first postgraduation job -- driving a cab in the Washington suburbs. In every other sense, however, he's come a long way as press secretary to the Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
A supervising auditor with the United States General Accounting Office, Kenneth Mann '61 has been on the federal payroll since 1967. The GAO serves as the government's watchdog by conducting audits, evaluations, and investigations of federal agencies and programs. As Mann describes it, he looks over their shoulders to make sure they are doing the job with the three Es in mind: economy, effectiveness, efficiency.
A national correspondent for NBC News and news desk anchor on the weekend Today shows, Ithaca College trustee Bob Kur '70 has spent most of his career in Washington.