While many of us on the Mock Con team regard this event as our baby, the Mock Convention is a tradition that belongs to the whole W&L community, and in that sense, it proves the adage that it takes a village to raise a child.

Right now our organization is in its adolescent stage – the 2012 Mock Convention is in the process of acquiring knowledge, making new friends, and creating a name for itself. Already we have accomplished so much: we have designed a new website and launched new publications, secured multiple speakers, and brought Mock Con into the 21^st century through the use of social media. However, without our staff of creative, driven, and occasionally eccentric individuals, the 2012 Mock Convention would never have grown into the promising organization that it has become.

That being said, what a motley crew we are! Like any village, we have our leaders, the three tri-chairs who put in more time and effort than anyone else to make sure that operations run smoothly. But we also have our jocks, our intellectuals, and our class clowns. We have a home-grown entrepreneur building our online store and a Democrat writing a Republican Party platform; we have law-students and pre-med students, students who have interned on the hill and students who have interned with the Lexington Police Department, not to mention members of various other clubs and representatives from almost every single Greek organization on campus.

Yet even these superficial identifications don’t encompass the plethora of personalities that have brought their unique strengths and perspectives to this organization, and with the addition of over 50 new state chairs, we have effectively doubled the size and caliber of the convention’s staff. Sitting down the other night over a casual dinner with the rest of the Executive Committee, we mused about the diversity of people and groups that contribute to the Mock Convention, knowing that no other organization could have brought the five of us together, let alone assembled such a capable Steering Committee or so many innovative sub-committees and state delegations. Only the Mock Convention has the ability to unite the entire W&L campus in this way, but only a place like W&L could bring so many interesting and innovative students together in the first place. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes an entire university community to make Mock Con magic.