In September 2012, Emma Hing ’13 created a new club dedicated to making Williston students politically informed. Dubbed the Political Awareness Club (PAC), it often calls to mind the Political Action Committees of Citizens United fame. This past summer, Christian Knapp ’14 took over the role as PAC’s president, helping it become “a leader in student-led organizations.”

Much of PAC’s reputation stems from its unique professionalism. “We did not refer to our meetings as “meetings,’” says Knapp. “They are events. Our events were well-rehearsed productions. We began exactly five minutes after the posted start time, to allow for students who may be late.”

He continues, “We usually started our events by posing a question to attendees such as ‘Will “Bridgegate” affect Chris Christie’s chances in the 2016 presidential race?’ We used polleverywhere.com to allow them to respond via text, Twitter, and a webpage while real-time results are projected on the wall. We then either hosted a debate or gave a student the floor to talk about an issue he or she is passionate about, usually one that is unrelated from the poll question.”

Under Christian’s presidency, supported by a board filled with standout students, each event was painstakingly calculated. Even attendance was predicted by a number of algorithms designed to assess the given number of attendees with relative accuracy. “I developed a system based on past behaviors of students to determine how likely they would be to attend any given PAC event,” says Knapp. “I would then run their individual probabilities of attending in a simulator I made in Excel. This would produce a nice bell-curve, giving me a good idea of how many students would attend our next event. I also used technical indicators such as moving averages, channels, momentum, and volatility to track larger trends with our attendance.”

Emmett O’Malley ’15 became president of the Political Awareness Club at the beginning of trimester three of this year. O’Malley, an active member of PAC and a former cross-country teammate of Knapp’s, was chosen “because he is a motivated and organized young man with passion for politics… he has shown his commitment for the club during his time as Vice President and we are confident he can effectively lead Williston’s biggest club.” Knapp is confident in his successor. “He is really going to take things to the next level. PAC has become so successful over the past two trimesters. Imagine what a new board that is full of ideas can do.”

“I have some ginormous shoes to fill, right away,” says O’Malley. The final debate of Christian’s term drew 59 attendees, a new record for the club and “a testament to Christian Knapp’s remarkably effective two-trimester term. In just a year, PAC’s average attendance went from around 8–last year–to about 30–this year.”

“Simply put, when I took over, PAC was at its highest point ever,” he continues. “It was at a higher point than any other club on campus. My presidency has gotten off to a much easier start than Christian’s did, because the club is already riding high on the wave of excellence Christian and co. catalyzed.”

The first PAC event of the third trimester occurred on April 3, 2014 and drew a crowd of 51 attendees. The continued large-scale participation emphasizes the club’s efficacy and suggests another successful year is on the horizon for the Political Awareness Club.