On December 12, 2017, Armstrong helped to cater the C-SPAN bus to Poland Seminary High School. Our school was chosen as 1 of the 2 in the area to be able to see the bus and explore in it for a few short moments, as well as hear a few short speeches from selected guests.

Dave Smith, secretary of the Historical Society in Poland, came to give a bit of background about Poland, the history, and famous people we have housed. He mentioned many facts about the settlers who originally came to Poland to even the reason why our town was named Poland; because of the soldiers who helped the United States from Poland, we wanted to honor them and thank them.

The mayor of Poland Village, Tim Sicafuse, also came to the school to talk a bit about our government and how he got the job he has now.

The people who put on the show behind the scenes was ArmstrongⓇ. If you’re wondering what a cable satellite company has to do with a C-SPAN bus, the answer is simple. C-SPAN stands for Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network. The bus gets all its’ fundings from cable companies, and they give 6.5 cents per subscriber on their online channel, which is where their entire network is.

Online, C-SPAN has thousands of hours of content that covers the government in a non-partisan point of view which means that they aren’t giving their opinions on the matter; only giving the unedited and unfiltered version of everything. They also aren’t funded by anything else, so there are no commercials or advertisements getting in the way of your government.

Doug Hemming, the speaker on the bus, said that “[their] philosophy is it’s your government and you should have access to it; plain and simple.”

Doug Hemming was partnered with Joel Bacon to speak and show us a little bit about the realms of C-SPAN. Usually, though, there are 10 people that travel with the bus, and they travel 1 week at a time and work around all of their personal schedules, as well as choose where and what states they want to go to during their 50 capitol tours.

Within the 1.2 million dollar bus, they have thousands of dollars worth of equipment that includes many TVs, cameras, IPads, and anything else they would need to put on a production. Everything they need to film a show is right within the bus, and they have had dozens of interviews right on the very bus. There is even over 2 miles of cables used for everything on the bus.

Many students were very impressed and pleased that they could experience this during their high school career.

Ian Lu, junior, said, “C-SPAN is the bus on the road to enlightenment.”

Carly Boccia, senior, was also in favor of how great it is and said, “[It is] very educational and expanded my knowledge in a short amount of time!”

Most students, though, were interested in how “high tech” it all was, said Sophie Delatore, junior.

Sydney Phillips, senior, said it was “very fancy and informational and smells nice.”

Although many students had different point of views on it all and took back different lessons from the experience, we were all grateful that Armstrong and C-SPAN chose us as their pit-stop on the road.