The New England Federation

Way back during my sophomore year of college, the Fellows Society (it’s like an honors society for the honors society, only the biggest nerds allowed) went on a field trip to the US Department of State in Washington D.C. to participate in a new program they were starting to launch for collegiate level students. This program included a well-orchestrated simulation. If you’re not familiar with a simulation, it’s pretty much a model U.N. where there are teams, teams are assigned to certain countries or organizations, there is a problem facing all the teams concerned, everyone has their own priorities, and the objective is to create a solution that satisfies, theoretically, everyone.

Being the nerd I am, I had a freaking blast. And it helped significantly that I was the only economics major in our entire Fellows Society and that my team won. Actually, my team dominated, destroyed, and absolutely obliterated the competition. Let me explain.

Our simulation at the US State Department involved an HIV and AIDS crisis in two hypothetical countries, which naturally involved groups like USAID, WHO, US Department of State, and a few other NGOs and whatever. That didn’t matter to me and my team. My team was the country next to the country with the HIV and AIDS crisis, and our objective was to make sure it didn’t get to us, as well as get a few extra promises from other people if we could manage it.

The fundamental framework of any grand strategy-game is as follows; never let anyone know what you’re actually thinking, only let them know what you want them to think. For example, at the opening of our session, my team watched as every other team included, most adamantly, in their opening speeches that their priority was to keep the border between our country and the crisis country open. Mistake number one. When it got to my team, the last one to speak, I proceeded to open with, “So our first order of business is that the border is closed effective immediately until terms of agreement are reached in this special session.”

Now did we actually want the border closed? Hell no! We needed immigrant workers to work our farms so we could have our people start industrializing our country in the cities. But for everyone else, they didn’t know what to do because we now controlled the ball, the court, the stadium; hell, we even owned the referees, fans, broadcasters, and the damn television sets. Basically, we had made it impossible for anyone to do anything until we got what we wanted. We knew that other teams would move mountains to meet our demands if it meant keeping the border open. Thus, we closed them as a bargaining tool despite not wanting to close them. The lesson; curate your actions to express what you want others to think your thoughts are, not necessarily what they actually are.

Like I said, it was also helpful that I was the only economics major. One of the members from the US Department of State team asked us how our country would cope with the loss of immigrant workers. I knew she was an international studies major, which, stereotypically meant she had no knowledge of economics beyond econ 101 and 102, unless she took sociology, in which case she didn’t know squat about fundamental economic principles. I thought to myself, “Okay Nate, time to econ jargon the shit out of this.”

“Ah, yes,” I said, “the reduction of temporary foreign imported labor will slow the accumulation of agricultural capital in our domestic market; thereby slowing the country's GDP. However, we believe that the natural rate of unemployment will return to stable levels within a relatively short period of time as the increased price of labor will attract more workers to the sector bringing the sector back to the levels appropriate to the equilibrium of a price taker market. In short, we see no need to worry about a reduction or shortage of labor in our agricultural sector due to the borders being closed.”

She believed me even though not a single word of that made real sense or was true. I also purposefully added “borders being closed” at the end to remind everyone that their top priority remained firmly in our hands and that only by satisfying our demands could they get what they want.

Anyways, my team crushed it. We walked away with everything we wanted, more than we wanted, and even more beneficial things that we didn’t even need whereas everyone else was mildly satisfied, at best.

I tell you this long-winded story because I love well-crafted simulations like this. There are no rules or regulations. You can do whatever you want or need to get the job done, within reason. In fact, after my team had stoutly defeated not only another country but a coalition of international and US organizations, I asked my teammates, “So war was always on the table for you guys, too, right?” My teammates nodded. That's right. We were crazy enough to start a whole war about this thing. What were organizations like WHO, USAID, and other NGOs gonna do? Stop us with sanctions on a self-sufficient country? But thankfully, war was never brought up, although it did have a special spot on our table.

So, I decided to put my Access students to the test. I organized what would be the most difficult English activity they had ever done. I called it “The New England Federation Simulation”. In a nutshell, I put together a full simulation in which a hypothetical New England has broken away from the United States and is now trying to organize itself into a federal republic. There would be six teams representing the six states, and each state would have one vote in the senate. There were three major federal problems facing the New England Federation (NEF); the location of a new capital, the official language, and the question of secession. In addition to these federal problems, there were numerous state problems that affected one or more states but not necessarily all of them. Everyone was given an overview packet that outlined major opinions and general information. They also received state-specific papers where they would learn about their states’ strengths and weaknesses as well as, and most importantly, their priority list.

Each state had a priority list of 5 priorities. In order to win, the state had to satisfy the top three priorities, the satisfaction of 4 and 5 would be for tie breakers. It is possible for all the states to win (to satisfy the top three items on their priority list) if states are willing to sacrifice items 4 and 5 (in most cases). Thus, the objective of the simulation is for students to come up with creative compromises. There were three moderate sessions where teams could argue and debate in a formal setting while also presenting bills to be voted on at the end. There were also two unmoderated sessions where teams could mingle freely and make deals. The whole point of the state problems was to exchange solutions for votes on the big things. For example, hypothetical Massachusetts was suffering of persistent droughts in the west. Hypothetical Maine had water but needed money for the infrastructure, something which hypothetical Massachusetts could provide. However, the pipe would have to go through hypothetical New Hampshire who wanted the new capital near or in hypothetical New Hampshire. Hypothetical Massachusetts could compromise by building the capital on the border; thereby, satisfying everyone’s needs. This is, theoretically, how things are best solved. Again, there are no rules or clear paths. So the students are the ones who make things happen, and Mr. Bald acted as sitting president and any tie-breaking vote.

Now growing up, my mother always taught me, “pick your battles.” I learned this lesson well and now rephrase to others in the, if you know me well, repeated line, “don’t die on that hill. It’s not worth it.” Or, “I’m not gonna die on that hill.” Or again, "Not that hill, man. Not worth it."

Such was not the case with my students.

EVERY hill was the hill they were going to die on. It didn’t matter how big, small, important, or insignificant the issue was. There could be a mole mound. Students were going to die on it. There could be a dust pile on the ground. Every state was going to die on that dust pile. A grain of sand could be on an otherwise spotless floor. For my students, that grain of sand is big enough to die on. Not a single state backed down from any position they had. The senator from hypothetical Connecticut literally stood up and said, “Why should we build the new capital in Massachusetts? They have a drought! A drought! There’s no water there!”

Another from hypothetical Rhode Island said, “We think we should have the new capital in one of our cities because we are the richest state and that means we should have the chair of power.”

I give him credit for being ballsy. But that didn’t go over well with other states. Yet again, same guy from hypothetical Connecticut also said, “We can’t have the capital in Vermont either. They’re poor and have blackouts.” Oh man! Take cover! Shots in the building!

The 3-hour simulation was filled with more conversation than I had ever heard in a language class before. Mind you, I was extremely nervous. I had invested about 8 hours of work into creating and curating this simulation to make it not only complex and solvable, but also accessible to language learners. Halfway through the first unmoderated session, I looked up from my chair and saw groups of students lively arguing their points to each other and trying to strike some small deals and I thought to myself, “Damn, it actually worked.”

In the end, there were a total of 8 bills presented to the president that the states then voted on. Of these 8, 7 of them did not pass. The 8th bill was a tie on the issue of the official language of the NEF. I forgot to add, in our hypothetical New England, hypothetical Vermont is kind of like real Quebec. Everyone in hypothetical Vermont speaks French and nearly a third of hypothetical Maine speaks French. I had to explain to my students that some facts about the states were true whereas others were not. Anyways, having French available as a federal document language was very important to hypothetical Vermont whereas other states, as long as you could use English everyone, that was fine. The vote on the bill was a tie, and President Mr. Bald, from the hypothetical state of Maine, broke the tie with a “yes” vote. Had I not, no one would have won.

As you can tell from those voting statistics, not many things got done. We still didn’t have a capital and the issue of secession was not settled, which meant that states could technically leave the NEF if they wanted. After totaling the priority lists, hypothetical Vermont won by satisfying all 5 of their priority list items. Hypothetical Maine would have come second or tied for first, but they satisfied 1, 2, 4, and 5. Since you need the top three to win, hypothetical Maine lost, as did all the other states who only satisfied one or two of their priority lists.

But there you have it. My students learned that compromising and coming up with solutions is more difficult than previously thought. They did, however, manage to solve some of their state issues, which was neat to see. But overall, every state decided that every hill was worth dying on. Hopefully it was a good lesson for my students. I sure had a good time.

As always, know that you are in my prayers each morning. All I ask is that you do the same for me.

May God be praised.