On Monday, Nov. 17, representatives from Free the Facts, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to educating young Americans on national fiscal policy, hosted a workshop entitled “The Debt Escape Room” in the Frank Center for Public Affairs (PAC). Led by Thomas Fodor, a policy director at Across the Aisle, Free the Facts’ parent organization, the event focused on familiarizing students with the governmental processes surrounding national debt management.
“Across the Aisle is dedicated to providing opportunities for young people to learn, meet, and find bipartisan solutions to some of the biggest policy challenges we are facing,” TaylorAnn Woolley, Coordinator of Across the Aisle’s Leadership Programs Department, said. “As an organization, we have identified that those are fiscal policy challenges. For instance, Social Security and Medicare are projected to become insolvent right around 2032–2033.”
The organization came to the University to speak to younger people, who, according to them, will be the most affected by fiscal policy in the future.
“We do this because young people are going to inherit the consequences of those fiscal challenges,” Fodor added. “When we are thinking about the national debt, young people are going to feel the impact if they want to buy a home or if they want to go to school. Fundamentally, the view of Across the Aisle is that we need to get young people in the room because, eventually, these challenges will come about, and we want to make sure that their voices are heard as we try to find solutions.”
Woolley stressed the nonpartisan nature of the organization.
“As Capitol Hill and the general public are having these conversations, [their] bipartisan nature…has really diminished,” she said. “These are problems that have been created by both parties, and are problems that need to be solved by both parties. Fostering respectful nonpartisan conversation is the only way we are going to get closer to finding solutions.”
Across the Aisle also runs a leadership development program for college students and recent graduates.
“The main way that we get students involved is through our Answer the Call initiative,” Fodor said. “That initiative has a number of different leadership programs, all of which are designed to fast-track young people’s public service careers. For example, Answer the Call ambassadors, once accepted into the program, spend the rest of their college career in what is essentially a professional development accelerator, where they learn about fiscal policy and how they can succeed in public policy and public service.”
Donovan Lave ’27, Gray West ’28, and Graham Johnson ’27 serve as the University’s Answer the Call ambassadors, and worked to organize and coordinate the event.
“What we did is organize an interactive simulation,” Lave said. “First, participants are given an overview of how the U.S. government raises and spends money, and how the national debt ultimately arises. Following this educational component, students get to put on their ‘congressional caps’ and vote on specific policies that have been vetted by the Congressional budget office to see what their effects will be on the debt in ten years time. It is a simulative escape room, because we are trying to see if we can escape the catastrophic events of an imploding national debt.”
For example, one policy proposal focused on whether to maintain Trump’s tariffs, while other policies involved reducing defense spending and changing Social Security taxes; students voted on the proposals, and, hypothetically, managed to reduce the deficit more than Congress.
Daniel Chehimi can be reached at dchehimi@wesleyan.edu.
Brendan Kelso can be reached at bkelso@wesleyan.edu.
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