Apparently, a lot of behind the scenes stuff was already underway as we didn’t reconvene in the main hall for the next four days. Without being one of the “in-crowd”, I initially didn’t have any idea about what was going on, but since I’ve found that if you’re patient and stay quiet long enough, people tend to tell you things.
Much like the events that led to the convention happening, it seems like there were immediately two major power factions. I like to think of them as egalitarian and authoritarian, but since I align mostly with the former, I might not be impartial in my assessment.
From what I heard, some fights broke out a few hours after we’d recessed in both Dorm 1 and Dorm 2. Not minor ones, either. We’re talking broken teeth, a few broken bones, a variety of cuts and lacerations, and two concussions serious enough to need monitoring. (Edit: I’ve found out that this is pretty accurate.) Hardly the civil conclave I was expecting.
Out of these conflicts, the scuttlebutt was one of actually breaking up the country so that these fundamental differences no longer had to be endured. By D+2, that seemed to be the standard position.
Of course there was a fundamental problem: absent an actual constitution, we were still sentenced to at least four months here. Because of this, we reached a compromise of sorts. There would be three two-day blocks of main hall use. The Egalitarians, the Authoritarians, and the Compromisers would each have a block where they could manage the debate (creatively called Blue, Red, and White days, respectively). It would be open-door and anyone could attend and civilly debate but disruption would not be tolerated. As we where entering summertime in Nevada, let’s say the consequences for inciting conflict in the chamber were not easily dismissed.
All of this was agreed to while we were still in recess. It was crazy.
By D+4, I have to admit that I pretty much came around, at that point, to thinking that breaking up the country might not be our worst idea. Even so, I wasn’t prepared to accept this radical option. I mean, we’d only been here four days, fer cryin’ out loud. This wasn’t anything like what I was expecting.
Even so, I was approached by the Blue group to help formulate their resolutions. Basically what was happening was this: Blue and Red groups were writing their own constitutions under the assumption that the country would split, while White group was operating under the idea that the union would persevere in the end. Since Blue group didn’t mind if I flitted between them and White group (I had too many issues I wouldn’t compromise on to sit in with Red group), I was able to offer my two-cents to both.
D+5 would see everyone back in the main hall to offer up resolutions to make all of this actually part of the process. In the meantime, two other delegates (Martha and George) and myself spent the evening building a foundational Constitution that was modified according to changes made by amendments or passages no longer relevant. There were a few squirrelly bits that weren’t as clean as others, but on the whole I think we had a good starting point.
