U.S. Senate Candidate Visits Former Teacher and Hawken Students

PG Sittenfeld may be running for the U.S. Senate, but he still refuses to call his 7th grade English teacher by his first name. Hawken's new English teacher and administrator, Terry Dubow -- always Mr. Dubow to Sittenfeld, taught the Cincinnati City Councilmember when they were both at the Seven Hills School in Cincinnati, Ohio.

They've kept in touch over the years, and now that Sittenfeld is running in the Democratic Primary against Ted Strickland, Dubow saw an opportunity to reconnect.

Dubow surprised the 11th and 12th grade journalism class with Sittenfeld's visit on Friday, October 9. He also presented the students with a challenge: They had to become reporters by listening to Sittenfeld's policy speech and asking him follow-up questions. The class then broke into four groups, and each group was tasked with writing a news story in half an hour.

Below is one of those pieces, written by students Tommy Dell, Tim Holman, and Peter Kaiser. "I think this is an example of what Hawken means by real-world learning," Dubow said.


U.S. Senate Candidate Visits Hawken

On October 9, 2015, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate P.G. Sittenfeld visited the Hawken Upper School Journalism class to address the students about his life and campaign. During the visit, Sittenfeld gave a short background of himself and a brief policy talk before entertaining questions from the students. Sittenfeld will run against former governor Ted Strickland in the Democratic Primary in 2016.

In his talk, Sittenfeld spoke of the importance of the current generation of young adults in getting involved with government in order to ensure that new ideas are constantly circulating, an idea he made relevant to the students he was addressing: “We need folks like you to run for office; if you don’t, who’s left?” he explained to Senior Tim Holman, a professed desirer of governmental positions in the future.

He also noted that one of the foundations of his campaign was his concern over the cost of college and his goal to combat this issue by lowering interest rates on student loans, saving the average Ohio graduate around $12,000.

First studying at Princeton University and then Oxford University, Sittenfeld is currently a City Councilmember in Cincinnati, where he has brought his high standards and focus on education. He was involved in the redesigning of the Cincinnati public school system, transforming it by turning it into a community hub designed to facilitate more than just the 7:30-2:30 school day for adolescents.

Sittenfeld has also championed reform in education and police relations. After Timothy Thomas— a young black teenager—was shot by a white police officer in 2001, Sittenfeld helped repair police-community relations so well that when U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch visited earlier this year she crowned the city as the “national model of police-community relations,” according to Sittenfeld.

At the end of his conversation with the students, Sittenfeld emphasized the importance of Hawken. “The farther you students are from your education, the more you will realize how special Hawken’s education is,” he said.