During the 2025-2026 academic year, the Galpin Institute is partnering with faculty, staff, students, and members of the greater Cortland community to design and conduct events that celebrate the Declaration in advance of its anniversary.
The Institute launched the celebration on September 17, 2025 - Constitution Day - because of the US Constitution's connection to the Declaration:
- The Declaration states what we want: We want to govern ourselves.
- The Constitution states how we want to govern ourselves: We want to do so as a democratic republic in which we participate in civic decision-making, both indirectly (through elected officials) and directly (by participating personally in decision-making).
The celebration's events foster democracy engagement by -
- providing nonpartisan issues-education in which students learn about the complexity of issues and about ways in which their college education relates to those issues.
- providing civics education so that students learn how to engage with government to design and enact long-term solutions to challenges.
- developing students' civic discourse skills, which include active listening, critical thinking, and creative thinking. These skills are critical for career- and civic-readiness.
Examples of events and activities from Fall 2025 include -
- "Celebration Launch." SUNY Cortland President Erik J. Bitterbaum, City of Cortland Mayor Scott Steve (R), and Cortland County Legislator Reed Cleland (D) used personal experience to emphasize the importance of participating in civic decision-making between elections.
- "Write the Wrong," designed by a Dragons for Democracy intern. Each student in this workshop compose and send emails to an appropriate elected official, advocating for a particular point of view or action on an issue.
- "Truth or Trap," designed by a Dragons for Democracy intern. Participants learn how to identify misinformation and disinformation.
- "Let's Talk Taming," designed by a Dragons for Democracy intern. Students read a scene from the political satire, "The Taming," then they use dialogue from that scene to identify values in the US Constitution and to consider the current state of those values in current US life.
- "The Role of Emotion in Leadership Communication." Professor Michelle Ouellette (SUNY Plattsburgh) conducted this workshop.
- "Civics Education in K-12." Dr. Brett Levy (SUNY Abany) conducted this workshop.