Sherae Honeycutt

PARKVILLE, Mo. — Original Post

Impeachment hearings resume for the House Intelligence Committee on Friday, and that’s giving students at Park University a real lesson in government.

President Donald Trump isn’t watching the impeachment hearings he describes as a witch hunt and a hoax. However, students in Associate Professor Matt Harris’ Introduction to Government class are.

“It’s something that might come up in an American Government class in high school,” Harris said. “Even when it comes up in our class, we don’t take as deep of a dive into it.”

“People don’t understand the difference from actually getting removed, and the impeachment is actually just the investigation,” Park University freshman Nancy Cortez said.

Students in Harris’ class said it’s been enlightening about what the impeachment process actually is, why and when it’s used, and how it works.

“I do need to take more insight into what is actually going on in office,” Park University junior Imara Harris said. “You hear about impeachment on the news, but actually being able to learn about it in the classroom, learn about what the process is actually about is very important.”

The students said they didn’t expect the hearings to be so heated between both sides of the aisle.

“It’s intense. I think it actually can be kind of messy,” Cortez said. “You can see that these people want to yell and cuss and kind of be disgusting with each other. I don’t know, I think intense is the right word I would be using.”

“You can tell that they do want to yell and shout at each other, but they actually can’t,” Imara said. “They have to be professional about it, about asking the questions.”

Harris said what end of the political spectrum the students are isn’t important. What is important is that they have a greater understanding of how the system works.

“That’s kind of the ultimate end goal,” Harris said. “That the students understand better what’s going on around them and that’s going to help hem be active citizens who participate in our democracy and understand what’s going on.”