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A frenzy over whether staff-led tours of the U.S. Capitol will continue began earlier this month. At issue is a proposal from the Architect of the Capitol that would require all Capitol tours to be led by professionally certified tour guides once the new Capitol Visitor Center opens in November 2008. Unlike the smaller tours currently led by Congressional staff and interns, visitors would be put into groups of 40, given earphones and shown a video.
The main argument for doing away with staff-led Capitol tours is that everyone knows the interns and young staffers get things wrong, and sometimes even blatantly make things up. As The Hill rightly pointed out last week, the ubiquitous story about John Quincy Adams pretending to fall asleep in the "whispering room" so that he could eavesdrop on conversations is entirely false, yet it continues to be a popular trope of staff-led tours. Many professional guides in the Capitol Guide Service are offended by the misinformation they hear coming from Congressional staffers.
For many though, it seems tradition outweighs accuracy. A bi-partisan coalition of 41 senators are now lobbying the acting architect of the Capitol, reports the Politico, to save the staff-led tours. And we received a Facebook invitation just this morning from GWU graduate student Ethan Pollack, imploring us to join to a group called Save Staff-Led Capitol Tours!.
Photo by Grundlepuck
From the group's description:
The Capitol Visitors Center is finally scheduled to open next fall at a cost of $621 million, revised several times from an original estimate of $265 million and an opening date that has been pushed back more times than anyone cares to remember.If this proposal goes through, no longer will hill staffers be able to mislead the public into believing that:
1. King Kamehameha arrived at the capitol naked and was sent back to Hawaii to be clothed.
2. John Quincy Adams often pretended to sleep while listening in on his political opponents via the whispering phenomenon in the National Statuary Hall.
3. The Statue of Liberty fits in the Rotunda (only true if you don't count its 150 ft base).
What these professional tour guides call "lies", we call "fun rumors". What they call "deceiving the public", we call "making sure that that family's 5-year-old doesn't die of boredom". Join this group and protect the sacred right of the hill staffer to conduct fun, state-specific, and occasionally inaccurate informational tours of the capitol.
What do you think about the fate of staff-led tours of the Capitol?
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Aren't there bigger problems our Members of Congress and their staffers could be focused on, say, the War....?
It really is a disservice to the constituents of said district when they go back and tell everyone what they "learned" on their tour only to be made a fool because half the stuff they supposedly "learned" was made up. You wouldn't believe the stuff I hear these idiot interns tell people...The Lincoln staircase and so on and so on, the tours should be handled by professionals who actually want to give the tour and send people home with a better understanding of the history of not only the Capitol but D.C., and yes Lab Rat there are more important things than tours but every day there is a different issue, we dont spend every minute on the war, there are other issues like appropriations and naming Post Offices but this clearly is a problem when you have teenagers disgracing themselves by making crap up. Let the staff and interns sit in their respective cubes and leave the touring to the professionals who wont send people back home with dumb made up "facts" about the Capitol and city.
Clearly tours with wildly inaccurate information shouldn't be happening. But why does the alternative have to be a video/headphone tour?
keep the idiot intern tours, but make sure that they are forced to give a disclaimer beforehand that "i'm not a professional tour guide, and i might just be making shit up as we go along here. better tours are available from people who know what they're talking about."
this is a good place for the invisible hand of the free market to work things out. the interns will either have to learn their shit, or no one will take tours given by them.
I do not understand why staffers are so keen to continue doing these tours themselves?
Whatever. This has nothing to do with accuracy. Like all licensing requirements, this is more about job security and eliminating competition than it is about "protecting the customer".
I was not heartbroken nor did I lose faith in America when I found out that Washington did not in fact cut down a cherry tree or throw a dollar coin across the potomac (or was the Walter Johnson?).
If there are a list of just awful falsehoods being perpetrated by these teenagers, who are clearly trying to kill America, then perhaps the professionals can draft up a cheat sheet for them.
Personally I hate the tour-groupification of the Capitol. I remember being able to walk around that building exploring it as I wished, not as a drone in the fanny-pack brigade. If the closest I can get to exploring as I wish is to be accompanied by a pimple-faced intern who tells me that Santa Claus was once a Kentucky Senator who invented the color fushcia, so be it.
Why can't the Members just tell the Architect of the Capitol to go fuck himself? Doesn't he work for them?
How about they get rid of the hideous metal barricades on the steps of the west portico and re-allow access to the Capitol steps? It's such a gorgeous structure, particularly at night, but when you get close you see those ugly-as-sin metal barricades half-heartedly propped up against the stairs, and an armed capitol guard staring down menacingly at you.
I, too, hate the homogenization of Capitol tours, but I'd value accurate information over inaccurate made-upisms. Plus, there's no reason why the professional guides couldn't repeat some of the legends that have been perpetuated over the years, only with the disclaimer that they're not at all true.
I'd be happy if the tourguides would just begin the tour by saying, "I'd like to welcome you all to Washington DC, where over half-a-million-Americans pay the highest taxes in the country yet have no voting representation in the House or Senate! Also, you're standing in the exact spot where Eleanor Rosevelt made her famous 'I Have a Spleen' speech after the Japanese sneak attack bombing of Pearl Bailey on December 7, 1941, "A day which will live in infancy."
Monkeyrotica you hit the nail on the head again!
The only thing I don't like about the whole thing is the impersonality of it all. Groups of 40 just seems too much.
I'm a volunteer at a house museum, and I know that lots of times guides embellish, and over time inaccuracies multiply to the point where everybody eventually thinks they're true. I think you can better educate a non-professional staff that still leaves room for personality and doesn't lead to a tour that sounds like it's obviously being read from a script.
A lot of people who run museums 'round here tend to think you need somebody with a master's degree just to do the most basic work, and they're often suspicious of volunteers who are remotely ambitious or prone to thinking outside the box. Reid is right, they do like to protect their jobs and their turf.
I say keep them. Goofy legends are part of the charm of a Capitol tour. They're also a valuable constituent service tool...would you rather take a tour with a staffer from your district through the tunnels or wait with the inevitable throngs of fanny pack wearing Midwesterners and school kids who will have to go through the CVC? I'd pick the staffer any day of the week.
Well, as a former intern, I think there's a better way. My congressman was strict about us getting the facts right and not repeating urban legends, so we were sent to training classes offered by the Architect of the Capitol. After an hour's worth of my time, I learned pretty much everything there was to know. So, if they're so concerned about accuracy, why not make those classes mandatory for staff and interns leading tours?
While they're at it, why don't they prevent any DC area resident or really anyone from offering any information about anything. While I think it's crazy when people think the Capitol is the White House or that Abe Lincoln is buried in the Lincoln Memorial, it's not like the NPS or anyone have to do anything about it.
Actually, Stating the Obvious, I think the staff led tours, if they continue, are supposed to go through the CVC as well.
Giving Capitol tours was one of the most fun parts of my job when I was an intern. But I was up front with people and told them that I actually knew very little about the building and, so at least they knew what they were getting.
Though, if they are going to get rid of staff-led tours, they should also implement a rule that all visitors must dress like respectable human beings. Flip flops and tie-dye cutoffs are not appropriate attire for visiting the seat of our government - contrary to popular belief, you're not in fucking Disneyland.
See, I was going to make a comment about how this was an effective way for the public to learn that hillrats are idiots, but I don't want to offend Stan (or, I suppose, my hillrat friends). Interns are different though...kinda.
I was in charge of student-lead tours of my college campus and in addition to all the important facutal information, we were encouraged to throw out some urban legends to the prospective students as well (yes, yes indeed the windows to the president's office are bullet proof). I can't imagine perpetuating the myth about Adams falling asleep is harming anyone's historical knowledge of the U.S...heck, we should just be thankful people are paying attention at all.
I was a hill intern and definitely told ALL of the myths in this article--because, for six weeks of giving tours, I was given ONE training tour (!) by an intern from the previous six weeks, and encouraged to not use any notes. The training course offered by the architect of the capitol is no longer allowed for interns, only permanent staff. There's a book for staff-led tours, but it's way too long for anyone to actually have time to read it. So how about instead of shaking their heads in dismay at interns who were trained to tell the untrue myths the architect's office come out with a simple document listing myths and facts, things that should be mentioned on the tour and things that shouldn't?
I heard that the Capitol was built in the 1970's
(*actual fact given by an intern on one tour a few years ago)
@Hillman: Fyi. The Architect of the Capitol *already* acts as Congress's personal whipping boy. Maybe congress should go fuck themselves for a while.
Having worked for the uppers of the AoC, I'm just a little biased in their favor.
See, it's not a secret that Congress and the AoC don't like each other. How can they? They both have exactly the opposite jobs! Congress's job is to screw up the capitol buildings and the AoC's job is to try to hold the buildings together while also accepting blame for everything Congress does wrong.
This problem with the tours is just an extension of that: Members like sending their interns around giving tours because it gives their constituents the feeling that they got the special treatment at the capitol. But the capitol is an old, fragile, over-booked building that is a hard place to navigate a big group of people through. And frankly interns don't respect it's history or the rules put in place to keep it running. (Which might not be the interns fault, maybe they're misinformed, maybe they have no incentive to care but whatever the case it's true.)
People who work for the AoC at the capitol work there for decades and decades-- congressional members and to a greater extent, their interns, get in get out and don't often understand how much work the AoC put into researching the capitol's history-- among billions of other things the AoC does to hold the place together.
And much despite Congress's efforts, now that the AoC has finally managed to build the CVC, I'm sure the tours are going to be much better managed, especially if professionals are in charge.
Besides, coming from someone who knows what they're talking about the history of the capitol buildings doesn't need any embellishment.
(Ahem. Sorry for ranting.)
As a former intern, I think that they could alleviate the problem by actually requiring staffers that lead tours to have gone through a thorough seminar in the Capitol grounds and its history. That way they won't make things up and the constituents still have the small groups that make their experience all the better.
EmmaTwoFour:
I pretty much lost all sympathy for the AoC when I attended a neighborhood meeting they were invited to. It was to announce the specifics of the giant Visitors Center project. Their rep basically told us residents we were damn lucky to be anywhere near the hallowed Capitol grounds and that if we had any concerns at all we could pretty much stuff them up our butts. Then, they proceeded to claim that building this massive structure would have zero impact on neighborhood parking, which they refuse to help regulate or control in any way. So let's see...... they build a massive new structure with no new parking, then they refuse to help regulate all the people that overload the limited neighborhood parking.....
After that, not my sympathy for them.