Constitution Day at WMU

DJ DeLong
Creative writing and history major
College of Arts and Sciences, Marketing and Communications student employee

On September 17, the nation celebrated Constitution Day. As part of the celebration, all federally funded universities and colleges are required to present a lecture in honor of the holiday and in recognition of the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. This year, Western Michigan University had the pleasure of having history professor Sally Hadden present. However, Hadden had a different plan for the lecture. Rather than speak about the U.S. Constitution, she decided to focus on a smaller scale looking at the state constitutions that followed the signing of the national one in 1787 to 1800. 

When asked what made her choose this topic, Hadden explained, “State constitutions are often overlooked, and treated as secondary to the national constitution. They deserve greater attention since they reveal the priorities of state lawmakers and had potentially a much bigger impact locally than the national constitution did in ordinary people’s lives.” During the lecture, Hadden identified that the state constitutions influenced one another more so than the U.S. Constitution, meaning that when drafting a new state’s constitution or revising one, lawmakers did not look for reference from the national document, but at other states that had already developed their own constitution.

Hadden’s goal was to enhance the audience’s knowledge and understanding of state constitutions predominantly during the 1790s. She indicated the important ways the constitutions influenced the development of new constitutions written in that time period. The development of the national document is a day to remember, however, Hadden has shown that there is more to the topic and research that is presented for most Constitution Day lectures. The presentations themselves allow a larger range of students and those of the surrounding community to learn about and experience a part of the nation’s history that is vital to everyday lives. “I’d like to believe that Constitution Day lectures,” Hadden stated, “like most lectures on campus, enrich the intellectual environment of the university and provide more stimulus to the overall intellectual project we’re all engaged in: learning more about all topics.”