“In the past two years, DaQuawn Bruce received news — not once, but twice — that he had dreamed of since middle school. He had been accepted into two competitive internship programs on Capitol Hill, opportunities that swarms of students vie for every year.
But Mr. Bruce, who graduated last month from Carthage College in Wisconsin, had to turn down both of them. The internships were unpaid, and his family in Chicago, which relies solely on his mother’s income, could not afford to send him to Washington to work for nothing.
“By the time I got offers for internships,” he said, “I wasn’t in a place to accept them, no matter how great the opportunities were.”
Now, in a bid to open Washington’s halls of power to more economically diverse students like Mr. Bruce, the Senate has allocated $5 million to compensate all of its interns. The money — approximately $50,000 per Senate office — will become available if it is approved by the House, and then only at the start of the next fiscal year, Oct. 1. But the Senate measure is the first widespread organized congressional effort in two decades to ensure such payments.”
Read the rest of the story from the NY Times here.