Supreme Court decisions, no matter how long ago they were decided, influence our modern society more than people may realize. 

Every year, students in the Stover Scholars Program write and perform a play to illustrate this fact and to recognize the day the United States Constitution was signed, Sept. 17. This year, the play will be performed on Sept. 20 in the Goodwin Performing Arts Center. 

Five Stover Scholars began working together in December of last year to write and edit the play about the Supreme Court case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, dealing with the issue of the government requiring parents to put their children in public school rather than private or homeschool. 

Dr. Lawrence Stratton, director of the Stover Center for Constitutional Studies and Moral Leadership, worked with a committee of students in December to choose the case they would dramatize and to prepare for the production. 

“I got some books and articles and gave it to the committee,” Stratton said. “The students read the case, read the books and read the previous cases… so they came up with a draft, and they divided and conquered, each writing different scenes.” 

Stover Scholars Tyler McCoy, TJ DeNofrio, Drew Hreha, Olivia Shultz-Falandes and Ryan Williams were the committee for the event and each wrote different scenes of the play. 

McCoy, a senior history and political science major, has been involved with writing the play the past two years and served as chair of the committee this year. He was the main editor, piecing all the scenes together into a cohesive play. 

“I edited them and wove them together to makethem flow better and added narration in as well to kind of glue all the scenes together,” McCoy said. 

After putting the scenes together and making edits, McCoy said the script went through multiple processes and people before it was finalized. He said Stratton helped immensely through the process. 

“It’s written by the students but anytime we ask for help, he is always there to give assistance and to help us put it together,” McCoy said. 

Another individual assisted in a slightly different aspect of putting the production together. 

Stratton, McCoy and DeNofrio said the production would not be the play it should be without the help of Theatre Professor Eddie Powers who is directing, helping the case move from the page to the stage. 

“I talk to them about being more animated, being more energetic with their characters, and there is some movement [to block] in the early scenes of the story,” Powers said. 

DeNofrio, a senior pre-law major, has helped write the play in previous years as well as this one. He said when you actually hear your writing on the stage after typing it out, “it’s a whole different ball game.” 

“You have to stress things differently; you have to pause in certain situations,” DeNofrio said. 

“While Professor Powers is directing everything, Dr. Stratton is directing information that is going into the play so it’s like this interworking dynamic with the two of them.” 

Through the hard work of the Stover Scholar students, with help from Stratton and Powers, McCoy hopes to get the play’s purpose across to students who see it. 

“We wanted to show how a case decided almost 100 years ago, that seems to have v ery narrow implications to its ruling, actually has very broad implications,” McCoy said. “Showing how cases that we might not influence our daily lives actually do have a great influence.”