Sudbury Beats Weston and Wayland in Third Annual Civics Bee

Do you know who becomes president if the president-elect dies before being sworn into office? Or who the Senate minority leader is?

If you know the answers to those trivia questions, consider competing next year at the annual Civics Bee held among Sudbury, Wayland Weston, sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

At this year's competition, the third one since the bee's inception, Sudbury came in first place, with a total of 480 points, followed by Wayland, with 465 points, and Weston, with 445 points.

The bee was held this year at the in Sudbury.

"I think everyone did a great job—those were hard questions," said Jo-Ann Berry, Bee Master and chair of the Citizens Education Committee of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, and an Acton resident.

With eight rounds of questions ranging from Name Your Officials to Voting Questions to matching Supreme Court cases with legal principles, teams from the three towns combined forces to show of their knowledge of legal and civic questions.

Each overall team was comprised of three adults, three high school students and three middle school students. For each round, an adult, high school student and middle school student stood up to answer.

A complete list of participants and a schedule of events is available at the right.

Richard Albert, assistant professor of constitutional law at Boston College, judged the competition and withstood a few friendly grumbles from the audience when he insisted upon precise answers.

But he praised the competitors and said he thought all had done an excellent job.

"This is what I write about; this is what I teach about," he said.

Albert also took questions from the audience while the scorer keepers tabulated the final scores, ranging from FDR's "stacking" of the Supreme Court to a recent Supreme Court decision on free speech.

All participants received copies of the U.S Constitution, donated by Sen. Scott Brown's office, and copies of the Massachusetts Constitution, donated by State Rep. Tom Conroy's office.

The bee will be broadcast on Sudbury TV, and you can view the lightning round, where teams had 1 minute to answer 15 questions, here on Patch, to the right.

Oh, you wanted to know the answers to those questions? The vice-president-elect becomes president, and the current Senate minority leader is Mitch McConnell.