NMSU students prepare to question policy leaders

When former U.S. Ambassador Chase Untermeyer takes the stage at next week's Domenici Public Policy Conference, Rob Thompson doesn't want to ask him a question whose answer he could have found online. The New Mexico State University philosophy major has spent weeks researching Untermeyer's career, writings and ideas while wrestling with the considerably larger subject he's been assigned: the future of democracy.

The goal isn't simply to know enough to ask a question. It's to know enough to ask one that makes someone who has spent a career thinking about public policy stop and think again.

“Philosophy is a lot about interrogating your own beliefs and interrogating the beliefs and arguments of others,” Thompson said.

He'll get that opportunity when the Domenici Public Policy Conference returns to Las Cruces Sept. 8-9 after an eight-year hiatus. Thompson, Javin Clark and Garrey Owensby are among NMSU students who won't simply listen as former elected officials, ambassadors and policy experts discuss democracy, artificial intelligence, national security, energy and elections. They'll ask the questions.

“We're almost kind of reporters doing research,” Thompson said.

The conference, named for longtime New Mexico U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, returns with a lineup that includes UTEP President and former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, former Arizona Sen. and U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Jeff Flake, Untermeyer and other policy experts, along with candidates in New Mexico's 2026 elections.

Students have been divided into teams and assigned speakers and subjects. They've dug through biographies, speeches, writings, policy positions and the organizations with which the speakers have been associated.

They've written questions, too. What they haven't written is a script. Once a presentation begins, the students will listen, take notes and decide whether the questions they prepared still make sense. A speaker who takes the discussion somewhere unexpected may force them to go there, too.

That uncertainty doesn't bother Owensby.

“I think that makes it more fun, honestly,” he said.

The preparation, he said, gives the students enough background to adjust when the conversation changes. And the objective isn't to coax a speaker into repeating something the students already found in their research. As Owensby sees it, respectful questions can still make someone consider their answer.

“I think it is important to make them a little uncomfortable, to think outside the box,” he said, “because I think the audience would respect that too.”

Clark, a political science major, is preparing for discussions of national security and the geopolitics of energy, subjects that overlap with his interests in politics, environmental law and New Mexico's energy economy.

Politics, he said, was “baked into” his family life growing up. By high school, he had begun developing opinions of his own while maintaining an interest in politics and debate that eventually led him to political science. Growing up in New Mexico gave him another perspective.

“Energy is a very important discussion with the amount of oil that we have here and how our state legislature uses that energy and how they regulate it,” Clark said.

Clark's research into Flake has included the former senator's small-government conservatism as well as his experience in international affairs. Understanding Flake matters, Clark said, but understanding the subject may matter even more.

“As questioners, having the background of Jeff Flake is extremely important for us,” he said. “But I think in order to craft better questions for the audience to learn from, it is more important to have knowledge of the topic.”

Carol Owensby, one of the faculty mentors working with the student panelists, said the students develop the substance of the questions themselves. Mentors help them shorten questions loaded with too much background, open up those that can be answered too easily and find ways to invite a deeper response.

Before the conference, they'll also practice speaking into a microphone and workshop questions with one another. Then they'll be on their own — mostly. Faculty mentors will sit nearby as students take notes and edit questions on shared documents while the speakers are talking.

“With that depth of background that we hope they've developed, they are able to pivot in the midst of a presentation and come up with relevant questions,” Carol Owensby said.

That student role dates almost to the beginning of the Domenici conference. At the first conference, audience members submitted questions on note cards, creating what Carol Owensby remembers as a “blizzard of note cards” and some frustration from people whose questions weren't selected.

The next year, organizers recruited students, asked them to research the speakers and turned the questioning over to them. The model stuck.

Carol Owensby said speakers over the years have complimented the students' preparation and their ability to ask questions that sometimes force even experienced public figures to think on their feet.

“There aren't gotcha questions,” she said. “Let's dig a little deeper into this.”

The students have embraced that distinction. A question might remind a speaker of a previous position and ask how it squares with another belief, Thompson said. Or it might simply ask whether that position has changed.

For Garrey Owensby, the challenge is to keep that exchange civil without making it timid.

“You've got to keep it respectful,” he said, “but at the same time, get them thinking outside the box a little bit.”

That approach also fits a conference carrying Domenici's name. The late senator was known for working across party lines, and Carol Owensby remembers earlier conferences where disagreement didn't prevent conversation. She believes putting students into that conversation adds another dimension.

Many of the people on stage have spent careers making or influencing public policy. The students asking the questions belong to the generation that will live with those decisions, and perhaps eventually make them.

“What are their points of concern?” she said. “What do these people coming up who are going to be able to move into maybe some of these positions at some point. How do those two perspectives interact?”

Thompson finds himself thinking about democracy beyond elections and institutions, exploring education, truth, judgment and the ability to hear an argument without treating politics like opposing sports teams.

Clark is digging into national security and energy questions that reach from the Middle East back to New Mexico.

And Garrey Owensby sees something valuable simply in demonstrating that difficult political conversations don't have to become uncivil ones.

“I think it's important to keep it civilized in these conferences,” he said. “It's important to be a leader in that sense.”

Carol Owensby has seen the experience last beyond the conference. Some former student panelists, she said, have become more active in politics, civic organizations and public service. She also sees this year's return as a continuation of the work of the late Kevin Boeberg, whom she credits with spearheading the student panelist program and helping shape its original vision.

While preparing for this year's conference, she opened some of the old electronic files used to organize the student program. Boeberg's name was still on them.

“It just tugged in my heart a little because he really did have a vision and a heart for the students,” she said. “I'm really excited that we can continue this.”

Eight years after the last Domenici conference, the policy leaders are coming back. So are the students — not simply to hear the conversation, but to help shape it.