Recent graduates appearing on film in prison jumpsuits would normlly be bad news for Andover. Now, it’s bad news for the U.S. government. “We spent the night making prison garb out of sheets and also signs,” said Mike Tully ’07. “We had this walk on campus where we handed out flyers and protested these issues. That was a sort of our big scene in the movie.” The documentary “I.O.U.S.A.”— which was first screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January—premiered nationally on August 21 to over 430 theaters. It features the Concerned Youth of America (CYA), an organization founded by Andover graduates to raise awareness about the nation’s fiscal problems. CYA’s Board of Directors includes five members from the Class of 2007: Yoni Gruskin, Tully, John Gwin, Prateek Kumar and Shawn Xu. The creators of “I.O.U.S.A.” contacted the organization through Phillips Academy’s Office of Communication seeking to reach out to younger generations. According to the documentary’s website, “I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens.” “A big piece of their film is about the future going forward and how this issue is going to affect our generation, so I think they really needed to find some students to put it in the face of the issue,” said Gruskin, Founder and Executive Director of CYA. After discussions with the filmmakers, the documentary crew shot scenes of CYA at the University of Pennsylvania, where Gruskin and Tully currently attend school. Kumar and Martin Serna, who is no longer part of the organization, were also in the film. For the filming at UPenn, CYA members protested the financial crisis in prisoner jumpsuits to emphasize their theme of being “prisoners of the national debt.” In April, the Philadelphia Film Festival screened “I.O.U.S.A.” followed by a question-and-answer period with Gruskin and Tully. The August 21 nationwide premiere was followed by a live, round-table discussion with prominent figures on financial issues, including Warren Buffett and David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller-General. According to Gruskin, “I.O.U.S.A.” had approximately 50,000 viewers its opening night. “To put that into relative terms, Al Gore’s documentary [“An Inconvenient Truth”] had 30,000 its first week.” The film’s strong premiere also placed it as the top-grossing documentary in an opening week, said Gruskin. CYA’s involvement with “I.O.U.S.A.”, although only about five minutes in length, has helped the organization’s development, according to Tully. “The film adds some legitimacy to our organization, and we can use it as a visual aid to spice up the issue,” he said. CYA is currently focused on changing the direction of the organization. This weekend, the full Board of Directors will meet in Washington, D.C. to discuss future plans. “We’re going to do a national tour this year and go across the college and high school campuses, speak and premiere the film at their schools, answer questions and hopefully set up chapters. We’re a grassroots organization so we’re trying to set up a national infrastructure,” said Tully. According to Gruskin, CYA is already in talks to visit Drake University, Penn State, University of Colorado and Michigan State, among others. CYA will also protest in their prisoner outfits at the first presidential debate in Mississippi, as well as the vice presidential debate in St. Louis, Missourri. “We feel that it’s a bit of an obscure issue, which is why we feel that we have to take the issue to the doorsteps of our peers,” said Gruskin. “It’s not that exciting necessarily, but it is important, and it is something that we need to get behind as a generation.”
