Michael McFarland is an Elon senior from Arlington, VA, majoring in English with a double concentration in Professional Writing and Rhetoric and Creative Writing. Over the past few years, McFarland has been a CUPID Associate and has worked directly with the North Carolina Open Government Coalition through CUPID to help their organization visually redesign a newsletter as a CUPID project.
In addition, McFarland has exercised his Professional Writing and Rhetoric skills in Mock Trial, a competitive trial advocacy organization he has been deeply involved over the past few years and also the focus of his senior project. In the organization, schools across the country are assigned a case at the beginning of the school year and then challenge one another in a tournament style competition at the year’s end. During spring break, Elon’s Mock Trial team competed at Furman University in Greenville, SC in a three day tournament.
Over the past three summers, McFarland has worked for two different organizations. During the summers of 2009 and 2010, he held internships at the United States Senate’s Sergeant at Arms Office where he wrote and edited manuals related to opening and closing Senate offices and wrote speeches for the Deputy Sergeant at Arms. Last summer, McFarland worked for a capital defense firm analyzing cases related to the death penalty. In one instance, he was even able to travel to a prison to obtain a stay of execution signature from a death row inmate. After graduation, McFarland plans on attending law school in North Carolina and hopes to become a trial lawyer. He is undecided on whether or not he wants to focus on criminal prosecution or criminal defense work. His favorite book is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
A special thank you to Ben Kanne, who is serving as a guest blogger, for his write-up about Michael McFarland! Look for this write-up and more in the upcoming issue of the department newsletter, The Back Cover, soon.
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