Guest speaker at the March 16 meeting of the Rotary Club of Lawrenceville was Jeff Ploussard, who spoke to the group about his experience working with Congressman Howard Wolpe during the Reagan administration and about the impact of gerrymandering on the American political system. He summarized Rep. Wolpe’s work with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Sub-committee on Africa. Wolpe was instrumental in getting the sanctions passed by Congress against South Africa during the days of apartheid. Ploussard maintained that a major reason for the current ineffectiveness of Congress is the practice of gerrymandering where voting district lines are drawn by the political party in power in a way to best serve the party. He is a proponent for independent commissions being appointed to draw the lines in a non-political way. He closed with comments about his association with Rotary, as a Rotary Foundation Scholar and Ambassador when he was a young man and as a judge for this year’s Laws of Life Essay Contest.