On Nov. 30, Youth and Government went on a three-day field trip to Jefferson City for the Clark Convention, marking the end to another year of Oakville’s student politics.
“We go to a convention in Jefferson City and people sign up for judicial, legislative or media,” Mason Bader (12) said.
Each of the three categories to choose from have their own responsibilities and tasks to complete.
“Legislative you make a bill…that the state can enforce, judicial you do case work and media you just take videos and photos of the whole thing,” Owen Mellinger (11) said.
Youth and government, run by social studies teachers Kara Beck and AJ Shinabargar, is a club focused on being a stepping stone to showing high school students a real world experience of how the government is run. This is accomplished through the use of “mock government.” At the convention, some students, like Bryce Kesselring (12), chose the legislative option, meaning they had to present a bill for the Senate and the House to vote on.
“I did a bill on sports gambling — to legalize it in Missouri — and added different clauses in there to allow it,” Kesselring said. “It passed through the Senate and the House and was signed by the governor and it came into mock law.”
With so few bills being passed, this moment was even more special to the Oakville students.
“I would definitely say watching Bryce’s bill pass was the coolest experience ever,” Grace Hickman (12) said. “Almost every single person voted yes to it in the House, and that was 150 people. And I know how much it meant to Bryce for it to pass.”
The overwhelming passing of this bill was no easy feat, but it was well worth it when all was said and done.
“It was a lot of fun just being on the floor watching it happen because it was a 20-30 minute conversation between 150 people, and then it ended with a three-minute standing ovation,” Bader said. “It was just a lot of fun to watch all the hard work Bryce did pay off in the end.”
While it was a fun experience for the club, it was also very informative to the group of students.
“Unless you go into law or government, you’re never going to actually understand firsthand how it works,” Hickman said. “You’ll know the process, but actually doing it is so different and it’s just really interesting.”
Coming to learn what everything was really about helped some students decide that government might have a place in their future.
“I’m probably gonna try to do some mock governments in college,” Kristian Nelsen (12) said.
Some are taking it even further, knowing that they will be back in the house in their future.
“I will definitely be a real senator some day,” Hickman said. “Thirty years, I’m not kidding.”
