Newfound students share experience in YMCA Youth and Government Program

BRISTOL — Students from Newfound Regional High School described their participation in the YMCA’s Youth and Government program as a positive educational experience they encourage others to explore.

The program brings teenagers together in state-organized, model-government programs, during which participants immerse themselves in “experiential civic engagement, debate issues that affect citizens in their state, and even propose legislation,” culminating in serving as delegates at their state conference and debating bills on the floor of the Legislature.

High school social studies teacher Tyler Breckinridge brought the Youth and Government program to Newfound last year, and he said the goal is to teach students “exactly how the government works out.

"I’m talking representatives in the House, senators in the Senate, and we use the actual New Hampshire Capitol, so they are sitting in the same seats your reps and senators you voted to send to Concord are sitting in today.”

In partnership with the Plymouth Regional School District, Newfound students choose candidates for the Senate, the House of Representatives, the governor, and Executive Council.

“A lot of our students did so well this year, they were chosen between themselves and Plymouth to represent our district,” Breckinridge said. “They are competing with 23 other high schools from all across the state.”

Jonathan Weeks served as a Supreme Court judge, a position he said he sought because, “I believed, through all my time in school, and all my time being interested in politics, that there’s, I think, a lot of breach of contract, not just physical written documents, but social contracts, too. And I thought, from a mock government perspective, the best way for me to bring that to the program would be through the Supreme Court. So that's what I ran for, and somehow I won it.”

He said what most impressed him was the chance to see the offices of the actual Supreme Court judges.

“If you weren’t aware, the chief justice has a shower,” he said, during a Newfound Area School District board meeting, on May 26.

“The security director, I got to speak to him a couple of times throughout the trip, about how he made all that happen. He was very involved with the program. All the justices were very happy to have us in their building,” Weeks said. “And there’s absolutely no way I ever would have gotten that experience without the program in my entire life, unless maybe I ran in real life, and made it somehow.”

Unlike Weeks, Leah McFarland said, “I'm not usually a huge politics person. I do like to argue, and I like to debate, so I was a little bit into that, but, like, all the semantics is not really my thing.” Taking the role of a lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court, she said, “I learned the value of, like, correctly arguing, and really got to pursue more of my passion in law, that I didn’t realize existed before this program.

“The moment that truly sticks with me is getting up there and speaking, because you can do all this work behind the scenes — and that’s where I found that I excelled in, was doing all the research leading up to the debate — but when I got up on that podium, I had to actually, like, grip the sides of the podium to make sure I wasn’t shaking visibly.”

McFarland drafted a bill on safe driving for students in New Hampshire.

“I saw a lot of issues with my classmates getting in a car accident, getting speeding tickets directly after they had just gotten their licenses,” she said. She also heard stories about speeders from her father, who works at the Department of Safety.

“So, knowing that we have programs for other instances like that, like the suicide prevention program, I wanted to see if something like this for student drivers could be implemented at high schools.”

McFarland took home the Supreme Court award, given by advisers of the court, and her sister, Riley, won the statesmanship award as best debater. Breckinridge noted that, although Region 8, consisting of Newfound and Plymouth is among the smaller groups participating in Youth and Government, they have been receiving awards and earning leadership positions at the state competitions. He said they are looking to participate in Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C., where they would be among thousands of students from around the country taking mock political roles.

Rudy Young, who in his second year in the program, served on the Ways and Means Committee, and hopes to take a role in the Senate next year. Young recalled standing in the hotel lobby with Weeks and Ricardo Rivera Soto, and having people came up to ask why they were dressed in suits.

“A lot of people that I wouldn’t have expected to seem interested in the club came up and asked, and were a lot more interested than I thought,” he said. He predicted that, through word of mouth, the program will expand, perhaps double, next year.

Breckinridge said Ben Kitchen had taken the role of a lobbyist, and also he wrote his own bill.

“He had a social media bill that, unfortunately, did not pass,” Breckinridge said. “It wasn’t so much that people were against the idea of the bill. Lots of times, as it happens, it’s not your idea, it’s the actual words of what it will do. So, for his, it was more of just they didn’t think [a bill banning youths from social media] was able to be enforced.

"The nice part about this program is when you defeat a bill, most students are very quick to tell you, ‘Hey, if you change this, I would vote for it.’

"We were actually approached by a group called the After School Alliance, who asked Newfound — specifically Youth and Government — to help them by writing a bill that could be presented to state legislators, on social media and on the importance of funding for after-school programs. So, that is something that the Youth and Government will be working on, and we will actually be hoping to present as a group.

“The goal is, if we can do this, it will help us get a grant for the program that would help the program continue, would get us more money for after-school funding, and would give some of our students a chance to go to D.C., and bring this to their U.S. reps, and we’re hoping to turn that into — especially for our kids here who are very interested — maybe go to visit the White House, but at least go to the Capitol, and meet whoever won their election in November, for the House.”