Yearly Archives: 2017

Happy Thursday, friends of YMCA Texas Youth and Government!

The application for the YMCA Conference on National Affairs (CONA) is now open. High school students from any YG program section are invited to apply to represent Texas at this national conference, to take place July 1st-6th, 2017.

Each year, Youth and Government delegates from over 40 U.S. states convene in North Carolina at the YMCA’s Blue Ridge Assembly to debate proposals pertaining to issues of national or international importance. Texas is honored to bring a delegation of 25 outstanding high school students each year, selected from all over the state. CONA provides our Texas YG students an excellent opportunity to propose and debate solutions to relevant world problems alongside understanding, interested young people from all over the country, furthering our mission to help teenagers become responsible citizens and future leaders of our nation.

More information about CONA can be found on the CONA website and on our Conferences page. Additionally, check out the Resource Portal for the 2017 CONA Key Dates timeline under the “Conferences” tab.

The application to represent Texas at CONA 2017 is due by Friday, March 17th, 2017. Adult recommendation letters for applicants are due no later than Friday, March 31st, 2017.

Apply now! Email your District Director or the State Director with any questions.

Hello friends of Texas Youth and Government!

Last weekend we held our 70th Annual YMCA Texas Youth and Government High School State Conference. Over 1300 students from our 5 Districts across Texas convened in Austin for 3 days of mock-government in our Judicial, Legislative, Media and State Affairs sections. As always, it was humbling to see our mission to help teenagers become responsible citizens and future leaders of our nation put into action.

We would like to celebrate the success of all our students by sharing the 2017 High School State Conference Results and Awards presentation, which can be found here. Please join us in congratulating all of our delegates on a job well done!

Results and Awards, 2017 High School State Conference

Bri Branscomb explains her journey to YG State Conference

By: Kyle Gehman

The class stands up, starts to recite with “I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America”, however, a sophomore from Leander High School stays seated.

She Bri Branscomb from the Leander High School delegation and is here for her first year debating on the House of Representatives floor. She comes from a multi-racial parent background and has strong, firm view on certain issues that she hopes she can respectfully share with other delegates.

“I think it is important for kids to be participating in democracy because we are given a right that not a lot of other countries have, and that’s a role in our government and a role in how our country will be run,” Branscomb said. “So I think if you have an opportunity to have your voice heard and open about your opinions and what you believe then you should take every chance you can take.”

For the past few months she has made the decision to not stand during the Pledge of Allegiance because of how she feels the words are not being represented.

“I’m not comfortable swearing my allegiance by saying that there is liberty and justice for every American citizen when that is a lie,” Branscomb said. “I don’t believe that everyone should sit for the pledge, and I don’t expect them to. Everyone has their own form of speaking up, and by no means does it have to be the same as mine. However, by sitting down I am taking a stand for what I believe in, and that is not something I will apologize for.”

This is her first year in the Youth and Government Program and already she has won Best Bill during the Austin District Conference. It discusses the mental health of police officers so that they may be reevaluated for duty.

“With all of these instances of police brutality in the past couple years there has been a very big rift between police and minority communities and I think that evaluating if officers are fit for duty could minimize these instances of brutality and help mend this division,” Branscomb said.

Outside of Youth and Government she is involved in her school’s newspaper as well as the theatre department. She hopes that one day she can be an actor and bring the skills that she has learned from YG into that profession.

“I think a lot of the celebrities are role models,” Branscomb said. “However, they’re not always educated so I hope that Youth and Government will help me teach people more on how our political system works and how to be more involved with not just basing your opinions off the media.”

By: Nettie Comerford
To start the General Affairs session at the 2017 Youth and Government competition, Chambliss Peirson, Allison Reimer, and Lily Turner proposed, to increase accountability of schools who are in violation of Title IV and perpetrators of sexual assault in universities. The group began by sharing a testimony from an anonymous Vanderbilt student: “On June 22 of 2013, as a happy, hardworking Vanderbilt student looking forward to my future, I’ve seen with my own eyes what I was when Mr. Batey was done with me, a piece of trash, face down in a hallway covered in his urine and paw prints. Since that night all I I’ve wanted is for this to be behind me. But the process to get justice has been a never ending constant misery in my life that I can’t remember a time when this wasn’t happening.”

Although their proposal did not pass, the Delegates had hoped to strengthen Title IX by ensuring that a school’s affairs would not override legal action in cases that involve sexual assault. “Title IX is a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in any federally funded education which includes private colleges…Title IX does not require schools to report incidents of sexual violence to law enforcement which we propose to make mandatory,” Pierson said. “It’s purpose is to actually carry on the case in order for the victim to get justice, because that’s the failure of Title IX, at least where it is right now,” Turner said. “The hard part of writing the proposal is working around what’s already existing, and there’s a lot of flaws in the system. It’s hard to figure out how to navigate around all the flaws.”

The proposal defined sexual assault as “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, in which the biggest example is rape.” In universities, sexual assault is an issue that affects both sexes, according to RAINN, “11.2% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through force, or violence. Among graduate students, 8.8% of females and 2.2% of males experience rape or sexual assault. Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault. Only female student victim’s, age 18-24, report to law enforcement.”  

Pierson and Turner, each seniors, are worried about attending college this coming year. Turner said, “It’s scary to think that this could be a situation that we could find ourselves in… It’s just something that needs to be changed.” Peirson believes many of the issues are the result of faulty university practices. “Law enforcement tries to bring justice to victims, I don’t think schools do

In light of a recent article released by Print Media, Governor Kennedy Montgomery has requested we release a statement to defend his reasoning behind dismissing the media from his meetings. In Print Media we honor the input from delegates and officers alike, but we also support the work and reporting of our journalists. The Print Media department of YAG will not be retracting any facts in the published article. As stated in the original article, Governor Kennedy was within his power to dismiss the media, and we are in our power to report on those dismissals.

The statement from Governor Montgomery is as follows:

One of the corner stones of democracy is the freedom of press and I, as the youth executive (The Youth Governor), believe this is a necessary part of our political process. I feel as though when the media released their statement yesterday evening they were truly mistaken because we need the press in our political system so that we can keep it honest, but our media was incredibly misguided when they said that I (Governor Montgomery) “made the decision to eject the reporter covering his cabinet meeting”. I politely asked for five minutes of privacy in which the media delegate may have made an honest and ethical misunderstanding of my statement and intentions. In order to maintain the integrity of the governor’s agenda and his governor cabinet it is imperative that he has honest moments of sincere and ethical privacy that must not be misconstrued as an attack on the media that I so passionately support.

By: Willow Dalehite

During the General Assembly of the State Affairs forum, proposals that passed the first round on Friday were discussed, amended, and voted on by all State Affairs delegates. Among those passed was a proposal entitled “Texas Water Quality” by delegate Noah Busbee of Dallas, which, with seven amendments, outlined a plan to improve Texas water quality by replacing inorganic pesticides with approved organic pesticides and imposing fines and other punishments for a farmer’s or vendor’s failure to follow the proposals guidelines. Busbee’s proposal was vigorously debated as delegates motioned to increase the time allotted for undebatable questions and pro and con debates, and the proceedings were interjected with bursts of humor and vehement “nay”s and “yay”s.

“While Texas is the leading producer of wind energy, its water pollution ranks among the worst in the nation. It’s the second worst water polluter in the nation, dumping 16.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the water each year. This is thirty times more than the next state,” Busbee said during the opening statement. The proposal addressed this issue by specifically targeting one source of water pollution (inorganic pesticides), but an opposing argument described by delegate Meera Gangasani stated that water pollutants were also caused by other factors, which the proposal did not address. “In the large scale,

[pesticides are] not really as big of a problem as other issues like industrial pollution and fracking, because those are the main sources of toxic chemicals and I thought maybe this proposal wasn’t as effective in dealing with that,” Gangasani, a con speaker, said.

This argument contrasted to the pathos-filled speech given by pro-speaker Justin Greisz, who described the negative health effects of inorganic pesticides on animals and humans as well as his stance on the importance of environmental protection. Greisz talked about the effects of DDT, a controversial chemical in the ‘60s that was eventually banned by the EPA, and Antisense, which are both inorganic pesticide methods. After mentioning the thinning effect DDT had on the eggshells of bald eagles, he said, “I just want you to remember that inorganic pesticides are killing our national symbol of freedom.” This drew some laughter from delegates in the crowd, and Greisz went on to say, “I know the switch from inorganic to organic pesticides may not be easy, but as said by the famous scholar Kermit the Frog, ‘it’s not easy being green.’” This final statement left the delegates cheering and howling with laughter as Greisz exited the stage.

Although the proposal was seriously considered by the delegates, Greisz chose to use humor and emotion in his speech to balance the facts that were important to the pro argument. “I had the pathos in there to get people feeling like they needed action, but then the humor was to help wind down so it could transition better to the next person,” he said. “It makes the change positive in their minds even though the information is negative.”

The pro and con debate was followed by a series of amendments specifying details of the proposal and addressing some of the opposing arguments. “The chief opposition was that organic pesticides aren’t as healthy and good as they may seem,” Busbee said, and an amendment proposed by Karen Chen addressed this. “Inorganic and organic fertilizers can both have a negative effect on water quality,” she said. “My proposed amendment was to replace ‘organic fertilizers’ with ‘safe alternative organic fertilizers’ because there are some proven by the CDC that are indeed safe and don’t cause negative impacts, like some organic fertilizers do.”

This amendment allowed Chen to vote for the proposal, and changed the minds of other delegates like Gangasani. “Actually I did vote pro for this proposal because one of the amendments was approving certain organic pesticides, because a common misconception is like, organic pesticides are 100 percent safe, 100 percent natural; they can’t do anything bad. But that’s not true, and one of the amendments rectified that,” she said, referring to the amendment Chen proposed.

While the amendments changed many of the delegates’ votes, Busbee’s stance on the issue remained the same. “I believe it is worth the lives that we will change and the lives that we will save to protect ourselves, to protect the environment and to protect our future generations,” Busbee said.