Decatur club going to Student Congress

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

— Five Decatur High School students will be representing Northwest Arkansas at the State Capitol next week as they participate in the Arkansas Student Congress program.

According to Decatur speech teacher James Garner, the program is offered by the Arkansas Communications and Theater Arts Association, which the school joined as part of a new student debate club, and allows students from across the state to take over the state government for acouple of days by presenting bills they have written, arguing the bills, and voting on which should become laws.

“Several students were interested in participating in debate this year, so I took a group to an ACTAA demonstration day and their excitement was obvious. They couldn’t wait for tournaments to begin and definitely wanted to participate in Student Congress,” Garner said. “They got up at 2 a.m. on a Saturday for the demonstration day and have since stayed after school to write bills and develop arguments, even before they knew if they would be able to go.”

The ACTAA StudentCongress will begin Sunday, Nov. 6, and run through Tuesday, Nov. 8. Faerlyn Hunter, Derrick Hill, Jayme Burden, Lensey Watson and Amanda Davies are scheduled to participate.

Hunter, a senior at Decatur High School, saidshe became interested in participating after taking a speech class last year.

“I like debating, it’s fun. I really enjoy the arguing,” she said.

Watson, also a senior, said her experience with 4-H and FFA have taught her to be a natural public speaker

Although both girlsplan to have a career in the medical field, they agreed that they are learning important skills that will help them with their future careers, such as public speaking, getting past stage fright and learning how to defend their points of view.

At student congress, the team will vie for positions, form committees to discuss the 59 proposed bills and vote on them, eventually eliminating all but three bills. A final bill will be passed and will have a chance at going before the Arkansas Legislature, Watson explained.

“I think its going to be a really fun experience,” Hunter said.

To make the opportunity possible, Garner said the students sent letters to law firms all over northwest Arkansas, hoping they could get donations to help them participate, but their success was very limited. Then, they applied for a community grant from the Walton Family Foundation and found a sponsor.

“This is a new program in Decatur and no funding was originally planned for it,” Garner said, “so the students were extremely excited that a grant committee at Walmart saw the value of the program and helped them.”

“They had faith. They did the work and now they are on their way,” Garner said.

Decatur is also looking at joining 13 other schools in becoming part of the new official competitive speech and debate district of the National Forensic League.

“This is an incredible opportunity for these students,” Garner said. “It not only gives them an opportunity to work on their verbal communication and argument skills, but it also makes them think about the government process and how they can become a part of it. The bills they are going to argue over as students could move on to the real legislature and become laws.”

“I think this is a special club,” Garner said, “because it was formed in response to student action instead of administration. It was something positive that the students wanted to do and they are working to make it happen.”

Sports, Pages 9 on 11/02/2011