JDCHS students gain government experience at Girls State

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SALT LAKE CITY — Two Juan Diego Catholic High School student ambassadors enjoyed leadership development and some in-depth, hands-on experience with the democratic process at Girls State, held June 2-7 at Weber State University.

For Emma Martin, the week was a taste of a possible future career because she plans to study international law after high school and hopes to one day serve her country as a diplomat or to work for an international policy-making organization.

During the pandemic, as leaders throughout the world struggled to navigate the crisis, Emma became very interested in government.

“I started getting really interested in how our government was handling things, not just Covid-wise but socially; how things were shifting, and social tensions, and the government’s role in that,” she said. “I just started to notice more the law’s role in everyday life, and I got interested in a career because I wanted to change things at a level that maybe I couldn’t right now.”

Her experiences at Girls State helped broaden that understanding and taught her some life lessons, she said.

At Girls State, the delegates organize cities, counties and a state and run for elected offices in each of them. Emma was elected as vice chair of her city and as a state delegate. She ran for county and state offices but was not elected to those positions.

“I learned how to pick myself back up again, because you can run for a ton of positions, and it’s hard to go through not getting a position, or bombing a speech, and then having to wake up the next morning and do it all again,” she said. “In everyday life, I think that’s something that I wasn’t very used to, but everyone was so supportive at Girls State that I really got the experience of picking myself up again and putting myself back there and learning that really I don’t regret it. I’m just happy that I tried.”

Emma’s time at Girls State also broadened her understanding of how being involved in the political process can effect change, she said. “One of my favorite quotes that I heard at Girls State was, ‘Everything that’s wrong with America can be fixed by everything that’s right with America.’ My thoughts were, ‘If I’m feeling like I want to see a change on a state or national scale, there must be other people who feel the same way.’ If I raise myself up enough to have the confidence to say that I feel that we need to change, other people will follow.”

Domiona Marine, who hopes to study medicine and become a neurologist, also learned much at Girls State, but perhaps her most valuable takeaway was “an attitude that I walked away with of being so grateful for everyone around me and loving everyone around me,” she said. “It was just an incredible group of women and an incredible group to be a part of.”

Participating in the political process at Girls State has encouraged her to be more involved as an adult, she said. “I didn’t understand how the system works, and now I’m inspired when I get to be of age. I want to go to caucuses, and I want to just see how that works locally and be a lot more involved with that.”

Although it requires a commitment of time and energy during the first week of summer, no other experience can compare with Girls State, she said. “No other environment, regardless of the time, can provide you the experience. It’s so unique and it’s such an amazing environment where I felt I dropped any biases. It was a just very immersive experience.”

Every year the Catholic Woman’s League sponsors young women from any of the Utah Catholic high schools to attend Girls State. Although both delegates this year are St. John the Baptist parishioners, there is no requirement to be Catholic, CWL scholarship coordinator Alexa Maland said.

The experience “opens their eyes to a number of things,” she said. “They come from an isolated environment, being in a smaller-sized Catholic school, and here they get involved with girls from all over the state, from large schools and small schools. They also realize that a lot of people may not even know what a Catholic high school is. It gives them an opportunity to inform other people of who they are.”

Catholic Woman’s League members hope that through the sponsorship they will provide an educational experience for the girls and encourage them to be civically engaged as adults.

“We as Catholic Christians, it’s very important that we have awareness of how we can participate in the public forum,” Maland added. “As we are losing Christian values across the world, someone has to stand up for those Christian values, especially since this is the basis of our western civilization. It’s important for the girls to have this experience, because this encourages people to participate in the public forum when they become adults.”