JSA attends climate debate

On Saturday, Nov. 23 and Sunday, Nov. 24, Samo’s Junior State of America (JSA) attended the Fall Southern California State Convention. Forty-one Samo students spent the meeting exploring a variety of political perspectives through civil political discourse with several schools from Southern California. JSA is a national non-partisan youth organization with different chapters and regions represented by the largest student-run organization in the nation, according to its website. All participating students aim to educate the next generation on how to be active civic participants.  The Samo chapter of JSA meets in English teacher Amy Chapman’s room every Monday at lunch and is run by chapter president Lilly Chertock (’21). JSA debates at the conventions are planned, facilitated and carried out entirely by students. At Saturday’s SoCal State, eight debate blocks, each containing around six options for students to attend, offered topics that ranged from the current impeachment proceedings to a rap battle about Kanye West versus Kendrick Lamar. The convention concluded with a closing ceremony where students were awarded for their speaking performances. Samo’s Isaac Anderson (’21) and Violet Scott-Street (’21) were both awarded with a gavel recognizing them as “best speakers”.  “JSA was crazy. I was able to talk about things I like which is a great change. Best speaker is super cool—I forgot I would be able to win it so I was very pleasantly surprised when I did. This is also my first ‘best speaker’ gavel and it completely validated my ego,” Anderson said.In order to prepare for the convention, Samo’s JSA club hosted multiple debates on Saturday, Nov. 9, primarily focused on climate change. The event took place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in science teacher Benjamin Kay’s room and was attended by Samo students both involved and not involved in JSA, as well as JSA students from other high schools.  Chertock organized the conference on Nov. 9 and selected the climate as the focal point of the day because she believes that environmental topics are important to today's generation, and thought the topic encompassed multiple viewpoints for debaters to practice.   “Environmental issues are the most urgent and deserve our full attention. It's extremely important for young people to know what is going on and be able to solve these problems,” Chertock said.  Scott-Street who runs the publicity for the Samo JSA club agrees with Chertock’s sentiments. ¨A problem with today is the lack of discussion over such a prevalent crisis. To center a day of debate helps exponentially. Every member in JSA benefits from [the debate days] in many ways. Whether it be academically or socially, students grow and evolve to become active members of their community,” Scott-Street said.