Women in EC Youth in Government: An Interview with Kendyll Martin, Mary-Kate Roffey, & Brooke Sylvia

From January 14th through the 18th of this year, Emmanuel College Youth in Government attended their first ever Youth in Government National Assembly in Washington D.C. It was an exciting experience for the club in many ways, as they had a very strong female representation at the conference and walked away with the Delegation of the Year Award. I sat down with EC Y.I.G. executive board members Kendyll Martin ‘18, Mary-Kate Roffey ‘17, and Brooke Sylvia ‘18 to learn more!

Her Campus Emmanuel: Hi ladies! Congratulations on winning Delegation of the Year at the Y.I.G. National Assembly! Tell me more about how that came to be.

Kendyll Martin: Basically, what happened was we got there, and the people that were running it– the officers and the one real adult who’s not a college student [laughs]– they already knew who we were because we sent them emails asking questions and had all of our bills in early. We were really organized before we even got there. We had a very large delegation for it only being our first year there, and we were able to get into the swing of things really quickly. Everyone was talking and almost everybody had a bill. [The bills] were really well presented, and we were able to defend them and speak well. So I think that was a big part of it: before we got there being organized and after we got there being organized. And not looking like we had no idea what were doing!

Mary-Kate Roffey: They were impressed with our professionalism and the fact that even though we were a new chapter, we participated a lot. It’s a very welcoming environment. You follow all of this procedure and stuff, so it can be a little intimidating at first. But the veteran people would stand up and say, “Let us know if we can help you in any way. We want to hear the new voices.” So all eight of us definitely spoke up about a lot of different stuff. They were really impressed by how much we participated.

EC Y.I.G. chapter members celebrate their win. Mary-Kate, Kendyll, & Brooke can be seen from the far right to center.

HCE: That’s great! You also had the most women percentage-wise out of all the delegations. What was that like?

Kendyll: We had eight people total go and six of us were women, so it was like 75% women. Most of the other delegations, even the big delegations with a lot of people, tended to be overwhelmingly male. I think that’s just a general politics thing. A lot of people that get into it are going to be male. It surprised me a little bit though, because in high school, there were a lot of women in it; I think there might have even been more women than men when I was in high school. Through this, there were just so many men. But we had so many women, and so many strong women that were not afraid to stand up and talk about their bill, or defend something that they cared about. So that was really cool.

HCE: How do you feel about the lack of women in politics, and what are EC Y.I.G. as a club doing to change that?

Kendyll: Personally, I think it’s a problem that there is a lack of women in politics, and there are so many men making decisions about things that they don’t necessarily have business making decisions about [laughs]. I mean, they just aren’t really as educated on [these issues] as women are. I think that Youth in Government as a whole pride themselves on being a movement, and I think bringing more women into Y.I.G. chapters is pushing even more for a little bit more equality in that movement. As a club, we’re brand new. We just started last year. So we haven’t necessarily done any events particularly for women in politics, but I think that’s definitely on our agenda going forward.

Brooke Sylvia: We kind of touched upon it. One of the guest speakers we brought in was [Sister] Mary Ann Walsh– she’s a professor here. She did a talk about it briefly.

Kendyll: Her talk was about leadership in the real world because she was a Massachusetts State Senator. Being a women in the Massachusetts State Senate, that kind of roles over into women in politics no matter what you’re talking about.

Mary-Kate: And she broke a lot of gender records within the state senate. It was really cool at our conference, too, that there were a lot of women’s issues that came up on bills and the men that were there spoke in favor. It was a nice change to see. It was very indicative of what our generation thinks and how the future of politics will be. They were actually educated and speaking in favor of women on these [issues], which was really cool.

Brooke: Yeah, just as a whole, everyone there was really supportive of everyone else’s bills.

EC Youth in Government members at the National Assembly

HCE: That’s awesome! Back-tracking a little bit, can you tell me more about what EC Y.I.G. does on campus?

Kendyll: Here on campus, part of what we do is preparing for our big conference every year. The other part of what we do is spreading awareness on how our political system works. We’re going to have some debate showings. We’re going to work with EC Political Forum to do that. We really just want to help people on campus understand how our political system works, and some of the reasons it doesn’t work. I think it’s really important that our generation understands how our government works, especially if we’re planning on being a part of it one day. We’re also planning on hosting some mock conferences so you can learn the political process and learn how to speak in front of people without so much pressure of it being at a big conference.

Mary-Kate: There is so much potential for things that we can do, too. A lot of it is just growing into the fact that we’re a new club. Just in this short time, we’ve had a few exec board changes. Now I think that since we’ve made it through our first conference so successfully, we have a lot of ideas and momentum that we can use here on campus.

HCE: If someone wanted to get involved, how would they do so?

Kendyll: They could contact me. Or we also have a Youth in Government email, which is ECCYIGC@gmail.com.

Mary-Kate: There’s a lot of C’s in there! [laughs]

Kendyll: They can either email that or email me personally at martink3@emmanuel.edu. We don’t have meeting days for sure yet. We’re in the middle of figuring out what our meeting day is going to be this semester. We will be coming out with announcements.

Brooke: There should be a flyer up for the debate that we’re co-hosting, so come to that.

Mary-Kate: And we’re always taking new people, especially after our first conference is so successful. Now that we know what we’re doing, we’d love to grow and get people. A lot of people didn’t even know we existed before.

Kendyll: Yeah, I’m a sophomore right now, but my goal for my senior year as President is going to our third conference– my last in my senior year– I want to have 20 people from Emmanuel going. Which I think is reasonable considering we had eight this year.

HCE: And do you have any social media that people could follow for updates?

Brooke: We have a Twitter, and we have a Facebook. Our Twitter is @EC_YIG.

HCE: Any other exciting news for people to know?

Kendyll [to Mary-Kate]: Do you want to talk about how you’re a lady and you’re a  national officer now? [laughs]

Mary-Kate: Sure! So I’m a national officer now for the program [subtly flips hair]. There are 11 national officers and there are only three females on it. So I definitely think that that represents how politics, and the program itself, are not as female-oriented as they should be.

Kendyll: In the program’s defense, they are run by the YMCA, which was a men’s organization. It’s not as much anymore, but especially where the Youth in Government part of it is so new, they probably got a lot of YMCA alumni to do it. Still, it needs to change. We’re working on it.

Mary-Kate: Yeah, the YMCA is definitely embracing women now. They have been for years, so that’s good. You’re definitely right, but I mean that’s just another sign. Because it’s through your college that you get involved, if you look even here at Emmanuel where our gender ratio is what it is, that definitely affects it. I’ll be in male-dominated Poli-Sci classes still. Even though it’s a great club no matter what you’re interest is, I’m sure the main recruitment goes to Poli-sci students and Poli-sci students are still very male. But I’m just very excited about this position.

Thanks so much for the interview! Good luck with all of your future endeavors, EC Youth in Government!

• women in politics