Young Activists Club helps implement city environmental policy

Senior Hollyn Slykhuis delivering the club’s speech.

Ava Reynolds and Brian Alvarado
January 14, 2016

Despite the cold temperatures, high winds and falling snow on Tuesday evening, the Young Activists of Harrisonburg High School (YAHHS) were not discouraged from attending the first City Council meeting of 2016.

The YAHHS members were joined by sixth graders, JMU students, EMU students, environmental builders and community members who are passionate about the environment. Each group presented about why bringing clean energy to Harrisonburg matters to them. The event, titled “Feel the Energy”, was put together by a group of local activists, the Global Climate March Committee. They put together a climate action earlier in the year, Postcard to Paris.

The purpose of the event was to flood the first city council meeting of the year with their petition to implement Section 8.3 of Harrisonburg City’s Comprehensive Plan and to bring clean energy to our town. Section 8.3 reads “To create a set of environmental performance standards for public and private development and redevelopment projects.” The petition had over 400 signatures.

Junior Lucy Moss, one of the 15 YAHHS members present, felt that it was important to be a part of.

“Know[ing] what’s going on in the city and supporting change in the city [is important]. Also it’s just good to be aware of the politics of our city. There’s so many people in the club already that it’s great to be apart of something as big as that,” Moss said.

Senior Hollyn Slykhuis was one of the speakers for YAHHS.

“I liked the feeling of the community coming together like that. I really appreciated that we had a lot of different ages and a lot of different groups and it’s just cool to all unite together for a cause like that. The support was strong, and I think the council felt that,” Slykhuis said.

Several of the YAHHS members at the meeting will be able to vote in the next presidential election, which is something Mayor Chris Jones stressed was important if we wanted to see change, however Slykhuis will not be 18 by November. That didn’t stop her from participating.

“It was cool for me since I won’t be able to vote in the presidential election coming up to see how you can still be involved politically and still make a difference, which is something that’s really important to me. This is something that anyone can do regardless of age and I really liked that feeling of making an impact,” Slykhuis said.

Senior Ami Mehta also attended the city council meeting. She felt it was really important that so many perspectives were represented.

“I think that made a really strong case. I’m really happy with the numbers. I feel like 400 people is just a list of people, but when you actually see 400 people together it’s a much better impression,” Mehta said.

Because of the amount of community members that showed up to support this movement, including the YAHHS, the city council had a unanimous vote at the end of their meeting to decide to implement Section 8.3 of the Comprehensive Plan.

“Zach [Benevento] confirmed that our petition had been passed by them, so I think we definitely created a big impact on them. I feel like our group was more articulate than the college students so I think we made a big impact as younger [group],” Moss said. Benevento is a leader of YAHHS.

The young activists made a direct and specific impact on the council members. When they were deciding to vote an implement Section 8.3 they specifically quoted Slykhuis who had quoted the actual Comprehensive Plan and the fact that the public input was standing before them. The section she was referring to was 8.33 which stated: “To consider adoption of local environmental performance standards as either policies or regulations after public input.”

“I was excited about that. Obviously it was a group effort, we all wrote the things that we had to say, so collectively for our group it is something that is really exciting,” Slykhuis said.

As for the future of the club, the Young Activists members hope to expand and put their name out there.

“I think it will be really cool to see the club expand as their presence get more well known within the school. The first meeting I went to was that one, and I didn’t really know a lot about what we were talking about going in but we actually knew our stuff which was really impressive seeing that in high school students,” senior member Rachel Rohrer said.

Moss also feels that the club has potential to expand and educate the student body.

“I think reaching out to more of the school we could get more people involved and educating people about the politics in our city. People don’t know about climate change, so talking to people about that and having larger discussions with a wider diverse group of people,” Moss said.