State Capitol Week in Review

The halls of the state Capitol rang with youthful enthusiasm on May 28 as delegates from Arkansas Girls State took over for a day.

Founded in 1942, Arkansas Girls State is a week-long leadership and civic engagement summer program for high school girls finishing their junior year, sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary. It educates young women on state government through mock elections, legislative sessions, and more. The program is designed to educate young women on the duties, privileges, and responsibilities of citizenship. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is just one notable alumna. It is considered the second-largest Girls State program in the nation.

The students spent a week at Harding University in Searcy, running campaigns and electing officials from the city and county level up to state government. The Girls State legislators discussed and developed mock legislation and arrived in Little Rock on Thursday, May 28 to debate and vote on their bills.

Real-life senators Breanne Davis, Jamie Scott, Jim Dotson, and Jonathan Dismang were on hand to offer advice and support to the Girls State senators.

The mock legislative session in the Senate chamber was gaveled in by the Girls State President Pro Tempore of the Senate Bhavana Gudipati of Bentonville High School.

It was interesting to see the topics that were on the minds of these young women. The session featured votes and lively debate on 10 bills that included the following topics:

• Adding additional Saturday hours to early voting periods.
• Regulating the use of growth hormones in cattle to ensure the nutritional value of beef consumed by Arkansans.
• Reducing the number of community service hours required for high school graduation. Currently 75 hours are required. Citing circumstances for some students with transportation issues and family or employment obligations, the bill proposed dropping the minimum required number of hours to 40.
• Permitting private school students to participate in local public or public charter school interscholastic activities if his or her school does not offer those activities.
• Requiring information about safe vehicle operation in highway work zones to be placed in the state driver’s instruction manual and the driver’s license examination.
• Requiring “high risk” drivers (drivers over 65 who had received two traffic citations within one calendar year) to submit to a driver’s license examination retest.
• Exempting textbooks and other instructional materials from the gross receipts tax.
• Creating support for excused absences for students in severe medical crises.
• Requiring data centers to abide by certain environmental standards.
• Creating a pilot program for junior and senior high students to get training as community-based doulas by enrolling in concurrent credit courses through community and technical colleges. This was designed to help combat the state’s maternal and infant mortality crisis, particularly in rural areas.

These young women were very prepared, thoughtful, and impressive. Perhaps some of them will return to the Senate chamber as members one day!

Arkansas Boys State also spent time running the government this week. That will be the topic of next week’s column.