A student legislator??!

It's our first unit in, Policy, our humanities course, and over the course of it, we've done some pretty extensive research and study about legislation, policy, and basic civics. What are the basic forms of government and how do they play roles in our everyday lives? who are our representatives and what policies do they have the ability to influence. Can a policy be reviewed from something as subjective as a piece of artwork? These are all questions that we were asking and answering as this unit went on. To further our knowledge, we even talked with many organizations and people who had direct connections to policy, like Akio Katano who is a lawyer, Arne Duncan a member of the Emerson Collective, and even many members of the CCHR. These are all experiences that we have woven into the challenge for this AP. This AP was all about choosing a piece of legislation that hasn't been passed and writing a letter about it to a person who can represent us and influence that passing of this policy. This required us to do research on our representative, and the legislation we wanted to write about. This was a little more difficult for me because I don't live in the city so I had to look a little harder, but here's my letter to my representative.

    Kelly, robin

    Congresswoman

    600 Holiday Plaza Drive Suite 505

    Matteson, Illinois 60443

            Have you ever determined how you're going to vote on a bill based on the suggestion of a high school junior?  Probably not since bills that are passed are usually passed by people with experience running our country but maybe it's time to hear one out. How often do you hear about suicide in a day? Some hear about it more than others and thus are affected by it more as well. Having thoughts of suicide themselves, or a friend or relative who was closely related to the idea. No matter how strong your connection is, suicide is a genuine issue that has been circulating in our lives for quite some time.

            Recently, a a piece of legislation has been put into the works but not passed yet. It is the H.R. 2862: Campaign to Prevent Suicide Act and to summarize this act specifically targets a social media audience. The act specifically wants there to be more suicide prevention ads and support groups on social media as social media is the place that lots of people congregate these days. I do feel that this is a good way to deal with this country's suicide rates, but at the same time, I think that there are many more efficient ways to go about it besides social media presence. Not only should this be a media campaign but there should be more suicide prevention and accountability resources directly available everywhere. Schools, churches, and workplaces are just a few examples of where these should pop up. Between the ages of 10-34, the second most leading cause of death was suicide and from ages 35 and 54 the fourth leading cause of death was suicide. These statistics just go to show that social media presence isn't enough to significantly decrease suicide numbers. Most adults from the ages of 35 to 54 don't use social media as regularly as younger people anyway so these social media campaigns wouldn't reach them. Also, there are roughly 137,432 schools in the US and only 12 out of our 50 states have mandatory suicide prevention programs for their schools. This also means there are roughly 16491 schools with suicide prevention programs and they aren't all necessarily contributing to the decrease of the suicide rate.

            As you can clearly tell by my being a high schooler, I’m not a significant stakeholder in our government. I’m still a high school junior, but I have plenty of the motive and drive that are necessary to influence this legislation. I have plenty of family in Virginia and even an uncle who was born and raised there who committed suicide. All the time, I think about that my uncle who committed and wonder if there were better outreach for his demographic as well as in general then he would have gotten the help he needed and would still be here. As you may know and probably could connect to, the majority of the black community has a problem with getting help when they clearly need it which is why a lot of our community's mental health is waining as I'm typing this now. Tweaking this legislation even the slightest to make it so that suicide prevention and mental health accountability is readily available and completely accsessible everywhere, is so key. Not only would it better our community but it would prevent a lot more lives from being lost. This is my direct connection to this legislation, and I would love to see it passed to its full potential. I'm not the only one who has a connection to this issue though which is another reason to tweak it. You yourself may have loved ones or friends who were lost to this issue, so therefore you could be seen as a stakeholder in this along with myself, NAMI Chicago, MHAGC and possibly almost every Chicago alder.

            Suicide has taken many lives from people who could've avoided that crisis. I along with, I'm pretty sure, every other person on the planet, don't want to see suicide being such a high-ranking cause of death. I'm very appreciative of the effort being put into deafening this issue's effect, but a simple social media campaign just won't do the trick. Along with the social media campaigns, open more clinics for mental health and wellness, mandate effective counseling opportunities in every school across all 50 states, and lastly making counseling clinics easily accessible/ affordable. These are all very reasonable additions to this ordinance before it is passed and I would be thrilled to see these implemented.

Sincerely

JH,