Illinois Valley Times

Sen. Win Stoller (R-Peoria) recently hosted his Youth Advisory Council program that gives high school students a look into the inner workings of government.

“Last week, I had the opportunity to welcome dozens of high school students from across the 37th Senate District to Illinois’ Old State Capitol in Springfield to hold a mock legislative hearing as part of my annual Youth Advisory Council program,” Stoller wrote on Facebook. “Bringing these students from throughout my district together was an opportunity to help them learn more about how the governmental process truly operates.”

ROWVA High School student Liz Wicks saw the event as a first step toward a future in law or politics.

“I want to pursue politics and law so I thought this would be a really good opportunity for me to put my foot in the water and check out the process and how it actually works," Wicks said. "And it’s really fascinating to actually be here.”

Illinois is home to many colleges and universities that offer government-related degree programs. The University of Illinois has a political science degree that concentrates on citizen politics and world politics, to name a few.

“So this is my Youth Advisory Council, and we bring 40 students, high school students, from around across the entire district here to Springfield and bring them to show them how government actually works,” Stoller said. “What we did today is we came up with a bill idea. We actually had it drafted up for them and then we debated it in a committee. We had Democrats, Republicans, we had lobbyists. We had members of the media. We had concerned citizens during this committee hearing and then we voted on the bill.”

Annawan High School student Aidan Early said his takeaway from the program was an opportunity to learn to better communicate with others.

“Because I’m a person with ASD, which is autism spectrum disorder, I pride myself on trying to be able to learn from different experiences and getting to learn to communicate nonverbally and read other people," Early said. "That way I could actually have a career that I'm very successful in whatever path I choose.”