{"id":3060,"date":"2023-03-01T10:36:46","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T15:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2023-03-01T10:36:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T15:36:47","slug":"calvin-ball-makes-a-special-rhhs-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/calvin-ball-makes-a-special-rhhs-appearance\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin Ball Makes a Special RHHS Appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Sanjana Jain, Design Editor\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI planned my work and worked my plan\u201d – Dr. Calvin Ball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, February 13th, River Hill\u2019s Young Democrats Club organized a \u2018Chat and Chew\u2019 session with current Howard County Executive Calvin Ball. The club intended the meeting to be an informal and interactive session between the County Executive and students, and hoped that overall this would help students feel more connected to their elected officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing a Howard County Executive, we think, is a very unique position,\u201d\u00a0said one of Young Democrats\u2019 co-presidents, junior Lily Ulman. \u201cWe know that [Dr. Ball] as a person loves being able to interact and meet students, and so we thought that it would be a win-win for everyone,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first part of Dr. Ball\u2019s speech was geared towards providing an insight into his educational and professional background. He explained how his initial focus of being a lawyer transformed after interacting with elected officials in Howard County government and the Maryland General Assembly; they initially had suggested that he run for County Council. The last 20 minutes of the meeting were dedicated to questions, and there were no limitations on what students could ask. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had a plan B, if he got off-track or if no one had any questions – we had a set of questions ready to ask him. But, he pretty much ran with it, which was great,\u201d said Lily Ulman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Convincing our County Executive to come give a speech to eager young minds wasn\u2019t difficult due to his nature, but the club\u2019s officer team\u2019s and sponsor\u2019s extensive network certainly helped. \u201cI think that having Mrs. Nichols as an elected official was the most influential thing we could have,\u201d said co-president, junior Justin Kim. \u201cShe has a really wide network of elected officials and she has a lot of connections that she can bring to the club.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

River Hill\u2019s economics teacher Mrs. Nichols is an elected member of the Howard County Democratic Central Committee. She was elected in 2022, and after familiarizing herself with the committee members and forming relationships with them, she quickly realized that \u201cthey have a heart for young people.\u201d She questioned how she could \u201cuse this position that I have to help our students at River Hill to be able to link and to be able to learn from these amazing humans that really do like you all,\u201d she said.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin explained that Mrs. Nichols regularly receives \u201cmultiple emails and texts from elected officials because really they want to reach out to kids,\u201d which is an advantage for the club if they\u2019re looking to bring in guest speakers or participate in campaign events during election season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Nichols prioritizes understanding a candidate\u2019s campaign, motivations, and true personality before deciding whether or not to support them. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m not someone who\u2019s just blindly going to say, \u2018I\u2019m going to stand for somebody,\u2019 no,\u201d she said. \u201cI need to know who you are, what you\u2019re about, and I need to talk to you and ask questions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She often participates in campaign work, and \u201cthis past year, I knocked personally on over 2,500 doors by myself for amazing elected officials. Through that, I really got to know their heart,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, The club presidents were still worried about how successful this event would be, considering that Young Dems has been inactive for the past year, and the fact that it\u2019s solely a political club. \u201cTalking about politics at a high school club, people are very sensitive to that topic,\u201d explained Justin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s always a risk regarding the reaction to the topics being discussed; it is impossible to gauge how someone might feel about a specific political aspect without prior discussion, a fact that the club\u2019s officers are well aware of. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ball\u2019s character was essential to the club choosing him as their guest speaker, partially for the guaranteed student interest that they would receive. \u201cIf he wasn\u2019t a person that was personable, we definitely wouldn\u2019t have thought we would get attraction or thought it would be worth our time,\u201d said Lily Ulman. \u201cWe definitely think that Calvin Ball\u2019s perspective and ideas are unique and inspiring for the students of River Hill to understand.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Co-president, senior Lily Shangloo, provided an important alternative perspective: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to draw people in because they say \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t want to get involved in politics at school – I don\u2019t want to mix the two,\u2019 but what message we\u2019re really trying to give is the fact that even if you\u2019re not a Democrat, just meeting the elected officials, getting to learn from your leaders, talking to people who have the ability to fix important issues, that\u2019s what really helps you grow as a student and as a member of your community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She continued to explain how \u201coutreach, I think, is really important,\u201d for attracting students to these events. The club began advertising weeks prior by setting up a hawk-talk announcement and pasting posters around the school. \u201cI thought that the turnout was great, specifically for a club that people are very reluctant to join,\u201d expressed Justin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another aspect of Dr. Ball that the presidents highlighted was his transformation that they saw after he became a leader. \u201cI remember how he talked about how all leaders have a gleam in their eye when they become a leader,\u201d said Lily Shangloo, \u201cand I definitely saw that in him when he was talking and explaining his experiences,\u201d she confirmed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sanjana Jain, Design Editor\u00a0 \u201cI planned my work and worked my plan\u201d – Dr. Calvin Ball. On Monday, February 13th, River Hill\u2019s Young Democrats Club organized a \u2018Chat and Chew\u2019 session with current Howard County Executive Calvin Ball. The club intended the meeting to be an informal and interactive session between the County Executive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":3061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[462,465,464,325,286,281,269,211,285,463],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-calvin-ball","tag-county-executive","tag-democrats","tag-howard-county","tag-journalism","tag-news","tag-rhhs","tag-river-hill","tag-river-hill-high-school","tag-young-democrats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/unnamed-7.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3062,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions\/3062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}