Moraine Valley students Susan Ismail, of Palos Hills, and Jacob Basta, of Blue Island, represented the college at the 2017 Hyde Park Leadership Summit at the Roosevelt Institute in New York.
Two students from Moraine Valley Community College were among students from across the country invited to attend the 2017 Hyde Park Leadership Summit at the Roosevelt Institute in New York.
Susan Ismail, of Palos Hills, and Jacob Basta, of Blue Island, attended the summer summit as representatives of the college’s Roosevelt at Moraine Valley Political Activist Club, the first chapter of its kind at a community college in Illinois.
The three-day conference focused on student involvement, research and policy change. “We learned a lot, but what really stood out in particular was that we had a great support system to provide the tools to accomplish our vision through the network,” Ismail said. “And, they really encouraged us to determine how to identify issues and find solutions.”
Ismail and Basta participated in roundtable discussions and panels with students from schools across the country, including other community colleges large universities like Cornell, Yale and Carnegie Melon. “A takeaway for me was the idea that young people are empowered to identify the issues that are most important to them and become actively involved in the legislative process. Policy that is enacted should work for everyone. It’s not right, not left, but forward,” she said.
The Roosevelt at Moraine Valley Political Activist Club is a non-partisan, student-led group that meets weekly to discuss campus activism, student involvement and the policy process.
