STVM student rules over state
By Kathleen Folkerth
WEST AKRON — Akron has its own governor in Rita Rochford.
Rita, 17, a junior at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School (STVM), was recently elected governor of the Ohio River Valley State of Junior State of America (JSA), a student-run organization that encourages involvement in politics and government.
The national program is divided up into nine states, which consist of individual schools that are members through their chapters. STVM has been involved with the program for about a decade, Rochford said. With 126 members, it is the largest chapter in the Ohio River Valley State, which is made up of 32 chapters from Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana.
Rochford said her new role as governor requires her to spend the equivalent of a full-time job every week on her duties.
“I spend 40 hours a week
at least on JSA,” she said. “It’s
very intense, but it’s definitely worth it.”
Rita, the daughter of Bernie
and Rita Rochford, of West Akron, became involved in
JSA after her older sister, Allison, encouraged her.
“At my first convention,
I really enjoyed discussing issues with people who actually
knew what they were talking about,” she said.
“I just fell in love with it.”
JSA members participate in debates
and political discussions. Rita said her favorite topics
are those about environmental issues as well as women
and the military draft.
The group also allows
students to work on leadership
training, activism, journalism and event planning.
As governor, Rita said she spends
a lot of her time on planning agendas, organizing debates,
setting up speakers and working with chapters to increase
participation.
One of her goals as governor
this year is to increase the number of chapters in the
Ohio River Valley.
“I would like to make it
a more prominent state,” she said.
Locally, STVM and Archbishop
Hoban High School are the only schools participating
in JSA, Rita said. She would like to see more
local schools get involved in the organization, which
was founded in California in 1934, and she is willing
to talk to local students about how they can start a
chapter at their school.
In addition to expanding the
membership, Rita said she’d like the activism
component of the organization to be explored more by
the members.
“The activism branch is
new in Ohio,” she said. “It’s a way
for us to do service projects.”
She added she would like students
to get involved in issues such as Darfur and the problems
resulting from Hurricane Katrina.
Rita’s participation this
year also will have her
traveling to events throughout the country for JSA.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, she attended a meeting
in San Francisco with her fellow governors, who elected
her their representative to the JSA Board of Trustees,
where she’ll serve along with former U.S. Attorney
General Edwin Meese and former White House Chief of
Staff Leon Panetta. She’ll return to San Francisco
this weekend for her first meeting with that board,
which is currently working on filling the executive
director position for JSA. This summer she’ll
also venture to Washington, D.C., for a three-week
course on foreign policy.
Rita said she’s been interested
in politics for several years and did some “minor
canvassing” for the John Kerry presidential campaign
in 2004. As for herself, she has an interest in political
science as well as medicine. She said the next year
will probably help her decide if she wants to work in
politics or become a child psychiatrist.
“I hope it makes me a more
confident speaker and a more efficient leader,”
she said of her involvement this coming year.
She also is doing her part to
pass along the JSA tradition to her younger sisters,
just as her older sister
did. Ellen Rochford, an eighth-grader at Miller South
School for the Visual and Performing Arts in Akron,
recently participated in her first JSA event and won
a gavel as “Best Speaker.”
“She already loves it,”
Rita said, adding that she hopes to introduce it to
her sister Hannah, a student at St. Vincent Elementary
School, in the future.
For more information on JSA,
go to www.jsa.org.
The sash West Akron resident Rita Rochford is wearing
is made up of notes written by outgoing governors sharing
advice and wisdom, she said. Photo
courtesy of STVM
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