With the lack of political participation becoming a defining characteristic in young Americans, senior Nate Mertz stands as an exception.
After viewing an ad online, Mertz was able to meet with David C. Long, an Indiana Senator, and obtain his recommendation to join the Indiana Legislative Youth Advisory Council (ILYAC).
Now, Mertz is an official member of the ILYAC, a group populated by teenagers and young adults ranging from 16-22 years old.
“It’s a council of about 15 people right now,” says Nate Mertz. “We get together and have to make an annual report and present it to the state Congress. We’ll give them the legislature and they’ll take a look at what we’ve put together, hopefully they like what they see, and they’ll try to push for it.”
The ILYAC was founded by the Indiana Bar Foundation, an organization that promotes civic education and duty. The Council has existed for ten years now, and their primary service is to help advise the Indiana General Assembly on the issues prevalent to Hoosier youth.
“It’s actually really fun,” Mertz says. “We have to take different topics for the annual report and hone them down, so we have to debate and figure out what we all want to include. We can’t be too polarizing, or else the state congress won’t take it or pick up on it, so we sort of have to leave it to them if they want to change any of our propositions a little bit.”
Mertz currently works with a colleague in the council on proposing ideas for school safety. He and his partner make up one of the five committees created to delegate work and help propose ideas for the annual report.
“What we’re talking about right now is metal detectors in school, and maybe arming teachers. We’re gonna talk about these things, put our ideas together, and then present it to the council with the five other committees.”
Due to their limited meeting time, Mertz has had to work on most of his proposal on his own. He uses the meetings to throw out ideas and figure out a way he wants to go with his proposals, and debate and discuss with his fellow committee member.
Deciding upon which topics to discuss and where to go with them is a pretty open-ended affair for the council.
“It really comes down to how much work we can get done and how much we can include,” says Mertz. “We have six meetings a year, usually about every other month, but it depends on how much we need to get done. We meet about three times before the state legislature goes in session to kind of prepare, maybe once while they are in session, and then afterwards about another three to kind of debrief and analyze our report and our proposals, and see where they’ve gone.”
Mertz’s activity in the council has earned him the nickname “governor” from friends and teachers, a name he embraces but isn’t quite sure of.
“I haven’t thought too much into the politics realm. I’m not sure about that,” says Mertz. But the experiences provided by the council spread farther beyond the realm of politics.
“I have always thought about law school because law interests me,” Mertz states. “I’m thinking about maybe being a lawyer or something. I’m not quite sure, but this is certainly helping me get a strong basis with the idea of how much I actually like law.”`