The United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP) announces that high school students Kendyll Dewayne Locke and Jenna Kathryn Williamson will join Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz in representing Texas in the nation’s capital during the 58th annual USSYP Washington Week, to be held March 7-14.
Locke of Fort Worth and Williamson of Texarkana were selected from among the state’s top student leaders to be part of the 104 national student delegation who will also each receive a $10,000 college scholarship for undergraduate study, USSYP said in a news release.
USSYP was created by Senate Resolution 324 in 1962 and has been sponsored by the Senate and fully funded by The Hearst Foundations.
The news release said no government funds are utilized.
Each year the competitive merit-based program brings two high school students each state, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity to Washington, D.C. for an intensive week-long study of the federal government and the people who lead it.
Locke, a senior at North Crowley High School, is a representative on his school’s Student Council and serves as the as the vice president of the Black Student Union.
Outside of school, he is a public relations committee member of the NAACP of Fort Worth-Tarrant County, public relations director for Fort Worth City Councilwoman Kelly Allen Gray, and a board member and marketing director for Power Dominion and Glory Ministries. He is the Youth Ministry president and Youth Usher Ministry president within his church. He also owns and operates his own marketing and public relations firm.
Williamson, a senior at Texas High School, serves as the president of the Texas Association of Student Councils and the president of her school’s Student Body. She also represented Texas at the National Association of Student Councils and the regional Vision Conference. She helped create the state platform, Level Up Your Leadership, for 1,400 member schools and co-founded the Tiger Pantry at her high school providing basic essentials free of charge to students in need. She was recently named a semifinalist for the prestigious Coca Cola scholarship and was selected Regional Sophomore of the Year by the Kiwanis Club.
Delegates and alternates are selected by the state departments of education nationwide and the District of Columbia and Department of Defense Education Activity, after nomination by teachers and principals While in Washington the student delegates attend meetings and briefings with senators, members of the House of Representatives, Congressional staff, the president, a justice of the Supreme Court, leaders of cabinet agencies, an ambassador to the United States and senior members of the national media.
Among the more than 5,700 alumni of the program
are:
Sen. Susan Collins, the first alumnus to be elected U.S. senator; Sen. Cory Gardner, the second alumnus to be elected U.S. senator and the first to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the first alumnus to be elected governor; former Chief Judge Robert Henry, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; former Ambassador to West Germany Richard Burt; former presidential advisors Thomas “Mack” McLarty and Karl Rove, and Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, currently a candidate for president of the United States.
– FWBP Staff