ACU students organize forum for Abilene mayor candidates

If you want to learn about how policies work, you can read a book. But if you want to see how it works in people’s daily lives, a great place to start is taking a trip to the state capitol. Dr. Stephanie Hamm, associate professor in the School of Social Work—recently took her students to Austin for the 88th legislature.

“Every year that the Texas legislature is in session, they have this thing called Social Work Advocacy Day,” she said. “So students all across the state come to Austin to talk about whatever's on their mind. Ask questions network, it's not each other and national legislators and so they went to the legislative offices, and they talked to our rep here.”

Her students also took a field trip to Abilene’s City Hall. Dr. Hamm said it’s all a part of their current course work, where they get a better understanding of local politics. Thursday morning, about a dozen of her students will be at this library for a student-led forum— asking mayoral candidates Ryan Goodwin, Dasi Reddy and write-in Chad Clark, what they can do for the city.

“It's one of our upper-level social work courses,” Dr. Hamm said. “It's policy practice. So these students are learning about policy practice on every level. The last unit they did was on the state level. They went to Austin, they talked about a bill, they did a lot of things. And so this unit here is on just the local and we are fortunate enough this year to have all three things going on. We've got school board, city council and mayor.”

The word politics can scare people away but Dr. Hamm said she encourages students to get involved in public affairs.

“They think it's not really for them. Like they can't affect anything. I think that's what they think. Until they start realizing that they can advocate for something that they're passionate about. And when you're passionate about something and you have your facts down, it's not that hard to advocate.”

Fourth mayoral candidate Weldon Hurt will not be attending Thursday’s forum.