On a freshman class trip with the Civic Leaders Center, Honors student Maggie Reeves remembers being awed by the realization that she was surrounded by people in political power who were making decisions every day that affect people’s lives. She also remembers the advice of one of the guest speakers: “If you want to change the way our political parties operate, you need to work from the inside out.”
If you want to change the way our political parties operate, you need to work from the inside out.
— Maggie Reeves
Reeves took that advice to heart. Although she’s not necessarily planning to work for a political party, she does believe that getting involved in your community is the best way to make a positive difference. Reeves has held leadership positions with groups like Women in Government and Student United Way, where she revamped the organization’s social media platform to improve its reach among her peers.
As an intern with Children’s Policy and Law Initiative of Indiana, Reeves got her first look at how organizations and legislators interact. She had to learn about different state senators’ policies agendas, research legislation that was on the docket, and figure out help her organization advance its goals. That experience enabled her to put what she’d learned in her Law and Public Policy major into practice.
Now, she’s using her lived experience with remote learning through the COVID-19 pandemic to inform her Honors thesis by exploring the relationship between access to high-speed internet and educational performance. She hopes that her work will shed some light on factors that contribute to the achievement gap between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Reeves’s future career goals involve helping others, specifically children. Although she’s not sure if she’ll work as a lawyer or find a different way to be engaged in policymaking and local government, she knows she’ll be able to use her experiences to make a difference from the inside out.
