What does a 14-year-old girl wear to the State House in Annapolis to testify?
“I want to wear a suit,” Oakland Mills High School freshman Courtney Aikens said.
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Aikens will testify before the Maryland House of Delegates Tuesday about House Bill 836, a measure that will create a public awareness campaign about Lyme disease prevention.
“We are going to let them know … how learning about Lyme disease is going to benefit the community,” Aikens said.
The testimony caps off a month of research by Aikens and her 16-year-old classmates Justina Spinella and Danazja Smith. The girls belong to Sister to Sister, a 25-member student organization atOakland Mills that aims to “develop young scholars and put women into leadership positions,” according to the group?s supervisor Joslyn Wolfe.
This is the club?s second-go-round at the legislative process. In 2005, Sister to Sister members testified on behalf of a bill that allows minors to give bone marrow to nonrelatives with a doctor?s permission. The bill was later signed into law.
Aikens, Smith and Spinella have already met with Del. Karen Montgomery, D-14, the sponsor of House Bill 836, and Del. Liz Bobo, D-12B, a co-sponsor.
They?ve spent countless hours after school in the library learning about Lyme disease.
“It really affects the nervous system, the heart and the brain,” Spinella said. “You [may not] even know that you have it because some doctors might mistake it for flu-like symptoms.”
Even though the girls have memorized every possible fact about the disease, they said they are still nervous about their testimony.
“It?s a house full of people.” Smith said.
“Especially important people,” Aikens said.
“And they don?t know much about Lyme disease and it?s like we?re teenagers telling them,” Smith said.
Next up for the girls: a research project on the Darfur region of Sudan.
