Meet Students Driving Positive Change

Glenn College undergraduates (from left) Lauren González, Clovis Westlund and Ruby Lobert (not pictured: Ryan Doucette) put their passion for service into practice. (Credit: Majesti Brown)

By Joan Slattery Wall

Running for office. Encouraging youth voices in policy. Organizing for worker’s rights. Standing up for the disadvantaged. Leading nonprofits. Assisting elected officials and candidates.  

Undergraduate students at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs know their passion for policy. See how they put it into practice — even before they’ve earned their degrees. 

At age 13, Ryan Doucette found interest in the efforts of then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich, so he signed up to volunteer for his presidential campaign. A staffer recruited him to assist in the northern Virginia area, where he lived. Then at 14 he became a precinct captain for the state Republican party in Virginia. Later, when his father, a captain in the Coast Guard, served as a special advisor on national security to then-Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Mike Pence, Doucette had the opportunity to meet them on multiple occasions.  

“It was like, 14-, 15-year-old me and the vice president,” remembered Doucette. “That doesn’t happen.”  

It also made a mark on his already growing interest in public service.  

“I saw what it looked like at a high level, and it solidified maybe this is what I wanted to study in college: public policy,” he said. 

“Growing up in a military family, I often spent summers with my grandfather, who was longtime mayor of his town, Barnegat, New Jersey,” Doucette said. “So, when I was at a young age, he brought me to lot of events and showed me what public service looked like.” 

Since high school, he has continued to seek opportunities for civic engagement.  

He took the initiative to obtain internships with political offices and campaigns including with U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez; Ohio Sen. Matt Dolan’s campaign for U.S. Senate; and campaigns for state representatives in Massachusetts, including Michael Soter.  

Amidst COVID-19, he co-founded Gen Z Grow Our Platform, a nonprofit policy advocacy group, as an effort to encourage the Republican Party and the larger conservative movement to address the concerns of Generation Z Americans. The organization hosted town halls with elected Republicans across the country, including mayors of Miami, Oklahoma City and Stockton, California, for thought-provoking conversations about issues important for his generation. He took pride in the organization when, following the Jan. 6, 2020, insurrection, it leveled responsibility on leaders within the right, calling out how their questions, particularly those around election integrity, distracted from policy concerns of young people, especially Generation Z. 

Now he’s chief of staff and an advisory board member of the nonprofit Carson’s Crew, which makes a difference in the lives of patients and families through innovation and technology. He works on policy measures and helps efficiently run the organization. 

This fall he will complete — in just 2.5 years — his BS in Public Policy Analysis with an education policy specialization and a double major in economics. He has served as a mentor for the John Glenn Civic Learning Community; president of the Glenn College Civic Leadership Council; secretary of OSU College Republicans; and student representative for the Glenn College Wellness and Mental Health Committee. He spent this summer as a Glenn College Washington Academic Internship Program intern working with FAMIL, a nonprofit that aids Afghan special forces and other individuals, who served on behalf of the U.S. government for two decades, to succeed in this country. While in Washington, D.C., he also picked up a second internship with a venture capital firm that focuses on cybersecurity. 

As a farmworker, Lauren González’s grandfather struggled with low wages, exposure to deadly chemicals, very long hours, poor housing conditions and discrimination almost every day. 

“I knew there were issues around it, but I thought that was something in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s,” said González, who expects to complete her BA in public management, leadership and policy, with a minor in Latino studies, in spring 2025.  

But when, as part of a project for an Ohio State Latino studies class, she interviewed the Cesar Chavez Foundation’s press secretary, Marc Grossman, she discovered those struggles continue even today.  

“I was thinking, how do I talk to people about this and start the conversation?” she said. With backing from her fraternity, Alpha Psi Lambda, and collaboration with various Latino organizations, she organized “Farm to Table: A Town Hall on Farmworkers’ Struggles.” 

“Our panel consisted of a commissioner for the Ohio Commission on Hispanic/Latino Affairs; an immigration attorney who represents farmworkers with ABLE, Advocates for Basic Legal Equity; and an advocate with Justice for Migrant Women,” she said. 

In another project, González brought with her to college Teal Week, a sexual violence awareness organization she started in high school after a survey she conducted during an internship with Girls Inc. of San Antonio, her hometown. 

“What surprised me was, instead of saying, ‘I wish I had more help when it came to reporting,’ they didn’t understand what was happening to them because it was not taught in school,” she said. “After a lot of research, I found that people were saying if you teach people about it at a really young age, you’ll see numbers go down in harassment and assault.” 

She set off to create an education and awareness program for children in grades four through 12.  

At Ohio State, she continued Teal Week as a student organization centered around supporting survivors as well as education, advocacy and awareness for college students. She also plans to reach out to school programs in the Columbus area to share curriculum she has developed. 

Also during her first year on campus, the tragic elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, moved her to lobby for gun reform. 

“San Antonio is very close to Uvalde. A lot of the victims were transported to our hospitals; a lot of first responders were from San Antonio,” she said. During the 2022 March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., she talked to representatives and senators about gun violence. 

“I got to meet students who attended Sandy Hook. I met a girl whose cousin was killed in Las Vegas. I met people who were there for different reasons but all for a common demon,” she said. “It was heartbreaking to be there, but it was a great learning moment for me.” 

To further her advocacy efforts, she obtained a position as a public policy intern for the Ohio Commission on Hispanic/Latino Affairs through the Glenn College Ohio Government Internship Program. 

As a first-year student, Ruby Lobert spent the longest four hours of her life at a restaurant near Starbucks across High Street from the Ohio Union. 

She and a co-worker had spearheaded the effort to unionize the store, and she wasn’t going home until she knew the results of the vote. She joined her manager, lawyers, fellow baristas and the National Labor Relations Board agent back at Starbucks for the count.  

“I was trembling the whole time,” she remembered, as she witnessed the vote passage in December 2022. 

The effort began when a friend of hers was fired and, she said, baristas found it hard to maintain their employment under company rules. She learned about the unionization process, made union education documents to explain things to her co-workers and disbursed union cards. 

“It was just the right thing to do. We wanted to be able to say these practices really hurt us and have people actually listen and have a mechanism of protection,” she said. “My mother is a public school teacher. I’ve seen the power of solidarity; I’ve seen the power of unions. I wanted to have something to do that would make this place work better for us.” 

An honors student expecting to graduate in spring with a degree in public management, leadership and policy, she later served at the national level for Starbucks Workers United, becoming the only representative in Ohio on the National Bargaining Committee. She published a newsletter for union members across the state. 

“It was important to me that people were informed,” she said. It wasn’t necessarily required of me, but I wanted to make sure people were plugged in.” 

Keeping herself and others engaged and informed runs as a theme throughout her college life. The springboard for her interest in public policy came from her involvement in the Activate Your Advocacy Bootcamp, a program of the student organization IGNITE OSU, which encourages civic engagement and leadership. Participation in the college’s NEW Leadership program, which introduces college students to successful women leaders and strategies to run and win political campaigns, taught her the breadth of public service. 

“It provided us with a network of people who are really committed to seeing more of us in the field,” she said. “It definitely affirmed that I’m in the right spot, that this is what I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to do.” 

She joined Undergraduate Student Government and has served on the outreach and civic engagement subcommittees of the government relations committee. She also worked at the Columbus Women’s Commission through the college’s Ohio Government Internship Program.  

Looking to try something new, she accepted an invitation to serve on the Glenn College Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, where she helped create the college’s new Minor in Social Justice Advocacy and Public Policy. 

“It was cool to see behind the curtain how all of these things come together,” she said. “I really liked creating that minor. I thought it matched what we’re seeing on the ground and what my friends were interested in. This minor is going to be around for a while, and I can say I helped do that.” 

Clovis Westlund noticed a critical omission while they watched and participated in legislative testimony surrounding the many education-related issues in Ohio and the nation. 

“A lot of times I would be the youngest person testifying by 10 years — and we’d be discussing issues for K through 12 schools,” they said. “There are advocates who care, but they bordered on speaking for students and speaking over students. So I’m looking for ways to get students’ voices heard.”

“I’m creating strategies and organizing student responses to legislative attacks on education in Ohio K-12 and higher education,” they said. 

Westlund organized students and their testimony against Ohio Senate Bill 83. The higher education bill was proposed to ensure the transparency and value of education and increase academic freedom but drew the ire of university employees and students opposed to its restrictions on issues including diversity, equity and inclusion; intellectual diversity; employee strikes; and faculty evaluations. 

“Bringing people along, especially engaging students at the statehouse who had never been there before, requires knowledge of processes you get only by being there week in and week out but also openly sharing information with people,” Westlund said.  

They wanted to bridge a gap for students passionate about these issues. 

“Putting that sentiment into action is making that jump. We need to make that bill or issue feel incredibly personal,” they said. “With Senate Bill 83, it was easy to make that connection to the personal. It’s key in terms of taking anger into action.” 

Originally from Shaker Heights, Ohio, Westlund found his passion through frustration in seeing how a community perception of integration and progressive success negated some students’ lived experiences of prejudices and discrimination. They began exploring pressing education issues facing schools today. In high school, they worked with the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland. 

“Living as a queer trans person is not a monolithic experience,” they said, explaining the insight they gained through a nine-month training session at the center. “That was informative as I went into my college experience in terms of being able to advocate for LGBTQ rights and being able to navigate that people come from very different backgrounds from you.” 

This academic year, Westlund received an Ohio State Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme research scholarship. They will conduct qualitative research on the ways people frustrated with public education explore alternatives such as home schooling or unschooling and what might be learned to implement changes in public education. They expect to complete a BA in public management, leadership and policy, with a second degree in sociology, in spring 2025. 

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