Grace Reilly is the President of Grove City College’s YWA Chapter. This interview was originally featured in Cogitare’s Fall 2022 Print Edition and has been edited for length and clarity.
EM: What is YWA and what can you tell me about its history in general and at Grove City College?
GR: YWA stands for Young Women for America and is a group of Christian conservative women. It’s a national organization and there are chapters all across the country. It’s a project of Concerned Women for America, which is more broadly for conservative women whereas YWA is designed specifically for high school and college students. Here at Grove City, we’re in our second year after starting last year. So we’ve been very excited about all of the different events we’ve been able to host since starting only about a year ago.
EM: Were you involved in getting YWA on our campus?
GR: The president last year was Joy Stockbauer and she started the chapter last year, while I served on exec. The process of starting YWA at Grove City happened a year before that.
EM: What has your role been with YWA and why did you decide to get involved?
GR: My first role was as the marketing and social media manager. So I did YWA’s social media, and this year I’ve served as president of the chapter here at Grove City. I decided to get involved just because I really wanted to be in a community of Christian conservative women. Through the opportunities it’s given me, I was fortunate to lead YWA with many other really great girls serving on our exec team. In total, there are six girls on the exec team that organize and run the meetings together.
EM: What are the current plans for future events coming up this semester, or maybe even next semester in the spring?
GR: Absolutely. Currently, we host meetings every other week where we focus on YWA’s core issues. The different core issues that YWA nationally focuses on are the sanctity of life, defense of the family, education, national sovereignty, religious liberty, sexual exploitation, and support for Israel. For our meetings, we try to break them down and focus on a different topic each week. So far, our focus has been primarily on the sanctity of life. We did a meeting at the beginning of the year on the sanctity of life where we had tea and discussed the issue. All of YWA’s meetings put an emphasis on education, prayer, and action during our conversations. So we incorporate prayer in the beginning, and always make sure our conversations are centered on that. Then we focus on actually educating and talking about the issues and breaking them down so that we can all feel comfortable going out into the world and talking to our peers. For the action aspect, we’ve written letters to senators and are looking into volunteering for the AO pregnancy center. Also, last year we went to DC to the Supreme Court for the Dobbs v. Jackson hearing in December, and this year, we’re looking to go to DC in January for the March for Life. So that’s something we’re looking into right now. It’s still being determined, but that would be our next big trip coming up. Just recently we had the national YWA bus come to Grove City College, they’re touring right now. And it’s called the “She Prays She Votes” Bus Tour, where they’re traveling across the country and advocating for their core values and that women use the right to vote.
EM: You touched on some of this in your last response, but how do the women of YWA connect discussions of Christian faith with their political aims? This ties into Cogitare’s main focus on the intersection of faith, politics, and culture. How does YWA accomplish that?
GR: We try to break every meeting down by starting focused on prayer. However, YWA has started with worship in the past. And then basically we look at the issues that are going on in politics and in the world through a biblical lens by laying out what the facts actually are in our country and in politics and culture right now. Also using scripture to then compare the two and decipher why do we believe what we believe? What does Scripture mean in this, for example, for the pro-life issue, we broke down the stages of fetal development, current legislation, common arguments on both sides, and then we pulled some verses about the sanctity of life and how we’re all fearfully and wonderfully made. With this knowledge, we were then able to discuss it through that lens and through what God says about who we are and who He is.
EM: What is the prevalence of YWA for the average Grove City College student, so that would not necessarily just include women, but also the men on campus.
GR: We are really excited to not only have a community of conservative Christian women in our chapter but to extend that to the community and kind of carry these conversations out to men as well. So recently, we hosted a movie night for “What is a Woman” and invited men and women alike, just anyone on campus who’s interested, and we even had some professors show up. In the future, we’ll be holding more of those movie nights with popular films in the conservative movement.
EM: And then my last question, how can the average Grove City student male or female work to combat the liberal agenda regarding abortion and LGBT categories?
GR: I would say the first step is to just route yourself in truth and know why you believe what you believe. So understanding the why is what’s gonna help you to talk to peers effectively, and be able to have a meaningful conversation instead of just a back and forth with a lot of the rhetoric that spins around in our current political climate, but just understanding that why and then I would say, if you’re talking to someone on the left, that you disagree with, just trying to ask them questions, understanding why they think what they think and then approaching it that way, and trying to have a civil discussion as much as you can without it getting out of hand.
EM: At Grove City College, a lot of people share the same perspective on these issues. Does YWA have resources available to the public?
GR: Yes! YWA has resources on their website and send chapter leaders resources on these issues. They have booklets breaking down each of the core issues that completely dive into everything about legislation from the past and where it is going in the future.
