By Stan Friedman
GRAND FORKS, ND (August 29, 2007) – What Ashley Young saw sickened her. A group of teenagers at her high school had knocked down a physically challenged student who hit his head against the wall. 
When the offenders received what she believed was too little punishment, she wrote a letter to the local newspaper. That led officials at other schools to invite her to talk with their students about bullying.
Now, as the new Miss North Dakota, Young will spend the next year talking with students and other people around the state as she promotes her platform, “Stop Bullying in Schools: Saving the Spirit of a Child.”
The 19-year-old captured her title in June and is the second member of an Evangelical Covenant Church to win a state contest in the Miss America pageant. Kirsten Haglund recently was named Miss Michigan.
Young has grown up in Hope Evangelical Covenant Church in Grand Forks. “She’s a wonderful young woman,” says pastor Paul Knight, who encouraged her to attend a recent leadership event sponsored by Willow Creek Church.
Her father, Dana, and mother, Kim, have been active in the congregation. “My parents are the most amazing people,” she says.
Young is a music student at North Dakota State University and hopes to eventually be a professor of musicology. Her passions for singing led her to participate in a local pageant. “I was taking voice lessons – music was always the biggest part of high school for me – and my teacher said it would be good experience for me,” she says.
Young was shocked when she won and eventually advanced to be the runner-up of the state contest last year before winning this year. Her reasons for participating changed along the way, however. “The Lord really gave me a new perspective on why he wanted me there,” she says. “It’s to be a light for him.”
That was made especially clear to her during the week of the most recent pageant. Young prayed with another contestant who had suffered a family tragedy. To her own surprise, Young began crying with the young woman.
“I would have never cried before,” she says. “To have the Lord put a heart of compassion in me to cry with someone is an amazing experience. He blessed me throughout the week.”
Now she hopes God will bless others through her during the coming year. By promoting her platform, Young hopes others won’t suffer the way many students (herself included) have because of bullying.
Young was never physically bullied, but was teased terribly as a child. Those emotional scars stuck with her. “I was in fifth and sixth grade when it really started to hit me,” she says.
“Most of my life has been trying to build up confidence in myself,” Young says. “I was tormented by the ghosts of my bullies. That was a very painful thing for me to deal with.”
Attending college in another town has helped her face the ghosts and overcome the pain, she says, adding that she believes God will redeem her experience by using it to help others.
People often think of bullying as a physical act, but Young says, “What’s harder to see is the emotional bullying.” She notes the growth of cyber bullying, in which people use the Internet to make fun of other students. “Some kids will always use whatever is at their disposal so they can bully,” Young says.
Young hopes to fight bullying by helping students “see the innate value of the person next to them.”
She knows a lot of people will be looking to her as an example. “It’s a really humbling experience to be a role model,” Young says. “That’s an incentive for me to stay in the word.”
Young recently spoke with Miss Michigan, Kirsten Haglund. “It was exciting. I can’t wait to meet her.” Both of them will compete in the national contest to be televised from Las Vegas in January.
