Hanover High School Student Awarded $2,500 in Essay Contest
ESSAY CONTEST
New Hampshire Union Leader
Aoife Connors
Boston University Washington News Service
March 31, 2009
WASHINGTON – Libby Tolman, a Hanover High School sophomore, has been awarded $2,500 for winning second place in the “Being an American” essay contest.
Tolman was selected as one of three finalists from the New England region, winning an all-expenses trip with her U.S. history teacher, Pamela Miller, to Washington from March 29-31.
Carolyn Kelle, also a Hanover High School student, was awarded an honorable mention and $250 in the competition.
The winners, chosen from more than 31,000 student entries from across the country, were announced at a gala dinner in the Renaissance Washington Hotel on Tuesday night.
The goal of the essay contest was to explore the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship and civic values. Students were asked to write an essay on the question, “What civic value do you believe is most essential to being an American?”
The competition was open to students in grades 9 to 12. Tolman’s essay described the value of justice.
A special guest, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, addressed the winning students and teachers at the dinner.
Tolman said, “I chose justice because when people talk about America, they talk about rights and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The 15-year-old said, “I think that without justice there would be no way to protect those rights.”
Kelle selected perseverance as her civic value. She wrote, “Nothing can be accomplished if we do not try. There is no giving up, no backing down, if one truly perseveres.”
While in Washington, the students visited the National Archives and the Supreme Court and met with pro football Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green.
The essay competition was sponsored by the Bill of Rights Institute, a nonprofit educational organization that encourages students to learn about America’s founding documents and how they continue to shape society.
In her essay, Tolman wrote, “One of the unfortunate things about justice is that it does not occur by itself; the fundamental American idea that citizens are protected from the seizure of liberty by their government no matter who they are must be advanced and developed by citizens themselves.”
Miller, Tolman’s teacher, said, “What struck me about Libby’s essay was her emphasis on justice as both a right as well as a responsibility for society to maintain, and I thought she brought that out very strongly in her essay.”
Miller described her winning student as advanced in her critical writing skills. “Libby has the ability to think at a higher level about ideas, and that is what we are seeing in her writing,” she said.
She said “Libby is a sophomore, while most of the winners are juniors or seniors.”
Tolman, she added, “is able to bring in basic substantive documents to think about—the Bill of Rights, the amendments or individuals in history—and she can marry those ideas together, leading to a higher level of writing.”
Miller said the ideas that came through in her student’s essay were “quiet powerful.”
Tolman, at a congressional reception held for the students in the Capitol Visitor Center Tuesday, said, “It’s really amazing in D.C., with all the cherry blossoms and everything—and we really got to see a lot of things—we saw the Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the National Archives.”
Miller said she presented the competition to her classes as “an opportunity for all of my students, but I did not require it.”
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