BURLINGTON, Vt., Jan. 19 – With President Barack Obama set to deliver his State of the Union address tomorrow, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today announced the winner and top finalists in his annual State of the Union essay contest for Vermont high school students.
Leo Lehrer-Small, a sophomore at Mount Mansfield Union High School, was named the winner of the contest, which was judged by a panel of four Vermont teachers. Sanders called to congratulate Lehrer-Small on Friday.
Ryan Taggard of Brattleboro Union High School finished in second place. Two students – Craig Pelsor of Milton High School and Hadley Menk of Champlain Valley Union High School – tied for third place. (The full list of finalists is below.)
In his winning essay, Lehrer-Small writes: “As we enter the year of 2015, there is one issue in particular that our government, in conjunction with global policy makers, need to address with attention and urgency. This issue, quite simply, is the safety of our planet: global climate change is already affecting the environment through droughts, increasingly frequent heat waves, and rising sea levels.”
“As the most powerful country in the world, the U.S. must be a driving force in halting global climate change,” he wrote.
The contest is an opportunity for Vermont students to articulate what issues they would prioritize if they were president of the United States. “This contest is designed to engage Vermont’s high school students on the major issues facing the country. Once again, our students did an outstanding job,” said Sanders, who serves on the Senate education committee. “Our students are the future of our country and they must be involved in the discussion about where our country needs to go.”
This year, 454 students from 27 schools wrote essays of 250 words to 500 words detailing their own view of the state of the union. A panel of Vermont teachers reviewed the submitted essays and selected the top 20 essays, which were named as finalists. To honor their accomplishments, each of the finalists’ essays will be entered into the Congressional Record.
Sanders will meet with the 20 finalists during a roundtable discussion to discuss the issues they wrote about in their essays. The roundtable has been scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 31 in the Statehouse in Montpelier. The senator will also hold a town meeting at the school of the winning essay writer.
“Each year, I am impressed by the range of issues students write about, but more so by their solutions,” said Jason Gorczyk, who teaches A.P. Politics at Milton High School and has served as a judge in Sanders’ essay contest for two years. “The State of the Union contest is a great place for them to blend their education with their beliefs.”
During the five years Sanders has held his State of the Union essay contest, more than 1,600 students from schools throughout Vermont have written essays on such important issues as the declining middle class, climate change, gun control, the national debt, the need to raise the minimum wage, health care reform, and the rising cost of a college education.
Winning essays in prior years were written by students from the Vermont Commons School, Winooski High School, Champlain Valley Union High School, and Mount Anthony Union High School.
The top essays and the finalists for this year’s essay contest are listed below.
1st place: Leo Lehrer-Small, Mount Mansfield Union High School
2nd place: Ryan Taggard, Brattleboro Union High School
3rd place (tie): Craig Pelsor, Milton High School
3rd place (tie): Hadley Menk, Champlain Valley Union High School
Finalists (in alphabetical order)
• Sam Anglum, Burr and Burton Academy
• Caroline Arthaud, Champlain Valley Union High School
• Har Wa Bi, Winooski High School
• Peter Camardo, South Burlington High School
• Taylor Devaney, Missisquoi Valley Union High School
• Connor Drown, Winooski High School
• Spencer Eckert, Woodstock Union High School
• Jacob Gallow, Missisquoi Valley Union High School
• Liam Gibbons, Milton High School
• Eli Hulse, Vermont Commons School
• Kathy Joseph, Champlain Valley Union High School
• Emery Mead, Missisquoi Valley Union High School
• Alicia Muir, Milton High School
• Curtis Richardson, Milton High School
• Friedemann Schmidt, Brattleboro Union High School
• Sophia Seman, Essex High School
To read this year’s winning essays and finalists, click here.
Contact: Michael Briggs (202) 224-5141
Ryan Taggard's Essay
From the supplied link to essays:
“Ryan Taggard, Brattleboro Union High School (Second Place)
The state of our country has seen marked improvement over the last year. Unemployment is at its lowest level since before the recession, the stock market is setting record highs, and a manufacturing sector that has added jobs for the first time in nearly two decades. But we’re working to regain lost ground, while neglecting the importance of innovating, creating, and aspiring – the very aspects that once made our country great.
Throughout the 60’s and 70’s, America was the planet’s premier superpower. Despite the threat of an aggressive U.S.S.R. looming on the horizon, campus unrest, the conflict in Vietnam, and the civil rights movement playing out in confrontations on the street, we found time to dream about tomorrow. The engine of this growth was the relentless advancement of science and technology. Our crowned jewel, NASA, was among the most powerful agencies the world had ever seen, and promised us a future full of plenty. We didn’t outsource jobs, because no other nation could do what America could. We spawned entire industries built around new inventions. And most importantly, we gained a technological edge, strengthening our military, infrastructure, and economy.
MRIs, GPS receivers, cochlear implants, Lasik surgery, catalytic converters, the first fuel cells, cordless tools, cell phones, and the microprocessors that enable our lives are all direct results of our first forays into the abyss of space. Due to our curiosity, hundreds of thousands of lives were saved. Patients who were born deaf were given the ability to hear. The blind could see. The environment was restored in numerous and invaluable ways, and communication became constant and universal. Curiosity enabled our nation to perform miracles.
Unfortunately for our nation, NASA was formed in the midst of a panic induced by the launch of the Soviet’s Sputnik. Once the American government saw that the U.S.S.R. wasn’t ready to go to the moon, they ceded their push to move forwards. Today NASA’s spending represents 0.49% of our federal budget. This half a penny off the tax dollar pays for all of NASA’s operations: the International Space Station, Hubble telescope, Curiosity rover, all the astronauts, and more. With only a slight increase in funding, we could go back to the moon, send men to Mars, and journey on to explore asteroids and alien worlds.
The incentives for raising NASA’s budget are diverse, powerful, and irrespective of party. As well as providing an opportunity for our government to assume a leadership position, the economic stimulus that accompanies a revived space industry would create new jobs, the technologies developed would improve our lives, and the cultural shift that occurred in the 60’s and 70’s would once again become the norm. Students would aspire to become scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technologists. We as a nation would reclaim our former spot at the very forefront of innovation. And America would reap the benefits of an educated, industrial, and forward thinking workforce.”
Brattleboro's Friedemann Schmidt - Finalist
another essay from Brattleboro students:
“Friedemann Schmidt, Brattleboro Union High School (Finalist)
Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan the United States turned within four years from the biggest creditor nation in the world in 1981 to the world’s largest debtor in 1985. Supported by numerous foreign assignments of the U.S. Armed forces, the public debt increased constantly, reaching a figure of $18 trillion in recent years. This is a very serious issue for the United States not only because it deepens the dependence on creditor nations like China or Saudi Arabia which neglect values like freedom and equality, but also it directly affects everyone.
In 2013 the interest payments of the U.S. public debt made up 6% of the federal budget excluding an actual debt reduction. With a steadily growing budget deficit, primarily due to outrageous defense spending, that figure will even form a larger part of the annual budget plan. Presumably that will lead to cuts in secondary areas like education, transportation and social as well as scientific endeavors. This symbolizes a threat to the belief of the founding fathers in equality and perhaps makes a myth of the United States offering fair chances for everyone, regardless of status.
By decreasing the governmental funding of social programs, like the free/reduced meal program offering meals to 20% of food insecure students in Vermont, the living status of numerous hard- working middle and lower class would drop. A declining federal funding of universities and colleges throughout the country would further increase the college tuition for individuals, creating an unaffordable higher education for hundreds of thousands of young, talented Americans – a problem America already faces.
The social injustice created by enlarging the gap between rich and poor, would weaken the unity of the United States as much as decreasing the funding of America’s world-leading role in science and innovation, the key to economic success and human progress itself. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich states that due to the fact that “Inequality has become worse, the danger to the economy and democracy had become worse.”
The public debt will be one of the major challenges for United States politics in the near future. Facing it will have to lead to changes of American policies and its lead in world policy. Priorities have to be set and compromises have to be made. Martin Luther King Jr once said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” It is the responsibility of every U.S. citizen to prevent that in order to maintain the prosperity and values for which America stands.”