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The Ely Speech Prize for The Global Seminar: Signature
By Divi Bhaireddy, III Form
The Ely Speech Prize for The Global Seminar: Signature
The Ely Prize in Public Speaking, originally given by a member of the Class of 1892 in memory of his mother, is presented to the student who gave the best speech in the Global Seminar Public Speaking Competition.
Someday in the future, I will be someone’s ancestor. People will tell stories about me; what I did with my life, what family I made, and the impact I left behind. Those people in the future won’t know how I laughed or how I smiled, my quirks or my chatter, but instead, they’ll know all that I did with my life. My name will be passed down, and how I decide the way my name is remembered, is all in my hands.
In the beginning of this school year, one of the first assignments we had in The Global Seminar was titled, “2.1 Our Names & Our Places in the World”. It was all about what our names meant and how it reflected our stories. And although we hadn’t chosen that name, it was still ours.
Our names were given to us by other people. Whether it be your mother or your father who gave it to you, your grandmother or your religion, it isn’t your choice. My name is Divi. My full name: Divija. It means born in heaven. And since I was a child, my name has been mispronounced when people first meet me because it isn’t one that they have encountered before. But, this year in TGS, we learned about Hinduism. How rich my culture is and how sacred our beliefs are. We learned about Samsara, which is a cycle of life ultimately to reach a state of Moksha; enlightenment. It helped me gain a deep appreciation for my name and all its uniqueness. And once I came to terms with my love for my name, it was time for the hard part: how I wanted that name to represent me.
(more…)The Shen Prize: The Ongoing Struggle Against the Corrupting Influence of Money in Politics
By Alden Mehta, V Form
The Shen Speech Prize: The Ongoing Struggle Against the Corrupting Influence of Money in Politics
THE SHEN PRIZE is awarded to the winner of a public speaking contest among Advanced Placement United States History students on the topic of democracy. The prize is given by Y.L. Shen in honor of his daughters, Ing-ie (Ava) Shen of the Class of 1988 and Ing-Chuan (Judy) Shen of the Class of 1989.
Is it possible for influence in American politics to be bought? The answer is yes. In theory, a true democracy adequately represents the voice of its people, showing no bias towards status, identity, or wealth. We should see this representation reflected in the profiles of the politicians elected through the democratic process. However, in the US, political candidates rely on generous contributions from the wealthy to fund increasingly expensive campaign efforts. Through these contributions, the rich gain a degree of undue influence in politics; instead of reflecting the concerns of their electoral bases and amplifying the voices of the general public, we see politicians prioritizing the interests of their biggest donors. Campaign funding, rather than public interest, drives their work. This hole in American democracy led to the enactment of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), authored by Senator John Pastore (D-RI), in 1974. FECA sought to remove the corrupting influence of money from politics. Ultimately, FECA did not eliminate the importance of money in politics, but was still an expansion of democracy in the US because it set a lasting standard for campaign spending and contributions and increased government regulation in order to limit the influence of money in politics.
(more…)George Hill Burnett History Prize: The Camp Fire Girls and the Appropriation of Native American Culture
By Marianne Lyons, Class of 2022
George Hill Burnett History Prize: The Camp Fire Girls and the Appropriation of Native American Culture
The George Hill Burnett History Prize is given to commemorate the graduation in 1902 of a grandson of the founder. It is awarded on the basis of a special essay in American history.
American camping associations are iconic. The camping movement from its inception and in all its forms has shaped American culture. In fact, I have had the privilege of attending Wyonegonic Camps in Denmark, Maine for the past ten years.
This past year as a counselor, I had the opportunity to pass down traditions directly to my campers. As part of this, I once took my cabin to my camp’s cramped museum, which holds the artifacts of Wyonegonic’s 120-year history. My campers humored me by asking questions about the different songs and pictures that covered the walls.
One of my campers paused as her hand hovered over a blurry, black and white picture. She called me over, and I studied the image. It was dated 1919 and showed a small white girl in Native American traditional dress. I paused. I thought hard about what to do and what to say next. Native American dress, lore, and appropriation are integral to the long history of the American camping movement. I didn’t know how to summarize and convey that history to my wide-eyed ten-year-old camper, but I knew I had to explain. I called my cabin over to the picture and opened up a conversation. I covered why this photograph might be offensive and encouraged the girls to share their perspectives. This conversation wasn’t easy, but it was important for my campers to understand the complexities of our shared history.
(more…)The Camp Fire Girls and the Appropriation of Native American Culture
By Marianne Lyons, VI Form
The Camp Fire Girls and the Appropriation of Native American Culture
American camping associations are iconic. The camping movement from its inception and in all its forms has shaped American culture. In fact, I have had the privilege of attending Wyonegonic Camps in Denmark, Maine for the past ten years.
This past year as a counselor, I had the opportunity to pass down traditions directly to my campers. As part of this, I once took my cabin to my camp’s cramped museum, which holds the artifacts of Wyonegonic’s 120-year history. My campers humored me by asking questions about the different songs and pictures that covered the walls.
One of my campers paused as her hand hovered over a blurry, black and white picture. She called me over, and I studied the image. It was dated 1919 and showed a small white girl in Native American traditional dress. I paused. I thought hard about what to do and what to say next. Native American dress, lore, and appropriation are integral to the long history of the American camping movement. I didn’t know how to summarize and convey that history to my wide-eyed ten-year-old camper, but I knew I had to explain. I called my cabin over to the picture and opened up a conversation. I covered why this photograph might be offensive and encouraged the girls to share their perspectives. This conversation wasn’t easy, but it was important for my campers to understand the complexities of our shared history.
(more…)The Evolution of Jane Austen
By Sydni Williams, VI Form
The Evolution of Jane Austen
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”1
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, upplaga (ex pbk ed.). ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2009).
This opening line from Jane Austen’s most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, is a summation of the time period in which Austen lived and wrote. The quote proves that, in eighteenth century England, an economically stable, unmarried man should pursue an agreeable, unmarried woman to acquire as a wife. After courtship, proposals, and financial negotiations with the woman’s father, a man and woman would be married through a process devoid of love. From the perspective of an eighteenth-century woman, Pride and Prejudice’s opening line demonstrates that a woman’s marital status decided her economic security and quality of life. Women had little to no opportunity to advance in society, beyond the man they married. Therefore, proposals, marriage negotiations, and weddings were an important landmark in the lives of many women; the landmark that decided their future.
Jane Austen, living among the eighteenth-century gentry, witnessed these events in her everyday life and wrote novels about this world: about marriage, love, hate, family, relationships, and humanity. Unlike many women of her time, Austen never married and spent her life dedicated to a writing career. Austen’s stories have transcended centuries, influenced the film industry, and remained on bookshelves and in classrooms. Although Austen’s “universally acknowledged truth” may no longer be true after the women’s rights movement, Austen and her novels have somehow remained relevant.
There is not much information existing on Austen’s personal life. Historians, biographers, and writers have theorized about her sexuality, gender identity, political views, and career goals. For almost a century after her death, Austen’s family members rewrote her life in biographies, profiting off of her successes. When remembering Jane, they manipulated her image to fit into society’s standards of a spinster, creating “Aunt Jane,” a caricature of Austen since used in many accounts and biographies. As a result of this image, Austen was an ideal conservative icon used in support of marriage.
(more…)The American Eugenics Movement and its Influence on Nazi Germany
By Caroline Sullivan, VI Form
The American Eugenics Movement and its Influence on Nazi Germany
It’s the early 1930s. A young woman, twenty years old, is out to lunch with her mother when all of the sudden she feels sharp stomach pains tearing through her abdomen. She dismisses them as merely an upset stomach, but they grow worse. Her driver rushes her to a hospital. When she arrives at the hospital, the doctors barely examine her before diagnosing her with appendicitis. They inform her that she must undergo emergency surgery to remove her appendix before it ruptures. However, upon waking up from the surgery she notices that something was different. All around her, doctors were whispering and acting suspiciously. New doctors, ones that she had never seen before, were coming in to observe her as if she was a sort of experiment. Confused, the girl begins searching for answers as to what had happened during surgery. She listened and overheard the doctors calling her offensive names such as “dumb,” “feebleminded,” and “idiot.” Finally, she connected the dots. While in surgery, the doctors had sterilized her, stripping her of her right to have children.
It’s 1958, and the parents of a four-year-old child admit their son, Mark, to a mental hospital for Cerebral Palsy. His mother goes to the hospital every Wednesday to visit, but one week the hospital tells her she cannot come anymore. A few days later, the family receives a devastating call: their six-year-old boy has passed away. Upon requesting further information about his death, the hospital refuses to share anything. It even fails to provide a death certificate when the family asks for one. The family is destroyed, his parents lost a child, and his three sisters lost their little brother. Even worse, they struggle to find closure as the hospital gave them so little information about his death. Their quest for answers finally gets results decades later when the government declassifies records from the state hospital. The family is horrified to learn that their, innocent, six-year-old child died an excruciatingly painful death from radiation poisoning at the state hospital.
These two stories have more in common than their raw horror. They did not occur in some far away totalitarian country overseas. Instead, they took place within the United States, under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. These tragedies occurred in the very country that idealizes its democracy, grounded in the ideal of freedom. These procedures were legal under the U.S. justice system, a system created to promote liberty. Instead, The Constitution allowed states to deprive the most vulnerable members of society of liberty under a program called eugenics.
(more…)Ely Speech by Yunxuan (Coco) Chen, IV Form, Eli Prize Winner (20-21 School Year)
The Ely Prize is presented to the student who gave the best speech in the III Form Global Seminar Public Speaking Competition each spring.
An Analysis of the US Electoral System
By Steven Yang, IV Form
An Analysis of the US Electoral System
The US’ system for electing its leaders has not changed since its inception. Briefly summarized, candidates usually adhere to one of the main two parties, Republicans or Democrats. Each party holds its elections (primaries) to have a single nominee. Then, candidates get a number of votes for winning the popular vote in each state. The candidate who reaches 270 electoral votes wins.
In recent elections, this electoral college has been controversial, as it has not produced the same result as the popular vote in two of the last six elections (Beckwith, 2019; Levy, 2019). Many argue, especially on the liberal side, that the electoral college should not be utilized in future elections.
However, a quieter yet equally important issue is that voters are misled by a combination of misinformation, party polarization, partisan-motivated reasoning, and an illusion of understanding, contributing to an inaccurate portrayal of opinions.
(more…)
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