SIX SENIORS HAVE received StudentCam prizes from C-SPAN’s national student documentary competition.
Nicholas Castro, Vinay Khemlani, Afrida Khurshid, Jennifer Kim, Rebecca Lee, and Aditya Samaroo won honorable mentions for their films. All members of Social Studies teacher Alex Wood’s Participatory Democracy clas, the students produced documentaries focusing on NSA spying and increases in college tuition.
According to a C-SPAN representative, the goal of the StudentCam contest is to allow students to express their views on current government issues.
The topic of this year’s contest was “What’s the most important issue Congress should consider in 2014?”
After attending the ceremony at THHS hosted by C-SPAN, Congresswoman that the students at THHS the selected issues as being “very much on the minds of young people all throughout America and in the minds of Congress right now.”
Assemblywoman Nily Rozic agreed, mentioning that the StudentCam contest has the same goal as she does: to get teens involved in the government and to really form a participatory government.
About this experience, Nicholas said he learned that “[teens] need to be aware and critical about the government.”
Mr. Wood have future students participate in this contest so they can “address important issues and think about them.”