Vermont Business Magazine US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) today announced the winners of his annual State of the Union essay contest for Vermont high school students. Nearly 800 students, a record number, from 39 high schools participated in the contest this year. A panel of five Vermont teachers served as volunteer judges and selected Meredith Holbrook, a senior at Milton High School, as the winner of the contest. In her essay, Holbrook focused on the need to address domestic economic issues, such as hunger, homelessness and strengthening Social Security in the United States. See winning essay below.
“We have many issues we must address, domestic and foreign. We cannot expect to properly address issues overseas, until we fix the home we live in. We must fix America from within,” Holbrook wrote in her winning essay. “Once we do this, we will truly be able to call ourselves the greatest nation in the world.”
Vivian Huang, a senior at South Burlington High School, is the second place winner. She wrote about the challenges of combating terrorism and providing healthcare for Americans. Ryan Racicot, a senior at Milton High School, is the third place winner. He wrote about the “pressing and immediate danger” of global climate change.
The top three essays were picked by the judges from a group of 20 finalists, which were selected by the judges earlier this week.
“As is always the case, I am so impressed by the wide range of issues students wrote about this year, and by the quality of the essays,” said Sanders, who serves on the Senate education committee. “While there is no shortage of obstacles facing the United States, it is heartening to see so many young Vermonters thinking about the direction we need to go as a nation.”
To honor their accomplishments, the essays of the winners and the finalists will be entered into the Congressional Record, the official archive of the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
Sanders’ annual essay contest is an opportunity for Vermont students to articulate which issues they would prioritize if they were president of the United States. This year, 799 students from 39 Vermont high schools wrote essays of 250 words to 500 words detailing their own view of the “state of the union.” That marks a substantial increase from last year when 454 students from 27 schools wrote essays for the senator’s State of the Union essay contest.
“This is one of the most authentic assessments a teacher can give her students,” said Terri Vest, who teaches at Plainfield’s Twinfield Union School and has served as a judge since the contest began. “Senator Sanders has given them a real-life question and they have wrestled with real-life problems and solutions.”
Increasingly, schools throughout Vermont are finding creative ways to incorporate Sanders’ essay contest into their curriculum. For example, Rutland High School had 10 classes of 9th grade students write essays for the State of the Union essay contest. Colchester High School students detailed their thoughts about the issues facing the United States as a journal writing project. Three young Vermonters at the Woodside Juvenile Rehab Center in Colchester also submitted essays this year.
During the six years Sanders has held his essay contest, roughly 2,400 students from schools throughout Vermont have written essays on a wide range of important issues. Winning essays in prior years were written by students from the Vermont Commons School, Winooski High School, Champlain Valley Union High School, Mount Anthony Union High School and Mount Mansfield Union High School.
Meredith Holbrook (Milton High School, Senior)
My fellow Americans, today the United States has the strongest military in the world. Our nation has
the number one economy. We have the longest running democratic government in history. If we want
to be considered the greatest in the world, the home of the free, the land of opportunity, then we must
face the challenges before us.
In 2014, 48.1 million Americans lived in food insecure homes, of this, 15.3 million were children.
This equates to 14 percent of households being food insecure. How can the wealthiest nation in the
world be unable to feed its hungry? We have the full capability of providing for those in need. We
should not allow politics to stop us from caring for our citizens in need. It is impossible to expect the
people of this country to be functioning members of society without adequate nourishment. The
solution to this problem is simple: feed America’s hungry. I believe that if we were to create a
cabinet level agency dedicated specifically to food-insecurity, we would be bettering the common
good of America. Devoting ten billion dollars from the federal budget would make a tremendous
improvement in the number of food-insecure homes. It may be a bold move to make, but our nation
cannot move forward until our people are no longer hungry.
Alongside hunger is homelessness. On one given night in America, about 560,000 citizens are
homeless, and about 200,000 of those people are in families. It should be the basic right of our people
to have shelter and security. The wound of homelessness cannot be solved with night time shelters.
Homeless people must be provided with long-term shelters if they are ever to be productive members
of society. In order to solve this issue, we must invest in job counseling. Many homeless citizens are
homeless due to the inability to acquire a job. If people had the chance to have a clean interview
outfit, as well as proper interview instruction, there would not be as many people sleeping on the
streets. In order to make this happen, we must have more people trained in the expertise of job
counseling, and more programs helping to aid homeless citizens. Again, this would mean funding
such programs. A small cost to pay to get Americans off the streets.
How a nation treats its elderly says a lot about its character. We will not be a nation that ignores the
needs of its senior citizens. Today, many seniors cannot comfortably retire. They are often forced to
choose between paying for food or, paying for medication. They will go without heat because they
cannot afford to buy fuel. The source of this issue is Social Security. Although this retirement system
has benefited many Americans, it needs to be changed. Social Security often does not change with
inflation, or does not change enough to account for increased prices. While prices are rising, Social
Security is not keeping up. This leaves seniors to make difficult choices regarding spending. Every
year, Social Security should be assessed, and changed accordingly to inflation. To pay for this, we
would need to raise the Social Security tax percentage to seven percent. This would allow America to
adequately pay for the needs of our elderly.
This nation is nowhere near perfect. We have many issues we must address, domestic and foreign.
We cannot expect to properly address issues overseas, until we fix the home we live in. We must fix
America from within. Once we do this, we will truly be able to call ourselves the greatest nation in
the world.
Source: BURLINGTON, Vt., Jan. 15 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. To read all of this year’s finalist essays, click here