"I was so scared": Huron student whose undocumented father was deported tells her story
For this piece, I conducted several extended interviews with our source, combed through U.S. law codes and data compilations, reached out to local law enforcement, the Michigan branch of the ACLU, professors of immigration at the University of Michigan...
Please also read the note on our rationale behind this piece.
It was my second day in the Detroit Free Press newsroom. I arrived at 8 a.m. to see an email from my editor, Mark Rochester, about an upcoming ethics board meeting at 9 a.m. It would announce the final verdict in a months-long conflict of interest case. I attended the meeting, got information from the treasurer’s lawyer and wrote the story by 2 p.m. With help from my mentor, reporter Jennifer Dixon, final edits were done by 4 p.m. And the next morning – July 11, 2019 – it was on the front page.
It's pretty safe to say that human rights aren't brought up in everyday high school conversation. For one, we take many freedoms we enjoy for granted. Without knowing the stories of those directly involved, we may not think of unattainable housing markets or PFAS exposure as human rights violations in our own community. This issue led the way for future stories about local and global epidemics, from campus sexual assault procedures to International Baccalaureate program development.
This comprehensive analysis of the right to healthcare, from both a localized and international vantage point, incorporates countless hours of interviews and background research.
Especially leading up to the 2016 presidential election, I noticed varied student reactions to teachers taking stands atop soapboxes. Education is Inherently political, and I wrote this piece to catalyze the necessary conversation between teachers, students and education experts about the role of politics in the classroom.
(Surprisingly, I wrote three of the five stories on the front page of this issue, even though it was my first issue on the The Huron Emery staff.)
Scholastic Art and Writing Regional Gold Key Winner