For the first time in the school’s history of entering, several Arcata High School seniors placed in C-SPAN’s national documentary competition, StudentCam.
“So as part of the AP government curriculum, students have to submit a action project,” said Adam Pinkerton, AP Government Teacher, Arcata High School. It was in Mr. Pinkerton’s class that the students created these projects.
Arcata High School has been participating in C-Span’s video contest for several years.
“Students have been working on this assignment all semester from start of the year to January when they submitted it,” he continued.
“And we found out this week on Wednesday that a number of them won.”Â
This is the first year that any Arcata High School students have placed in the nationwide competition. Four groups earned honorable mentions for their documentaries, and one group of students won 3rd Prize overall.
“We did our project for the C-SPAN StudentCam documentary competition, and it was about gun violence in America,” explained Jasmine, who earned third place alongside Astreya and Beyla. “And basically,” she continued, “we kind of talked briefly about increased background checks, basically bringing some of the legislation that we have here in California, like further across the country, which is like the idea,”
They also interviewed David Hogg, survivor of the 2018 Parkland High School shooting, which saw 17 students and staff were killed.
From gun violence to defending the right to love, the student groups covered a wide range of topics.
“Our project was on the legalization of same sex marriage in the United States,” Natalie told Redwood News.Â
“Especially with Obergefell v Hodges,” added Taya.
“Jim Obergefell and his husband, John Arthur, were not allowed he was not allowed to be at his end-of-life care and hospice because his marriage was not recognized in the state of Ohio,” explained Natalie. “And so his partner did pass away during the process, but they stuck around. And it was not just Jim and Arthur and John, but it was a bunch of other plaintiffs also involved in the case.”
“We had to ask a lot of people for interviews and wait for them to respond and try to edit the video, too,” added Amelie.
Another group’s project focused on agricultural subsidies, by Erika, Ella and Sierra.
“So we interviewed several farmers, a dairy farmer and organic farmer, and then a soybean and corn farmer in Iowa.” said Sierra, of the agricultural group.
“Overall, it came out pretty well,” added Ella, “it’s better than I expected, I would say.”
The students also focused on issues close to home, like this project by Sasha and Quinlyn.
“Our project was called Stolen Lives, and it was on missing and murdered Indigenous Women,” began student Sasha. “I’m Native American locally, and so I’ve, like firsthand seen the effect of this issue on native communities, both mine and others here and around the country,” she continued. “And so I just thought it would be good to address the issue and see how we could kind of help heal communities and fix the issue in coming years.”
The students learned far more than just to shoot and edit video.
“Just really enjoyed, like, meeting all of these new people that I had never met before. And like, learning about, like, their stories and stuff like that.” said Quinlyn. “Yeah. Yeah.” Sasha agreed.
Taylor, Sasha and Adrian are the fifth group whose project “The Future of Nuclear Energy” also earned an honorable mention. And other than those checks in the mail, Mr. Pinkerton says the class is also planning a celebration to honor the hard work and awards they earned for their documentaries.
