On Thursday, April 25, juniors Curran Dee and Raine Wang, along with history teacher Peter Jones and history Department Chair David Baker, attended the annual WALKS Essay Dinner at Loomis Chaffee School.
The WALKS Essay Dinner is a prize-awarding ceremony and celebratory dinner for students whose writing stood out among their peers and were chosen as finalists by their respective school. This year, Curran and Raine were the two selected to move on to the finals from KO.
The WALKS Constitutional Essay Competition is a writing competition between private high schools in Connecticut, including Avon Old Farms School, Loomis Chaffee School, Westminster School, and Suffield Academy. Each paper was no less than 10 pages, and the essays were judged on extensiveness, detail, and complexity. Each school nominated two essays they felt best represented these qualities to advance to the finals and attend the ceremony dinner. These 10 finalists were then anonymously read and judged by an outside judge chosen by Loomis.
Each school rotates who will host the dinner each year. The host school also has the responsibility of picking that year’s prompt and judge. The prompt this year was to craft an essay that explored the transformations in the Supreme Court’s relationship with other branches of the federal government. Loomis alumna, parent, and trustee Britt-Marie Cole-Johnson was elected to be this year’s judge. Ms. Cole-Johnson is a partner at the Robinson+Cole law firm, working with private sector employees from startups to the Fortune 500.
Curran shared his experience at the dinner. “It was really nice to be honored as a finalist and to talk to the other students about their essays,” he said.
Raine agreed. “Although it was a little awkward at first since none of us knew each other, it was nice to chat with people from other schools,” they commented. “I feel like we don’t have the opportunity to do that super often, so it was new and exciting.”
The essays were due the first day back from March break. The extra time off allowed Curran and Raine to dive deep into their research and to spend an extensive amount of time working on their papers. Curran wrote about the Supreme Court’s use of judicial review to check the actions of the legislative branch through cases like Loving v. Virginia and Obergefell v. Hodges. He also discussed the executive branch’s role in enforcing the decisions of the Supreme Court, writing about the case Worcester v. Georgia.
Similarly, Raine discussed the Supreme Court’s growing influence in the federal government through processes like judicial review and key court cases such as Schenck v. United States and Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. “I learned a lot while researching all the court cases and stuff,” Raine said. “I feel like all the research gave me a better understanding of how the branches of government work, and how the rules are sometimes bent according to what is profitable or popular at the time.”
The writing process was lengthy. Both students spent a good amount of time over the break dedicated to the research and writing process of the essay. Curran shared his process writing his essay. “I had never written a paper that long, so it was a very tiring process,” he said. “But, it was really fun to learn more about the Supreme Court, and it was very rewarding when I found out I was chosen as a finalist.”
Everyone, whether selected to represent their school or not, worked extremely hard on their essays and learned some more about the U.S. government and history. Overall, the dinner was a nice way to honor the 10 students from all five schools who all put a great deal of time and effort into researching for and writing their essays.
