Prizes awarded in 2020 writing competition
Fall 2020Eight students received nine cash prizes in this year’s Writing Contest. Once again, all of the entries to this year’s contest were absolute evidence that the union’s community has some very bright, thoughtful, politically astute, and imaginative young people.
The writing competition is sponsored by Laurel Rubin through the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. Ms. Rubin is the granddaughter of Jay Rubin, the founder of our union and HTC president from 1939 to 1978.
“This is my first opportunity to thank Laurel Rubin and the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation for sponsoring this competition,” Hotel Trades Council President Richard Maroko said. “We are certainly very grateful that this contest provides our members’ children with a superb opportunity to express their opinions and show their artistic skills.”
Here are the Writing Contest Winners
Top-Prize Essay winner
The 2020 writing contest’s top prize of $3,000 was awarded to Amira Shimin, the daughter of Mohammad Kashem of the Conrad Hotel. Amira received top prize this year for her essay entitled, “A Modern Day Hero”, about her sister who has been organizing overworked medical residents and has already had some success in reducing their work hours. Amira was awarded a second cash prize for a narrative about her embrace of activism.
First Place, Narrative Category
First place in the narrative category (and a $1,500 prize) was awarded to Jailyne Polanco, who wrote about her experiences as the American-born daughter of Dominican immigrants. It was a brilliant and deeply personal piece of writing, a journey towards self-identification.
First Place, Essay Category
First place in the Essay category (and a $1,500 prize) was awarded to Eishika Ahmed, who, we might add, also won prizes in 2018 and 2019, making her only the second student in the 19-year history of the contest to win prizes in all three years of eligibility. Eishika’s essay discussed quite astutely whether the U.S. Supreme Court is more political than judicial. In her essay, Eishika argued for a more transparent method of selecting Supreme Court justices and perhaps someday even having them elected by the people.
Prize Winner
Sabrina Fong won a $1,000 prize for telling us “Why My Dad’s Union Membership Is Important to Me.” Sabrina wrote “I have never met a single person who loves his job more than my dad loves his,” Sabrina wrote. “He has not once complained about his job and I know this has only been made possible because of the union. I speak for all my fellow teenagers and Gen-Z children of HTC members when I say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you for providing our parents with rewarding and safe working environments, for protecting and defending them against management at all times, for providing them with family medical coverage, for guaranteeing them rights that non-union workers don’t have, for fortifying them with a sense of unity that is hard to come by in this day and age, and, lastly, for constantly providing us with opportunities to accomplish our lifelong dreams.”
Essay Prize Winner
Another excellent essay about “A Modern Day Hero” was submitted by Ryan Ahmed, who won a $1,000 prize for his essay on Dr. Anthony Fauci. Ryan wrote that “Dr. Fauci’s work has already saved millions of lives” and will save many more because “Fauci believes, as a voluntary member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, that the government’s actions could be guided, even if the president’s declarations could not. Fauci softly revises the absurdities and half-truths of Donald Trump at White House press briefings.”
Prize Winner
There were a number of entries relating to immigration, and the best of these was submitted by Samantha DeMartino. In “My Personal Experience with Immigration,” Samantha told the story about her father’s immigration to the U.S. and her maternal grandfather’s arrival from Argentina. Then she reported on her involvement with Caroline House, a school for immigrant women and children.
Essay Prize winner
Omar Kastrat, a 12th grader at Stuyvesant High School and a previous writing contest winner, won a prize for his enlightening essay that presented a compelling case that proved not only that global warming is very real but that it also is a grave danger to all of us, especially those in his generation.
Narrative Prize Winner
Tahmin Zahid won a prize for her narrative describing the extreme difficulty she faced as a 16-year-old taking a college-level calculus class at the school she attends, the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics.
Thank you to all the 2020 writing contest participants!
The union is grateful for the efforts of all the students who took time to tell us their thoughts, to share their opinions and to unveil their wonderful imaginations.