Herricks School District sent 24 students to the Long Island Regional National History Day Contest last month and came back with nine senior division awards and two junior division first-place finishes. Not bad for a Tuesday in March.
The event ran on March 22 at Hofstra University and drew more than 600 entries from across the region. Herricks competed in both the Middle School and High School divisions. Seven projects and 24 high school students from the district advanced to the National History Day State Competition, scheduled for April 26.
The senior results were deep and varied. Three Herricks projects took first place in their respective categories. Nikhil Aggarwal, Callista Domingo, Rhea Mandal, Rehan Malhi and Soor Patel won the Senior Group Exhibit division with “Looms to Legislatures: The Lowell Mill Girls and the Fight for Dignity in Industrial America.” Prapti Patel won Senior Individual Exhibit honors with “Unmasking Power: Watergate’s Revolution, Reaction and Reform.” And Aanika St. Jean, Zarah Zohir, Neha Paul and Maya Purohit took first in Senior Group Performance for “Virginia Is for Lovers: How Loving v. Virginia Revolutionized Marriage Equality in the United States.”
Loving v. Virginia, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967, struck down laws banning interracial marriage. Students who choose that case as a subject aren’t picking soft material. It takes nerve, and clearly those four handled it with authority.
The second-place finishes were equally strong. Karan Singh, Ryan Khokon, Kunal Bhardwaj, Krish Shashidharan and Harvir Singh earned second in Senior Group Documentary with “Below the City: The Subway That Revolutionized New York.” Sabriyah Islam, Chloe Fan, Penelope Fung, Janice Loong and Ayana Patel finished second in Senior Group Website for “From Passive Pleas to Passionate Protest: How Stonewall Ignited Revolutionary Reform.”
Three more projects placed third. Nuha Maruf, Rania Gupta and Xennie Liu took third in Senior Group Exhibit with “The Innocence Project.” Wenshu Wang placed third in Senior Historical Paper for “‘Engineering Consent’: Edward Bernays and the Institutionalization of Modern Persuasion and Public Relations.” Hammad Waseem and Jun Guan finished third in Senior Group Website and also earned the American History Award sponsored by the Huntington Historical Society, for their project on Engel v. Vitale.
That last one deserves a word. Engel v. Vitale originated right here in Nassau County in 1962, when the Supreme Court ruled that state-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment. Waseem and Guan dug into a case with genuine Long Island roots. That’s the kind of connection a good teacher points students toward.
The middle school results were sharp. Two eighth graders from Herricks won first place in their Junior Division categories. Abigail Mannino and Liliana Paciaroni took the Junior Group Performance title with “This is our Story: How the Revolutionary Reaction of the ‘Code Girls’ during WWII led to Reforms in Cryptology.” Lianna Mathew won Junior Individual Performance for “Nellie Bly: How One Investigative Journalist Revolutionized American Society.”
Bly, of course, faked mental illness to get herself committed to a New York City asylum in 1887 and then reported from inside. Her work helped change state law. That’s primary-source history with real consequences. Not a bad subject for a thirteen-year-old to study.
The thing is, National History Day isn’t a trivia bowl or a spelling bee. Students conduct original research, develop arguments, and present findings in formats that range from documentary film to live performance to academic paper. The best projects read like something a working historian would be proud to defend. For students to compete at this level against 600-plus regional entries and walk away with nine awards says something real about how Herricks is running its social studies program.
Long Island Press first reported the district’s results.
The State Competition runs April 26. Projects that finish at the top there advance to the national contest held at the University of Maryland every June. Herricks students are showing up with strong material. Whether that translates to College Park in the summer is still an open question, but they’ve earned the right to find out.
The district is in New Hyde Park in Nassau County, for those unfamiliar. Its schools don’t make headlines for the usual reasons. This is the better kind of headline.