LOCAL STUDENTS THRIVE IN HISTORY CONTEST, BUT FEDERAL CUTS JEOPARDIZE SCHEDULED NEXT STEP

Almost every Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School 10th and 11th grader has heard about National History Day, the annual contest that challenges middle and high school students to create original history projects based on an assigned theme. Starting as a local event in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1974, the program spread nationwide and has been part of our high school’s curriculum for decades.

Given National History Day’s deep roots, I was shocked to learn the contest recently lost the federal funding it has long relied on from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The surprise cut has created a National History Day budget deficit of $336,000, raising questions about whether students who medaled in recent state National History Day competitions will be able to go to next month’s planned National Contest in College Park, Md. It also clouds the long-term viability of the program, which has inspired more than 500,000 students nationwide to conduct and present original historical research.

I am one of those students. As a first-time participant in the 2024-2025 contest, I was tasked with researching, developing, and presenting a historical project related to the theme “Rights and Responsibilities.”

For me, choosing Honors History meant embarking on the National History Day journey. The thought of an all-consuming research project felt overwhelming; yet over the following months, it became one of the most rewarding academic experiences I have had. That transformation is what, in my view, makes National History Day worth saving.

Ultimately, I chose to research the right-to-die movement in America, an uncommon topic for National History Day projects. Ms Kristen Borges, who coordinates our high school’s history curriculum and has overseen the school’s National History Day participation for more than 20 years, says students tend to gravitate toward more familiar subjects such as the Japanese internment during World War II, Title IX, and the women’s suffrage movement.

Once I settled on a topic, I immersed myself in books, scholarly articles, and primary sources. The project spanned four months, and for students who advance, the journey continues through regional, state, and national competitions. Yet, even after months of research, I still felt there was more to learn.

Ms. Borges says this realization is exactly what makes National History Day unique. She experienced the same feeling while earning her master’s degree. After spending a year researching and defending her thesis on a prominent female sachem during King Philip’s War, she said, “There was still more to learn...more sources to uncover.”

There’s never enough time to explore a single topic deeply, yet few experiences are more rewarding than losing oneself in such a pursuit. Each discovery brings a quiet, electric thrill, sharpening the mind as the world outside fades. I wish we could focus longer on concepts at school instead of flitting from one to the next in a matter of days. This is why I value National History Day—it gave me the opportunity to explore the ins and outs of a complex and controversial subject: the right-to-die movement.

Early in my research, I firmly backed the right-to-die movement. But I was forced to recognize the gravity of opponents’ warnings after confronting the history of Nazi eugenics and learning how euthanasia policies in Belgium and the Netherlands have widened to include psychiatric patients and even children. I still believe the right-to-die movement matters because it supports terminally ill individuals’ rights to control their deaths. However, I now see that strict death-with-dignity regulations are imperative to prevent abuse and unintended expansion.

Surprisingly, the hardest challenge for me was deciding how best to present my research. National History Day projects can take the form of exhibits, documentaries, performances, websites, or research papers, which are available to only 11th graders at our school. I ultimately decided to create an exhibit, figuring people could best grasp the history, progression, and controversy of the right-to-die movement through a three-panel display. My concept was good, but my execution was poor. Wrong font size, wrong shape size—wrong, wrong, and just more wrong. Nevertheless, after filling numerous wastebaskets with 10th, 11th, and 12th tries, I felt a rush of exhilaration when my exhibit was complete. I had created something out of nothing, and it felt amazing.

Then came the competition. After advancing from the Greater Boston regional contest in March, 15 Hamilton-Wenham Regional students competed in different categories at the state contest on April 12 at Winchester High School. Two of our school’s group entries earned silver medals, qualifying them for the National Contest scheduled for June 8-12 in College Park, Md.

Gabriella Jewitt, Rowan Sheckells, and Jane Starr received a silver medal for their group exhibit, “The Devil in the Details: How One Woman’s Story Sparked a National Departure from Media Responsibility.” Their project explored how the media handled a notorious child-abuse case that helped fuel the satanic panic of the early 1980s. And Ian Swanson, Mollie Mosher and Reece Fabrizio won silver for their group website “Rights and Responsibilities: How Massachusetts Led America on Gay Equality.”

Two Hamilton-Wenham Regional students won Honorable Mention: Ema Klefti for her paper “Plyler v. Doe: The State’s Responsibility to Provide Undocumented Children the Right to a Free Public Education,” and I for my individual exhibit, titled “The Right to Die in America: Rights of Terminally Ill Patients and Ethical Responsibilities of Physicians.”

The question now is whether the Nationals will take place—and whether National History Day can survive—following the loss of its federal grant funding. Many students and their parents are still unaware of the program’s financial plight. National History Day organizers are appealing for private donations to cover the budget shortfall. It is heartbreaking to think that future students might never discover their voices through this program the way I did. National History Day didn’t just teach me history. It taught me how to speak up and believe my research could matter. The loss of that opportunity for others would amount to more than a budget cut. It would represent a loss of potential.

LOCAL STUDENTS THRIVE IN HISTORY CONTEST, BUT FEDERAL CUTS JEOPARDIZE SCHEDULED NEXT STEP