National History Day Team Sweeps State Competition
Lori Feng, Sarah Perry, River Gordon, Devin Chen, Sarena Patel, Likhitha Polepalli, and Helen Peng all participated in the National History Day state competition at the University of Southern Miss. The team took home all of the first places in the categories they competed in.
March 26, 2018
Friday afternoon, the National History Day Club departed from Goen Hall en route to Hattiesburg to compete in the state NHD competition. All seven MSMS competitors won first in their divisions, advancing to the international competition in Washington D.C. this June.
National History Day is a research-based history project competition, where students choose a topic that fits the annual theme and compose a website, research paper, performance, exhibit or documentary. All students have to give an interview on the day of competition, and the top two groups in every category qualify for the international competition.
The theme for this year’s competition is “Conflict and Compromise.” The students researched a conflict in history, discussing the causes of the conflict and how it was settled through compromise. The topics of the MSMS students included Chinese containment, feminism in the Indian freedom movement, gays and lesbians in WWII, and the Delano Grape Strike.
Juniors Lori Feng, Helen Peng and Devin Chen and senior Gary Nguyen competed in the website division of the competition, where they discussed the importance of President Nixon’s visit to China, researching the lasting effects of the visit and the reasons for the unstable relationship the two countries possessed.
Peng commented on the project, pointing out the importance of the visit not only for diplomatic relations, but also in the policy put forth by President Nixon.
“Our NHD project was on Nixon’s week-long trip to China and his forming an alliance with communist China. This alliance was a pretty big deal given that the U.S. policies of containment and the twenty year trade embargo that the U.S. had placed in China because of anti-Communist policies. In the long run, Nixon and his advisor Henry Kissinger successfully formed an alliance with China which proved to be worthwhile in the years to come. Also, I think it’s pretty important to point out that Nixon generally has a bad reputation because of the Watergate scandal, but his alliance with China really just proves how complex his presidency is and that Nixon actually deserves a lot more credit than he’s given, especially seeing that China is one of America’s strongest and most powerful allies today.”
Not only did each student from MSMS win first in their respected divisions, but individual awards were also given to the competitors. One of the individual awards included the Women’s History Award, won by Likitha Polepalli and Sarena Patel.
Polepalli discussed the work that went into their award-winning documentary, titled “Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: a Feminist Approach to the Indian Freedom Movement.”
“So we chose a project in January and since then we have been researching. On Monday and Tuesday we decided to record our script. However, that Tuesday when we put what we had together, it ended up being way over ten minutes and our documentary was only supposed to be ten minutes. We had to start all over! On Saturday morning we presented our documentary and answered a few questions for our interview. We were absolutely nervous because it was the first time we did this, but at the awards we figured we won when the presenter said ‘I am not even going to try to say these names.’ It was a great experience and we realized how much of a process research is,” Polepalli said.
All of the competitors seemed to have enjoyed the project, including Devin Chen, who said, “Although this was only my first time doing the NHD, it was both an eye-opening and incredible learning experience.”
NHD President Feng added a final comment on her experience with NHD this year.
“I am definitely really proud of everyone who competed this year, as we all worked hard and are now excited for D.C! A lot of research was put into the projects, and MSMS had an outstanding year with NHD. I am really looking forward to an even bigger NHD club membership next year.”
All of the MSMS NHD students will compete in Washington D.C. from June 10-14 on the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park in the international competition.
