The National Honor Society announced $2 million in scholarships for students nationwide on Monday, and one of the finalists to receive its biggest award is from West Virginia.
The National Honor Society announced $2 million in scholarships for students nationwide on Monday, and one of the finalists to receive its biggest award is from West Virginia.
Colin Street is a senior at Morgantown High School and one of twenty nationwide finalists for a $25,000 scholarship.
Street has done advocacy and organizing work for both the American Legion’s Boys State, where he has served as a senator representing West Virginia in mock-Senate programs, and is a co-founder of his school’s Sexuality and Gender Acceptance Initiative, which has worked with the ACLU to provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth.
“We’re looking to obtain a 501(c)(3) status through the IRS and get incorporated with the state of West Virginia,” Street said. “But right now we’re just focusing on building a solid base in our community.”
According to a 2017 study by UCLA, it was estimated that West Virginia has the most per capita transgender youth in the country at just over one percent.
He’s also done work as president and a coach for Mountaineer Area Robotics, a local robotics team.
Street is planning on studying environmental science and public policy in college, and said he’d like to use that knowledge to give back to his home state.
“North Central West Virginia and the state at large, these are the people and communities that built me into the person I am today,” Street said. “And I want to make sure I can give back and provide those opportunities that I had and more to the future generations of West Virginia.”
Street will be honored in Washington, DC as part of the National Honor Society’s leadership week next month, where the national winner will be recognized. As a finalist, he has already earned more than $5,625 in scholarship money.
Two semi-finalists were also announced by the National Honor Society: Meredith Romanek, from Wheeling and Jenna Tuttle from Berkeley Springs. As semi-finalists, they earned $3,200 in scholarship money.
High school student Rania Zuri has made it her mission to end book deserts in West Virginia. Book deserts are places without libraries and bookstores, threatening literacy rates for young children. A senior at Morgantown High School, Zuri founded the LiTEArary Society to provide books to preschool children across West Virginia.
This story originally aired in the Feb. 3, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
High school student Rania Zuri has made it her mission to end book deserts in West Virginia.
Book deserts are places without libraries and bookstores, threatening literacy rates for young children. A senior at Morgantown High School, Zuri founded the LiTEArary Society to provide books to preschool children across West Virginia.
She recently spoke with Inside Appalachia host Mason Adams.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Zuri:I’ve always been a bibliophile my whole life, and I had a classics book club in middle school. But in ninth grade, I was working on a project to set up a small library for young girls, when I learned about book deserts and the vast book deserts that exist in our own country. I decided to combine my book club with my passion for ending the book desert into the LiTEArary Society, which is a play on words of literary and tea. We are an entirely youth-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the mission of ending book deserts for preschool ages three to five from disadvantaged families. At this age, the children are too young to check out a book themselves from the library, and their families or caregivers don’t necessarily have the disposable income to go out and buy books. That means Head Start, because it is the federal preschool program for preschool children from households at or below the poverty line.
Adams: Once you started to dig in, what did book deserts actually look like on the ground?
Zuri: Well, it’s definitely been very different from just reading about it. But as I went out, and I traveled throughout the state, and I’ve been traveling throughout Appalachia, in the most remote and rural parts of the region, and seeing that these children – they have their faces, they have stories, and they have backstories – I have been constantly met with questions at every stop. There’s always new stories and new faces, but always the same question: “Can we take this book home?” And so it’s always a delight for me to tell them that it was their book to take home and call their own.
Adams: Can you tell me about your childhood and what your reading experience was like?
Zuri:I wasn’t a kid that had everything. I didn’t have the latest toys or video games and things like that. But I always had books. I was so fortunate enough to always have books in my life. They’re just so important to have as a child, as there really is a magic in reading. I truly believe that books are a ladder out of poverty. That’s where kind of the inspiration of my mission came from, from my own background. I was the kid that always had a board book or princess book, whatever.
Members of the LiTEArary Society at Morgantown High School. Courtesy of Rania Zuri
Adams: So you helped found the LiTEArary Society and then this past year, you all gifted a brand new book to every single preschool child in Head Start across West Virginia. That sounds like it took a lot of work.
Zuri: Oh, it did. It took a very long time. I called this project the West Virginia Head Start Road Tour. It was almost 7,000 brand new books in total, and I traveled to every single Head Start center in the state to donate these new books. I held reading circles with the children. Many of the children in Head Start didn’t have any books at home. It was my favorite part to give them the books. Some of the children, when I handed out the books, they were jumping up and down from excitement. That was truly a delight.
Rania Zuri signs her book, “It’s Mountain Music to My Ears” at the West Virginia Tourism Center. Courtesy of Rania Zuri
Adams: Now you’ve gone from bibliophile, to mountain book ambassador, to author. Tell us about this new book that you’ve been working on.
Zuri: My latest initiative has a musical aspect to it. I wrote and illustrated a series of rhyming Appalachian-themed children’s picture books about an Appalachian hare named Billy Bob. My first book in the series is called “It’s Mountain Music to My Ears.” It tells a musical adventure of the Appalachian hare named Billy Bob, who goes through the hills and hollers of West Virginia, and he meets different Appalachian animals that each play different Appalachian musical instruments like the spoons, the mountain dulcimer, the mandolin, the banjo, washboard.
Zuri says her next book is already in the works. She’ll be promoting it soon.
Students at Morgantown High School staged a walkout Wednesday afternoon to protest the removal of Pride flags from classrooms. Monongalia County Superintendent Eddie Campbell asked all school principals to remove Pride flags just after the start of the school year. He cited a county policy that bans political activity in classrooms.
Updated on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022 at 11:25 a.m.
Students at Morgantown High School staged a walkout Wednesday afternoon to protest the removal of Pride flags from classrooms.
Monongalia County Superintendent Eddie Campbell asked all school principals to remove Pride flags just after the start of the school year. He cited a county policy that bans political activity in classrooms.
Morgantown High School senior and student leader Lonnie Medley, who uses he/they pronouns, said the Pride flags made school safer for LGBTQ students.
“Today, we unfortunately have to have a walkout to fight for our rights because yesterday at the board meeting, it didn’t seem to go very well,” they said. “There are so many people that don’t have accepting homes and school is the only place where they feel safe.”
Medley said that despite best intentions, even school is not a perfectly safe place.
“So a lot of people think that we are safe in school without the flags, but that’s not how it is,” they said. “We are unsafe, we get bullied, we get harassed every day. And the only places we are safe are the places that have pride flags, and accepting symbols.”
Fellow Morgantown High senior Will McGahey is hopeful that the walkout opens some eyes, but is ready to keep taking action to ensure the return of Pride flags to classrooms.
“Hopefully we helped the boards understand that, you know, people like us are here,” he said.
McGahey said community activists plan to organize more actions until the Pride flags are allowed back in schools.
Chris Schulz
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Seniors Will McGahey and Lonnie Medley stand outside Morgantown High School Sept. 28 as students stage a walkout to protest the removal of Pride flags by the county superintendent.
Original Post:
Students, teachers, parents and community members gathered outside of the Monongalia County Board of Education meeting Tuesday night, to protest the removal of Pride flags from classrooms at Morgantown High School (MHS).
Earlier this month, the county superintendent sent a letter to the county’s principals asking that Pride flags be removed from classrooms. The justification for the action was county policy 3231.01, which bans political activities in the county’s classrooms.
“The policy specifically bans literature being printed or distributed that deals with candidates, issues or points of view,” said Rev. Jenny Williams. “It’s clear from the content of the policy that it’s aimed at keeping election politics out of the classroom. I’m not really sure why the Pride flag is coming under that and the board will have to be able to state that tonight.”
Sam Hunley and Paige Corob are both seniors at MHS. They both arrived early to the meeting to take part in the demonstration against the flags’ removal, mingling with the crowd of more than 100 demonstrators.
“It’s really affected the LGBTQ youth in our system, and this is us coming together and standing against it because it means more to us than I think anybody understands,” Hunley said.
Corob called the decision heartbreaking, and disagreed with the characterization of the flag as political.
“It represents respect, and it shows the protection that we have, and that at the end of the day, we’re always going to have people that are supportive of us and supportive of loving who anybody loves, regardless of who that might be,” she said.
Chris Schulz
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Community members demonstrate outside of the Sept. 27 Monongalia County Board of Education meeting in support of Pride flags in county classrooms.
The decision had already garnered public discussion at the board’s Sept. 13 meeting where 13 community members spoke. At Tuesday’s meeting, 37 people were signed up to speak.
All public comment at Monongalia’s Board of Education meetings is limited to one hour, so each speaker was given just one minute and 37 seconds to speak. Most of the speakers were in favor of the Pride flags, or against their removal.
Staff from all three of the county’s high schools presented the board with letters outlining their concerns over the removal of the flag, and representatives from the faculty senates of University High School and MHS spoke in person.
Former Monongalia County teacher Rose Bell spoke about the experience of her nonbinary grandchild who used Pride flags to identify safe havens in their school.
“In those classrooms, there will be no bullying or harassment, and it won’t be tolerated,” Bell said. “The pride flag is an indicator that the teacher in that classroom is a trusted adult who will help them when there is an anxiety inducing situation, in or out of the classroom. Continuing to display the pride flag will ultimately provide a safer school environment.”
Speakers drew cheers from the crowd that had remained outside of the building, audible even from within the meeting chambers.
Some who spoke were in favor of the flags’ removal, such as Republican candidate for House of Delegates in district 78, Gino Chiarelli.
“Don’t let the crowd fool you. The overwhelming majority of people, parents and taxpayers in my district … believe you made the right decisions,” Chiarelli said. “Many of them fear backlash that they might incur because they dare stand against the political mob that is outside. So I want to say that I stand in solidarity with your decision. You made an excellent choice and the people of my district, the people of Morgantown at large, support you 100 percent.”
Chris Schulz
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Former Monongalia County teacher Rose Bell speaks at the Sept. 27 meeting of the Monongalia County Board of Education.
Later in the meeting, superintendent Eddie Campbell outlined the course of events that led to the removal of the flags. He said that after receiving concerned comments from community members that the Pride flags violated county policy, he consulted with outside legal counsel and took action.
“The guidance that I was provided with was ‘This does fall under your policy related to political activity in the classroom,’” Campbell said.
Campbell did not reveal what lawyer or firm he had consulted, and comments later in the meeting implied that not all board members had seen the legal analysis.
“I contacted our building principals, not the board, not these five people, I contacted our building principals,” Campbell said. “I said, ‘Please address the issue in your buildings. I want absolutely no consequences on the teachers that are displaying the flags.’”
Board member Daniel Berry said he interpreted the policy as applying to candidates running for political office and political parties. He expressed concern at the precedent the decision might set.
“I used to teach at Morgantown High and we had in the cafeteria, every flag of every country,” he said. “I think we’re going down a slippery slope, and that we might just have sterile white walls. I’m just really worried, and I think this probably needs to go on a future agenda.”
Board member Jennifer Hagerty reiterated that the Board of Education had taken no action on the issue of Pride flags, and questioned the legality of the decision.
“The ACLU, I think somebody brought this up in their speech, is pending litigation on this exact matter, overturning the board’s ruling on this exact conversation,” she said. “So I think we’re stepping into some legal territory that I personally think we need more information on because we aren’t quite prepared to make any decisions on Pride flags.”
Board member Ron Lytle focused on student comments about feeling unsafe, and said that safety should be the community’s priority. He questioned the necessity of the flag in that process.
“Be careful what you put up around you to protect you, because it sooner or later becomes a jail.” he said. “I can say, without a doubt, that if we would put the flags back up this week, we’d be right back where we’re at 10 years from now, this would be a wasted opportunity, absolutely wasted.”
Even after a protracted discussion that lasted almost an hour, the board took no action, although many members expressed interest in studying the matter further and taking the issue up again at a later date.
The board’s meeting carried on to issues of budget and expenditure, but most attendants and speakers left after the discussion of Pride flags.
Outside, now dark and with the demonstrators gone, a group of students congratulated each other for their bravery in speaking or for showing support by attending the meeting. Despite the outcome of the meeting not going their way, the atmosphere was positive.
“I’m incredibly disappointed with the outcome of tonight,” Corob said. “But at the end of the day, we all have each other’s back. We love like brothers and sisters and siblings, and no matter what we will continue to fight for what we believe in, and we will continue to stand up for people who deserve human rights.”
A walkout is planned at Morgantown High School at 1 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 28.
Dec. 7, 2016 will mark the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which thrust America into World War II. Morgantown High School’s marching band has been selected to represent West Virginia during a commemoration next year in Hawaii to honor that milestone.
One of the few remaining survivors of the attack came to the Mountain State from Texas to share his first-hand account of that fateful day with the band members and take part in Veterans Day ceremonies.
Seaman 1st Class Richard Cunningham, 94, was invited to speak at Morgantown High School’s auditorium because he’s one of the last witnesses to one of the most infamous days in American history.
He was serving aboard the USS West Virginia on Dec. 7, 1941, as the battleship was docked in Pearl Harbor. Early that morning, he and two other sailors were assigned to pick up some officers from shore in a small, wooden motorboat. They were halfway through their 10-minute journey when they heard an enormous explosion.
“The three of us looked back and we saw this Japanese plane coming down and peeling off and coming in,” Cunningham said. “We looked and saw the two rising suns and the big loud bomb and I thought, ‘Boy, this is it. This is war.’ ”
Cunningham told the rapt audience about how he and his shipmates dodged enemy fire in that flimsy boat to rescue sailors from the burning water of the harbor. He told them how the explosion from a damaged Japanese plane was so close that it singed the hair on his arms. And he told them how he and others fought the flames from the burning American naval fleet for days after the attack.
Credit Jesse Wright / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Seaman 1st Class Richard Cunningham speaks with students following a talk he gave at the Morgantown High School auditorium on Monday, Nov. 9.
But his message in the end was simple.
“Be prepared,” Cunningham said. “The nation can get lackadaisical in their attitude toward living, you know. And you get so involved with the things that you have to do that you forget about that the freedom isn’t free.”
Learning About History
Cunningham participated in many of the Veterans Day ceremonies in and around Morgantown during the week of Nov. 8. But he also spent time at Morgantown High School talking to students about the battleship he served on, the USS West Virginia, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It especially meant a lot to the MHS marching band. They’ve been chosen to represent the Mountain State in Hawaii next year during the 75th anniversary commemoration of the attack.
Band director Keith Reed said that to prepare for the trip, the students are learning a lot about the USS West Virginia and the sailors who died during the battle. He said having Cunningham meet the students in person drove those lessons home.
“The kids really liked him,” Reed said. “They listened, they were quiet today — I mean the whole student body, not just the band kids — and I think it will really bring it more alive to them and make it significant when we get to go over there.”
It’s a Long Way To Hawaii
Reed said the school plans to send about 250 band members to Pearl Harbor next year. Freshman trumpet player Arden Minor will be one of them.
“I know we’re good, but I don’t think we’re the best in the state,” she said. “But I do think we are very well qualified to represent the whole entire state of West Virginia and I am really excited about that.”
Credit U.S. Library of Congress
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A small boat rescues a seaman from the 31,800 ton battleship USS West Virginia on Dec. 7, 1941.
Arden said she is looking forward to paying homage to all those who served aboard the USS West Virginia.
Reed said he hopes to lay some wreaths on the dock near where the battleship was moored when it was attacked. He also has a special song in mind.
“We really want to play ‘My Home Among the Hills.’ And I don’t say that to, you know, to invoke emotion, but it is to think that,” he said.
Reed said it’s going to take quite an effort to get the band and their instruments to Hawaii, but they’ve received a lot of community support for the trip.
W.Va. Roots
Cunningham said he was more than happy to come to Morgantown. He lives in Texas, but of both his parents were West Virginia natives. Cunningham said he’s thrilled that so many students from Morgantown High will get to experience Hawaii.
“I’d love to see ’em out there and bare-footed and walking up and down Waikiki beach in their bare feet,” he said. “It would just, that would just tickle me, really, it would make me happy.”
Cunningham wrapped up his visit as a Veterans Day parade guest of honor, riding in a silver convertible and leading the MHS Marching Band down High Street in Morgantown.
Students from two Monongalia County schools are representing West Virginia in the National Science Bowl.
The event will be held Friday through next Monday at the National 4-H Youth Conference Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
The State Journal reports Morgantown High School and Suncrest Middle School in Morgantown advanced to the national competition by winning state regional competitions in February.
Morgantown High coach Joe Melia attributes his team’s success to their motivation and love science.
“And they enjoy the competition and they enjoy being able to represent West Virginia so well,” Melia said.
Morgantown High is no stranger to success when it comes to the Science Bowl. Melia said the school has made it to the national finals in three out of the past four years.
“I think four years ago, we got fourth place in the nation. And then last year, we ended up getting 13th in the nation,” he said.
Melia says he likes to have students with a variety of ages on the team so experience can build from one year to the next.
The top 16 high school finishers and the eight best middle school teams in the finals will win $1,000 for their schools’ science departments.
