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Announcing the CMU 2020 High School Essay Contest Results
Emily Katsman (Winnipeg), Grace Gong (Mississauga), and Katrina Lengsavath (Winnipeg) are the winners of this year's competition.
CMU is pleased to announce the winners of this year's High School Essay Contest: in order of placement, congratulations to Emily Katsman (Grade 11) of Shaftesbury High School, Grace Gong (Grade 12) of Erindale Secondary School, and Katrina Lengsavath (Grade 12) of Gordon Bell High School.
Contestants were asked to respond formally, in a roughly 1000 word essay, to one of the following three questions:
- Should we be concerned if our phones are listening to us?
- Are businesses and corporations manipulating environmental consciousness for their own gain?
- Should we engage with movies, music, video games, and other forms of art as a way to escape the world?
For her first-place essay "False Claims: Companies and Corporations using Environmental Consciousness to Manipulate the Minds of Consumers," Katsman (Grade 11) receives $300 in cash prize money along with $200 off CMU tuition for her first year. This essay tackles the problem of greenwashing:
"With our damaged Earth heading for a two-degree global temperature increase, it is a blessing that companies are starting to recognize their polluted effect on our deteriorating environment. However, because this increase in awareness is so new, rules and regulations regrading what is environmentally friendly are still unclear and easily broken. Canada itself has fallen behind in the construction and enforcement of environmental regulations," she writes.
Gong also responded to our prompt about manipulation and misrepresentation by companies seeking to cultivate a green image. Her runner-up essay amounts to an exposé on the corporate thrift store Value Village:
"In the age where thrift shopping and sustainability is in style, young people are shopping second hand more often. Although thrift shops may contribute to charities and promote reuse, when it comes to billionaire retail corporation Value Village [...] the reselling of donated used clothing is a corporate strategy marketed to poor people [that] does not substantiate its claims of supporting those in need or preventing clothes from "ending up in landfills." [...] As a former employee there, I can confirm that we were told during training that over 90% of the donated clothing doesn't get sold, and would most likely end up in the landfill."
Lengsavath chose to write about the link between entertainment and escapism. Her third-place essay, "Something for Your Mind," addresses entertainments like music, TV, and cinema as valuable tools for releasing stress and reorienting mood and perspective. Lengsavath points out that on-demand streaming has transformed—and perhaps improved—how the average viewer engages with TV and cinema, in contrast to the old order of channel surfing, or watching whatever might be on.
Both Gong and Lengsavath will receive $100 in prize money for their fine work, along with $200 off tuition for their first year at CMU. Congratulations to all the winners
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