Ketchikan High School senior Marco Torres was honored at Thursday’s Ketchikan School Board meeting by local representatives of the Alaska Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Dennis Spurgeon and Joni Bates presented Torres with a $1,000 scholarship for an essay Torres wrote for the VFW Voice of Democracy contest. His essay won the state competition.
Spurgeon says that the annual contest began in 1947, and is open to U.S. students throughout the world.
For this year’s competition, students were asked to write essays based on the theme: “Is Our Constitution Still Relevant?”
In his approximately seven-minute speech, Torres argues that the U.S. Constitution is, indeed relevant, especially considering its ability to change.
Here is the final segment of his essay, which Torres read during a recent Ketchikan School Board meeting.
Torres left Friday for the national competition, which offers a grand prize of $30,000.
