OKLAHOMA CITY – Lawton was well represented at the state’s first Civics Bee competition held last week at Will Rogers Theatre.
Of the five finalists competing for cash and a chance to compete at the National Civics Bee Championship in Washington, D.C. in November, three students were from Lawton. Cullen Perez, an eighth grader at Lawton MacArthur Middle School, finished in first place and took home the $1,000 prize. Perez will compete on the national level with total prizes available worth more than $50,000.
Remi Isom, a seventh grader at Lawton Bishop Public School, finished in third place. Although Alghassim Diallo, a seventh grader from Lawton MacArthur Middle School, didn’t make the top three in the state competition, he finished first in the local competition earlier this year. The two other finalists, Stran Talley and Harry Wang, are both ninth graders at Stillwater Junior High. Talley placed second.
Perez said he went into the state competition Aug. 21 “mildly confident until I saw the results from round one, then I was very confident. I missed a few questions, but after the first 10, I saw I answered the most correctly and I felt so much better.”
The eighth grader said his most challenging question asked by the panel was, “Which Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion in the Munn v. Illinois landmark case?” Perez said he studied a lot of the cases, mainly to see what they were about and why they were important, “but not who actually wrote the decisions.”
When it was all said and done, he said his first thought was, “I really did it! I really did it!”
Perez qualified for the local round held in April by submitting a 500word maximum essay by the Feb. 19 deadline to the Lawton-Fort Sill Chamber of Commerce. The local chamber partnered with The Civic Trust of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation to host the first-of-its-kind civics competition modeled after the popular Scripps Spelling Bee competitions. The challenge encourages young Americans in sixth through eighth grades to engage in civics and contribute to their communities.
In the essay, middle school students were asked to identify a problem facing their community and how it might be solved. Perez said his essay “was about low voter turnout in Lawton and the U.S.
“My solutions were to incentivize voting with small prizes or a raffle, implementing programs to help people physically get to the polls or bring ballots to people, preregistration and even special efforts for soldiers and military families to vote absentee easier.”
Contestants were able to deliver a speech based on their essay at the state competition.
Even with the big win, Perez isn’t sure that a political career is in his future. “It could possibly make me take some more government classes and study more about politics,” he said. “But I still think I want to be a pilot or maybe a musician.”
Chad Warmington, president and CEO of the Oklahoma State Chamber, posted on the state’s website that, “We’re so excited to encourage Oklahoma students to engage in civics with a unique platform to demonstrate their knowledge. It’s an awesome opportunity for students who want to get active in government. We’re hoping this event will grow annually and encourage more and more Oklahoma students to get involved.”