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Pomona
College Senior Wins First Place
in Elie Wiesel Essay Contest
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Pomona College senior Leslie Barnard of Woodinville, Wash.,
has been awarded first place and $5,000 in the Elie Wiesel
Prize in Ethics Essay Contest for her thought-provoking
essay, “Forty-three Cents.”
Inspired to enter the contest in part by the ethics classes
she has taken at Pomona College, Barnard, a senior majoring
in religious studies, based her award-winning essay on the
summer she spent living in a Buddhist nun’s hostel and
teaching English to local schoolchildren in India. Barnard
traveled to India on a Freeman Foundation Fellowship while
enrolled at Pomona College.
In Ladakh, Barnard writes in her essay, if a child whose
allowance for an entire month is 20 rupees (approximately 43
U.S. cents) spends 5 rupees on a small chocolate bar, she
will instinctively share it with all the other children
hovering around the candy stand, whether she knows them or
not. It doesn’t matter if adults are watching. This practice
has nothing to do with rules or punishments. It comes from a
deeper place. Like most Americans, I had been raised to
believe that the more I earned and achieved over and against
my competitors, the more I would have, the more I would be.
In Lakadh, however, this is not the case ...
“When I learned I had won, I felt really good,” Barnard
says. “I was glad the idea I was trying to represent had
gotten across. I was happy that I had been able to
articulate the power of these experiences I had in India, at
least to some extent.“
After graduation this month, Barnard plans to spend two
years teaching elementary school on the Rosebud Indian
reservation in South Dakota through Teach for America.
Click this link
to read the full essay.
The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest is an annual
competition that is designed to challenge college students
to analyze the urgent ethical issues confronting them in
today's complex world. The contest is run by the Elie Wiesel
Foundation for Humanity, established by Elie Wiesel and his
wife, Marion, soon after he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize
for Peace. The Foundation's mission, rooted in the memory of
the Holocaust, is to advance the cause of human rights by
creating forums for the discussion and resolution of urgent
ethical issues.
Pomona College is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts
institutions, offering a comprehensive program in the arts,
humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Its
hallmarks include small classes, close relationships between
students and faculty, and a range of opportunities for
student research. Visit Pomona College on the web at
www.pomona.edu.
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