Monday, 17 November 2008

Milton students honored for letters

Lindsay Musser,16, of Milton searches for the copy of her letter to the editor she wrote earlier this year that earned her the Thomas Paine Award for Citizen Journalism. Musser recieved her award during a banquet at the Front Street Sation in Northumberland Sunday night Nov. 16, 2008. Liz Rohde /

They earn citizen journalism award

By Rob Scott
The Daily Item

NORTHUMBERLAND -- Two Milton High School students who helped raise $35,000 for a school in Cambodia were honored for writing letters to the editor in defense of the project earlier this year.

In March, William Reish, of West Milton, wrote a letter to the editor chastising the Milton Area School District for flying a tattered and faded American flag outside the high school. In his letter, he referred the district's efforts to raise money to build a school in Cambodia, implying that the money would be of better use replacing the flag.

Students Lindsay Musser and Jehoshaphat Reich responded by writing letters of their own, criticizing Reish's insinuation that the district was somehow wrong for raising money for the school while ignoring the flag.

Lindsay and Jehoshaphat were honored Sunday, along with about a hundred other letter writers, by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. They received the Thomas Paine Award for citizen journalism.

"I was just so mad and disgusted that someone would waste their time writing this letter," said Lindsay, 16, after she got her award.

The money raised for the Cambodian school came entirely from donations and fundraisers, she pointed out, not from the district's coffers.

Mike Conn, a teacher at the high school whose trip to southeast Asia inspired the fund drive, said the district raised $35,000 in 4 1/2 months.

"(The students) took this very personally," he said. "It touched me deeply, and it says a lot about their character and they felt so passionately about what we were doing."

Robert Shabanowitz, a Lewisburg resident who also wrote to defend the school, received an award of his own Sunday.

"The kids were doing everything the flag symbolizes," he said. "These kids were doing such a magnanimous gesture. To hear them get so much criticism for that ... broke the camel's back for me. They were putting into action what few of us do."

Jehoshaphat was looking at colleges and could not attend the awards ceremony, according to Conn.

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