Meridian Student Wins Cash in a C-SPAN Documentary Competition

Students across the country entered short documentaries in a C-SPAN contest, and a Mountain View High School student won $250 cash for her entry.

If you love a student who tackles tough issues, you're going to love this.

For a nationwide C-SPAN student competition, Meridian's Sarah Cole created a documentary called, "Nuclear Renaissance: The Politicization of Radioactive Waste Disposal."

C-SPAN asked students to join the national conversation on things that challenge us all and "Explore the issue you most want the president and new Congress to address in 2021." She went for it!

C-SPAN said more than 2,300 students across the country were part of the competition, and the most popular topics were:

Health Care (14.9%)
Environmental and Energy Policy (14.6%)
Equal Rights and Equity (13.5%)
Criminal Justice/Policing (7.6%)
Education (7.5%)

Sarah's piece was picked as an honorable mention, and she gets $250 for making the list. There was $100,000 in prize money given away overall.

Sarah isn't the first Mountain View High School student to do well in the competition. In 2019, Caitlin Lanterman and Madison Collins were also honorable mention winners and each took home $250, for their documentary, "American Immigration." Out of more than six thousand entries, they were in the top 150 nationwide. Only nine percent tackled the immigration issue that year.

Each year since 2006, C-SPAN has held the StudentCam contest for middle and high school students to produce short documentaries, and Mountain View High School has been well-represented many of those years. Congratulations to everyone there for tackling big issues, having a big impact, and gaining some big-time recognition.

The 150 winning videos for 2021 are up now at Studentcam.org courtesy of C-SPAN.