Students advance to county level in History Day competition

Who would want to study history in their spare time? Answer: the group of 37 students participating in this year’s History Day competition. 

This year, the school has had many History Day entries, but only a maximum of three entries per category advanced to the county competition. The school sent 20 entries with 37 students, to the county competition at Castilleja School on March 9.

The theme for this year’s History Day, in which students pick a topic to research and enter in a competitive event, is “Turning Points in History: People, Ideas, Events.” The broadness of the theme allows students to pick a wide variety of topics ranging from the creation of the smallpox vaccine to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

“I'm really enjoying the freedom of History Day — everything is independent and my group and I have complete creative control and we get class credit,” said junior Amelia Troyer, who created an individual documentary about the Summer of Love, said.

In the past two years, the school enjoyed a lot of success in the History Day competitions. According to librarian Kevin Heyman, during the past two years, the school has sent more than 15 entries to the state competition and three entries to the national competition. 

As a result, Heyman has high expectations for this year’s country entries.

“We have a number of very strong entries this year,” said Heyman. “This should be a record year as I expect to send more students to the state competition than Saratoga High School ever has.”

Naturally, the students going to county have researched their topics extensively in order to compete and succeed. As a result, they used the school’s databases along with other sources in order to learn as much about their topic as possible. 

This year, Saratoga purchased a new database, NewsBank, an excellent source of old newspaper and magazine articles. Heyman said that Newsbank allows students to view the actual images of old articles, helping them understand the context of the text. 

“The cost for the databases is around $3,800 per year,” said Heyman. “That sounds like a lot, but when we consider the extent to which it is used, the per article cost is quite reasonable.”

Junior Andrew Chang, who is going to the county competition with fellow juniors Mihir Iyer, Alex Renda and Nikil Ramanathn, used the database to extensively research his topic, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and create a group website. 

“The school database allowed us to find newspaper clippings from the era about our topic, which helped us find images that supported our analysis greatly. I’m pretty happy that the school purchased it because it saved us a lot of time,” said Chang.

In addition to using the new database, students have been active in their research, going so far as to find real people to interview. 

Heyman said that this year, there has been an exceptionally large amount of students who did original research ranging from interviewing participants in historical events, going to the Nation Archives and seeking out experts in the fields the students are researching.

Troyer interviewed a participant in the Summer of Love.

“My favorite and most crucial interview was with Kathleen Eagan, who was actually in San Francisco for the Summer of Love … She offered a primary perspective on the goals of the hippie movement and the nature of the summer as well, dispelling many negative stereotypes that people tend to have about hippies. She really brought it to life for me,” Troyer said.