The Camden Conference has awarded Bill Taylor Awards to four high school students for their essays related to the 2020 Camden Conference, The Media Revolution: Changing the World.  

Bill Taylor, a long-time supporter of the Conference, created this award in 2014 to promote student research in support of his strong interest in education.

Education programs of the Camden Conference are designed to promote knowledge, perspectives, and dialogue opportunities on world affairs with high school and college educators and their students. Several Maine high schools and colleges offer academic courses based on the annual Conference topic. Twenty percent of the nearly 1300 Conference attendees are high school and college students who receive Camden Conference scholarship funding to defray their registration cost. The students who enter the essay contest do not have to be enrolled in a Camden Conference course, but they do have to attend the Conference.

The winners of the 1st prize tie are: Pearl Benjamin of Watershed School with her essay entitled “The Necessity of Truth: How Social Media is Used to Undermine Democracy” and Sophie Laurence of Gould Academy with her essay entitled “Ideological Bias in the Media: “Blue Feed Red Feed = How Democracies Die”.  

The 2nd prize winner is Caitlyn Drinkwater of Piscataquis Community High School with her essay entitled “New Media and Misinformation: The Tools We Need to Change Media Forever”. 

The 3rd prize winner is Romana Bystrianska of Piscataquis Community High School, a foreign exchange student from Slovakia writing in her second language, with her essay entitled “European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Fake News Policy in Slovakia”. 

“The Bill Taylor Award essay contest was highly competitive this year and the winners reflect a progressive engagement with international affairs among Maine high school students,” said the Conference, in a news release. “The Conference congratulates our winners. 

All of the winning essays are posted on the website: https://www.camdenconference.org/the-camden-conference-announces-winners-of-high-school-level-bill-taylor-award/.

The mission of the Camden Conference is to foster informed discourse on world issues. For more information, visit www.camdenconference.org, email info@camdenconference.org, or call 207-236-103