When Ravenna sophomores Adelina Wunderle and Ella Ribelin teamed up to create a project in their Honors American History class, they had no idea that they were about to make school history. The Ravens’ duo became the first students to submit a project to the National History Day regional competition and became the first students to compete at the state competition last Saturday at Capital University.
“It is definitely a big deal to us,” Ribelin told The Weekly Villager. “We have never had anything go this far and we are just happy that the hard work we put into it was noticed and took us this far.”
Ribelin and Wunderle earned a state bid when they were awarded second place at the regional competition on March 29 at Youngstown State University. The Ravenna duo qualified for the state competition by building a group project setting forth the rights and responsibilities on the infamous Kent State Shooting of 1970.
“We really wanted to put in the extra effort,” Wunderle told The Weekly Villager. “We even went to the Kent State Museum to simply look in and find some extra stuff. We took pictures and we just really wanted to make a big impact and wanted it to be special.”
Wunderle and Ribelin teamed up to create a group project in their Honors American History Class, taught by Dawn Boohers. According to Wunderle, the projects were judged by Boohers but ordinarily not submitted to the National History Day regional competition.
The Ravenna sophomores’ project was deemed so impressive by Boohers that she submitted it to the regional competition, marking the first-time students from the Ravenna School District qualified for the competition.
Wunderle said that she and Ribelin picked the Kent State Shooting because they already had an understanding of and interest in the incident, from what they had each learned from their families, as Wunderle’s father and Ribelin’s grandfather, respectively, were both history teachers.
“When we first submitted it, we didn’t think we would get far because we thought we had to be pretty good from what we have heard to go far,” acknowledged Ribelin. “Once we made it to the regional competition, we were happy that Mrs. Booher submitted it to the actual regional competition.”
The pair created a poster that listed the rights and responsibilities of the participants in the incident. Ribelin said that as far as responsibilities were concerned, both sides were irresponsible because the Kent State students were ordered not to protest but the Ohio National Guard also did not act responsibly by discharging their weapons.
Wunderle argued that that students’ rights were violated as the Ohio National Guard endangered their welfare by firing into the crowd, but the students were also in the wrong because while they were allowed to stage a peaceful demonstration, it was anything but peaceful.
“There was an order that had gone out, a mandate that said no protest for the next day so they did not have the right to protest in that specific instance, so they were breaking that,” she added.
In addition to listing the rights and responsibilities on the poster, they also pasted pictures on the poster to create a timeline of the events. They then made a cardboard diorama of the ROTC building that was burning and stationed little army figures on the display, with several having guns and others holding protest signs.
Wunderle said that given their personal understanding of the incident because of their proximity to Kent State, it helped motivate the pair to go the extra mile for the project.
“I think this is something that I would not have been interested in if I was not so close”,” she acknowledged. “It just would have been another event that happens I just think it is very meaningful because it happened so close. I go to Kent State at least once a week, so it is cool to see that something so historic happened right there.”
Ribelin said that the feedback they received from the judges indicated that their project was well-thought out and their personal ties to the incident helped deepen their understanding. She added that they were advised to improve upon their thesis statement.
After a strong presentation, the Ravenna duo’s efforts were rewarded with a state berth but their journey ended at the state competition as they were not selected to advance to the national competition.
“We were really surprised,” Ribelin noted. “We obviously were not expecting to win. We did not know what to expect and when you are sitting in an auditorium full of a bunch of other students who had known about this event, hearing our names called from our school, it was really special to us.”
