In brief: Creative writing contest set
Local high school students are invited to submit essays or poems on how they would respond to peer pressure similar to that felt by German citizens in the days leading to the Holocaust.
The creative writing contest is part of the Spokane Community Observance of the Holocaust scheduled for May 1. The author will read the winning essay or poem at the event and will be presented with a keepsake commemorating the achievement by James Waller, a Whitworth College psychology professor and the author of Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. The winning submission will also be published in The Spokesman-Review.
Essays should be between 500 and 1,000 words and should respond to the following:
“Think about what social conditions and individual personality traits enabled ordinary people to become perpetrators of the Holocaust and other more recent genocides. Keeping this in mind, imagine you and your friends dealing with such conditions and the tremendous amount of peer pressure attempting to corrupt your moral compass. How would you respond?”
Students are asked to view the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s three-minute video featuring pictures from a Nazi photo album at nytimes.com/packages /html/arts/20070919_ ALBUM_FEATURE/ index.html.
Submissions should be typed and double-spaced in Microsoft Word format, with the student’s name, phone number, e-mail address, school name and grade level on the first page only, and any reference material should be annotated at the end of the piece.
E-mail submissions to never again-spokane@comcast.net by March 1.
Coeur d’Alene
Nursing students pass exam
All of North Idaho College’s spring 2007 practical nursing graduates and 96 percent of NIC’s associate’s degree nursing graduates passed the National Council Licensure Examination, qualifying each to apply for licensure as a registered nurse or a practical nurse in any state.
NIC’s 2007 graduates exceeded both the national and state averages for national licensure examination pass rates. Idaho’s average pass rate for the registered nursing exam was 89 percent and the national average was 86 percent. Idaho’s pass rate for the practical nursing exam was 93 percent and the national average was 88 percent.
The figures presented by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing represent the graduates’ first attempts at the national licensure examination.
In the more than 30-year history of NIC’s practical nursing program, the pass rate has been 100 percent every year except two.
“The success of these graduates reflects their commitment to meeting their educational goals and the faculty’s commitment to providing an excellent education,” said Health Professions and Nursing Director Lita Burns.
– From staff reports