Student Contest

The 2023 contest is now closed. Please stay tuned for more detail about the 2024 student contest. 

2023 Topic: What’s your vision for church-state separation?

At Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), we envision a nation where we are all free to believe or not believe as we choose, where our laws don’t allow anyone to use their beliefs to harm others, and where we can come together as equals to build a stronger democracy.

What is your vision for church-state separation? What would happen if we secured separation of church and state in the United States, and all people were able to live as themselves and believe as they choose? Students are invited to write a short essay or create a short video sharing that vision.

Tips for your submission:

• The strongest submissions will weave together personal experience/perspective and well-researched information.
• Submissions might describe what your future (or the future of people you care about) might hold, or what your communities would look and feel like – including your family, school, or neighborhood.
• Submissions can include researched factual information, personal narrative, or a combination; or be fictional.
• Submissions can reference historical events, legal cases, U.S. history, primary sources, personal experience, and other sources.
• Creativity is encouraged!

Who Can Participate

The contest is open to high school students and undergraduate students attending any 2- or 4-year college or university including trade & technical schools. Students must live in the United States including the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories. Employees and board members of Americans United, and members of their families, are not eligible to participate.

Participants can submit either an essay or a video, not both. Students are only eligible for one prize.

Criteria

Submissions will be judged on creativity and adherence to the topic above and additional criteria below. Essay submissions must be received by 11:59PM PT on Monday, May 8th, and video submissions must be received by 11:59PM PT on Monday, June 5th.

Essays:

• Essay length should be between 750 and 1,000 words.
• Writing should be clear, creative, and proofread; demonstrate genuine grappling with the topic; and be the student’s original writing.
• Students should fact check their writing and include citations when needed. Any form of citation or footnote is accepted.
• Note that formatting options will be limited in the submission form, and submissions will not be judged on formatting. But spelling, punctuation, and grammar do count.

Videos:

• Videos can be recorded on your phone or any kind of camera.
• No experience or expertise is needed; videos can be as simple as talking into the camera, or more elaborate such as animated, documentary-style, fictional narrative, recording of performances such as music or poetry, or something else.
• Length must be between 2-4 minutes.
• Landscape (16:9) or portrait (9:16)
• Videos can be sent as a YouTube Video Set as Unlisted, Audience set as “Not Made for Kids.” Music for YouTube must be public domain or it will be automatically removed from YouTube during their upload/review process.
• Videos can also be sent via Vimeo, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive links.

The first place essays will be printed in Church and State magazine. All the winning essays will be published on AU’s website.

All the winning videos will be published on AU’s digital media channels including but not limited to the website, YouTube, and TikTok.