Sydney Guye, a Kennedy High School senior, right, submitted the “Outstanding Senior Entry on Genocide, Bias or Tolerance” at Long Island History Day at Hofstra University. Left, Guye’s American history teacher, Dennis Urban.
Courtesy Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District
Sydney Guye, a Kennedy High School senior, received the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County’s “Outstanding Senior Entry on Genocide, Bias or Tolerance” award at Long Island History Day, a competition this semester at Hofstra University in Hempstead, for research on Sylvia Rivera, a transgender rights activist who died in 2002.
Guye’s paper — “Sylvia Rivera, Stonewalled: Sylvia Rivera’s Fight for Transgender Rights” — beat entries from across Nassau and Suffolk counties. Students carried out primary and secondary research through oral interviews, libraries, archives, museums and historical sites, and presented their findings in essays, exhibits, documentaries, online media and performances.
