The results of the competition were announced during a brief ceremony Monday evening in the John Marshall Dining Room in the Memorial Student Center on MU’s Huntington campus.
“This year’s (winning) essays were simply brilliant; they were spectacular,” O’Hanlon said.
The competition was established in 2009, after an anonymous donor requested that Marshall find a way to promote scholarship related to the Constitution and simultaneously honor O’Hanlon, a retired Cabell County Circuit Court judge. Prior to his long career on the bench, O’Hanlon served as a professor and chair of the Marshall University Criminal Justice Department.
Patricia Proctor, director of the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy – which administers the contest – said this year’s question focused on the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case. Students were asked to read the Supreme Court’s decision as well as its descent, which involved around 200 pages of reading.
“This is pretty low key, and reading 200 pages of a court ruling isn’t exactly easy, but it’s a good mental workout,” O’Donnell said. “I like keeping engaged during the summer, and I think that’s a big reason why I entered the contest.”
Proctor said O’Donnell, 19, is already a junior at Marshall by virtue of the hours he has completed. He is majoring in accounting, and his minor is in Spanish.
O’Donnell received $1,000 for his winning essay, which is titled “Super PAC-ed; How Citizens United Set a Faulty Precedent for Corruption and Distortion.” Sepideh Ghenatnevi Dunham of Charleston, a Marshall graduate student originally from Maryland, wrote the second-place essay and received $500. Her essay is titled “Citizens Unite: Combating Corporate Suppression of the Voice of the People.”
“I wasn’t expecting to win or anything like that,” O’Donnell said. “I was expecting a political science major to win it. So, when I won it, I was really surprised.”
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Photo: Patricia Proctor, director of the Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy at Marshall University, presents the first-place award to Alex O’Donnell, who won the seventh annual Dan O’Hanlon Essay Competition. Photo by Braxton Crisp/Marshall University.