Senior Madison Pisarski won third place in the 2024 York County Bar Foundation’s Law Day Essay Contest.

She found out about the contest in her AP Government Class, and two weeks after submitting her piece, she found out she placed third.

“I…had to write an essay on why civil participation was important and [why] maintaining democracy [is important], like why is voting important in the United States,” Madison said. “ It was assigned for a grade, but other than that, it is important to be able to vote. Recently, I turned 18, …it was the first election that I was allowed to vote, and a lot of people don’t realize how important voting is.”

Madison wrote the piece in a little less than a day.

“It was around 55 hundred words that we had to write, and [I] feel like [if]I [could]…have more, I would be able to maybe polish it up and make it better, but I am really happy where I…placed….,” Madison said. “It was like a good experience all around, and I am pretty happy how it went.””

AP Government teacher Frank Posner was her sponsoring teacher for the competition, and he attended the awards ceremony with her. He also assigned the prompt in his class; however, he gives Morgan all the credit.

“[The assignment] was passed along to me from Doctor Sterner who said this is a good opportunity, and we found some time and had everybody do it,” Posner said. “I facilitated with choices they had to pick and some general writing process aspects,…for the most part…she’s probably 99.5% responsible for all of it.”

Posner was proud of Madison overall and was excited to share the victory with her.

“It was great…having placed, we got invited to a lunch-in, and it was really impressive…,” Posner said. “A formal federal judge spoke at the lunch-in, so it was really special to be invited to something with so [many people with so] much experience in law [in the room]. It was really neat to see bigger investment in the community and law and a greater understanding … [in the] greater community of ours.”

Freshman Morgan Pisarski, Madison’s sister, sees her sister as deserving of this recognition.

“My sister is a very talented writer,” Morgan said. “She has always been very articulate…and writes, and she’s very talented…. she deserves it, and she did an amazing job.”