Eli Anderson-Song '18 had his paper selected as The Cum Laude Paper - 2017. One winner is selected annually for the national award, which comes with a $5,000 prize. He is the first Governor’s student to win the prestigious award.
Annually, each of the 382 secondary schools that have a chapter of the Cum Laude Society is invited to submit its best example of original work, either creative or research based, to be considered for recognition as The Cum Laude Paper. TheCum Laude district committees do a blind judging and select a winner from the eight different districts in the United States. Of those eight winners, the national Cum Laude committee then chooses the best paper for the national award. The purpose is to recognize and celebrate outstanding academic achievement and original thought.
Anderson-Song’s original paper, "A Question of Life and Money: Chinese Prostitutes in San Francisco and American Immigration Policy”, describes how a small group of Chinese prostitutes became the most influential demographic on immigration law in the United States. It focused on how the intersection of these women’s identities - race, gender, immigrant status, and occupation - made them seem particularly threatening to the American public in the nineteenth century.
"When Eli first approached me and mentioned that he wanted to write a paper about the role of prostitution in the American West, I was intrigued," said his AP US History teacher Sharon Slater. "His interest in the topic stemmed from a family vacation to Seattle, at which time a museum tour guide mentioned the significance of prostitution in Seattle's early economic development. Eli decided to explore whether there might be an even larger role played by 19th century prostitution in the West.”
Slater remembers a specific conversation during his process, "Eli told me that he wanted to write on something completely original that not even historians had directly addressed. I knew then that his paper was likely to be extraordinary. His final paper was the best student paper that I have ever read."
The Cum Laude Society established The Cum Laude Society Paper contest in 2003 as a representation and celebration of outstanding scholarship at Cum Laude Society schools. The Society currently comprises 382 schools arranged in eight district groupings. The Governor’s Academy joined the competition in its second year, 2004. Anderson-Song is the first Governor’s student to win the national award and the seventh Governor’s student to win the award for District I.