Sampay is a major in Critical Race, Gender & Ethic Studies. She also has a minor in Journalism. Three columns that Sampay wrote while on the staff of The Lumberjack newspaper in fall 2015 won first place for General Column Writing in the SPJ’s annual Mark of Excellence Awards contest for region 11, which covers Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada.
As a first-place winner, Sampay will move on to the national competition among category winners from the 12 SPJ regions. Sampay has also been named Opinion Editor for the Lumberjack for fall 2016.
National winners will be notified in the late spring and will be recognized at Excellence in Journalism 2016 Sept. 18-20 in New Orleans.
Entries are judged by professionals with at least three years of journalism experience. The awards honor the best in student journalism. As such, judges were directed to choose only those entries they felt were outstanding work worthy of such an honor. If the judges determined that none of the entries rose to the level of excellence, no award was given. Any category not listed has no winner.
The columns Sampay wrote can be found at thelumberjack.org:
thelumberjack.org/2015/12/12/who-is-slauson-girl
thelumberjack.org/2015/10/23/slauson-girl-speaks-the-importance-of-ethnic-studies
thelumberjack.org/2015/09/23/slauson-girl-speaks-memoirs-of-a-ghetto-girl