Ronit Goswami
Goshen College, Winner of 2020 C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest
I remember when we moved here, we had no family; all our family’s kind of back home in Bangladesh. But we had fantastic neighbors.
I actually had another topic in mind. It was going to be about discrimination against people of color and minorities here in the U.S., and I have experience with that a little bit, too. But homelessness is just so prevalent, and you see it on the global scale as well.
It was something I saw a lot growing up when we lived in Bangladesh, and you see a lot of homelessness even here in the United States. I just thought that issue was very, very pressing. That’s something that’s been on my mind for a while.
I was definitely nervous at first. You always get a little bit of pre-game jitters, as people say. I looked at the video from last year to see where I could improve as far as my stage presence.
Once you see faces in the crowd that you recognize, it kind of gives you comfort, in a way, and you’re a little more comfortable as you speak out. Practice doesn’t make perfect but it makes better, so there was a lot of practice that went into that as well.
I would say Goshen is a fairly diverse city-slash-town. There’s a lot of intersecting cultures, intersecting lifestyles – just really a lot going on as far as the people. And one thing that really stood out to me, especially moving here from Bangladesh and moving here from New York City, was just the fact that people seem to go out of their way and people care around here. Not everywhere you go will have people who are there to kind of look out for you and show that caring personality.
Writing, editing, and photography by Scott Weisser and Neil King
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