Students Yasmeen Razaq and Tathir Khan, with IS 10 principal Clemente Lopes (c), after winning national writing contest
Talk about a Queens coincidence.
Two teens from the same Astoria school detailed their powerful encounters with youth violence and hatred, and their essays stood out among hundreds submitted from across the state and country.
Tathir Khan and classmate Yasmeen Razaq, 14-year-olds who both just wrapped up eighth grade at Intermediate School 10, were chosen out of 592 candidates in the state, and 65,000 entries nationally, as winners of the annual “Do the Write Thing” contest sponsored by the National Campaign to Stop Violence.
Lisa Cone, a director at the National Campaign to Stop Violence, said such a coincidence has rarely happened in the program’s 19-year history.
“The judges don’t know (the writer’s) school, name or gender. It was pure coincidence,” she said. “It’s pretty rare. I’ve had that happen maybe only twice in the five years I’ve been here.”
Queens wordsmiths Yasmeen Razaq and Tathir Khan, both 14, won a national writing contest for condemning hate and youth violence.
Khan called himself “one of Hate’s victims,” and described his experiences growing up Muslim in a post-9/11 world.
“People would stare at us,” he wrote in his winning essay. “They would say things such as, ‘Where is your beard? You have everything else!’ or ‘Give me a warning during the next attack.’ It hurt me to think that millions of other people were insulted and shamed the way I was.”
Students from 27 states entered the contest this year, officials said. Two from each state were picked as winners.
“A lot of these students have very sad, very sobering stories,” Cone said. “We have found it’s a very therapeutic exercise to put that on paper.”
Razaq, a Woodside resident who is 14, penned a fictional journal entry in the voice of an anguished teen bullied for being “emo.”
The aspiring pediatrician said she was inspired after seeing kids her age torment each other.
“It makes me sad how our generation picks on people,” she said. “Bullying is just a thing people do to make themselves feel better, to hide their own flaws. It makes you a horrible person, and I hate it.”
The cost of youth violence hit home last week when a 14-year-old Bronx teen allegedly stabbed his eighth-grade classmate to death in response to intense bullying.
The national essay competition aims to promote awareness among youngsters, to stave off similar tragedies.
Last year, more than 71,000 students across the country pledged to refrain from violent acts, officials said.
“Hate is everywhere,” Khan said. “No one ever knows where hate will lead you. You can’t really extinguish it, but you can lessen it.”
mchan@nydailynews.com
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