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Homeless Student Is Intel Talent Search Semifinalist

Posted by Soulskill on from the dedication-to-science dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Samantha Garvey, a senior at Brentwood High School, has managed to become one of the remaining 300 semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search this year. Her research focused on mussels and on her discovery that they change the thickness of their shells if a predator such as crabs are introduced. Why is Garvey's achievement so impressive? Because she and her entire family are homeless, and rely on a local homeless shelter. Such a situation would stop many students from being able to focus on studying, let alone a research project, but Garvey has instead used her situation as motivation."

17 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. Succeeding in a public school, yet! by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well done of her to rise up and be counted. Amazingly, despite everything thrown at her by people who would go so far as to condemn her for the social and financial position of her family, she's using it as self-motivation. Has to be cruel to be homeless and one of the National School Lunch Program kids in a world where many children go out of their way (starving effectively) to hide the shame of their family's misfortune.

    Any candidates for public office feel like giving her parents some employment or shall we go the usual route, use her as an example the American Dream isn't dead, yet, and then abandon them for the next popular thing on the campaign trail?

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. How is this even... by Bitsy+Boffin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    America (I'm addressing you as a whole).

    How is it that you allow young people, let alone whole families, to be homeless, to live in "shelters".

    WTF is wrong with you people?!

    You are supposedly the most powerful nation on earth, the wealthiest, the nation that is spoken to exude opportunity and success from every pore.

    And you have whole families, school children, living in homeless shelters.

    I don't care how they came to be in the situation, it doesn't matter how that happened, what matters is resolving it, providing the social, housing, and financial support to ensure that every body can call somewhere home.

    For every one remarkable individual like this who manages to overcome the adversity, I hate to think how many are dragged down by the circumstance.

    --
    NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
    1. Re:How is this even... by Ouchie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Income inequality is just envy. - Mitt Romney

      --
      "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
    2. Re:How is this even... by 10101001+10101001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Name the country that does not have homeless people.

      Yea, that's telling 'em. America, the great and power, is just as powerless as everyone else to resolve a social problem that may be unsolvable. Of course, America isn't really interested in solving that social problem. I don't mean this as a slander or an insult. It's precisely the belief in a sort of Social Darwinism that has made the US such a great power (it also helps that it has a lot of natural resources and a climate that readily allows for most of their extraction, a relatively large amount of space which keeps down the cost of living in most the country, and an effective imperialist agenda not unlike many other empires of the past which might have more to do with it) that keeps a lot of social reform discussion from even coming up; I mean, why fight against a gifted horse just to help a few people? Then there is...

      Not saying the US does not have problems (oh hells yes we do!), but there are homeless everywhere.

      Hunger is everywhere. Vaccinatable childhood diseases are everywhere. A need for high-speed travel for the movement of both goods and people exists everywhere. The desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness exists everywhere. I guess we can't actually do anything about any of the above then, though. I mean, the US has problems...like homelessness..so we can't actually discuss working to fix homelessness. That's some master deflection; how about at least trying in the slightest to offer a few valid ideas on why homelessness can't be eradication entirely? That'd probably be an actually valid argument. Of course, that still leaves the potential of homeless almost being entirely eradicated (ie, that the few special cases that show homelessness is inherently inevitable doesn't explain not dealing with homelessness for the vast majority of the homeless).

      --
      Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
    3. Re:How is this even... by SammyIAm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      what matters is resolving it, providing the social, housing, and financial support to ensure that every body can call somewhere home.

      What do you think homeless shelters are for?

    4. Re:How is this even... by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most western nations will provide at least a flat to their poor. The only homeless they have are people whose psychiatric problems cause them to refuse the help. The U.S. really is dead last amongst the 1st world.

    5. Re:How is this even... by forkfail · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Long and the short of it is that we've allowed a new, hereditary aristocracy to persuade us that our best interests are aligned with theirs.

      Oh, they're smarter in many ways than the nobility of the past. They know how to blend in just a bit better, while still flaunting their wealth. They've bent the principles of equality and the perception thereof, and corrupted the American Dream, locking everyone else out, but allowing them to still dream the dream.

      This new aristocracy has their fiefdoms in the corporations; they own our government lock, stock and barrel; they keep us at war.

      They own the majority of the media and the mediums, and what they don't have yet, they're working diligently to take. And what information and knowledge there is, they ensure not only control of, but fight to make you pay for.

      And they've persuaded too many people of this nation that caring for the sick and the elderly is somehow evil; that educating the next generation is a waste of money; that governments are not, in fact, created by men to secure the fundamental rights as described by Jefferson. In fact, they've gone so far as to persuade many of the citizenry that any sort of organization that builds out the infrastructure, education and welfare of the people simply for the sake of doing so is fundamentally evil. They've even gone so far as to pervert Christianity to be a worship of wealth.

      And at the same time, we're provided with an ample supply of soma in the form of so-called reality television, video games, professional sports circuses and other thought destroying noise.

      That's what's happened to us, and that is why we allow this.

      And those who have made issue of it are called dirty, unwashed lazy hippies, or seekers of entitlement - an incredibly ironic term, given that it comes from the rights of the nobility - those with title. They've lumped the terms "fascism", "communism", and "socialism" all into one inclusive bucket, not realizing the extremely significant differences between them, nor that our nation has become ruled by the corporations, nor that a certain amount of socialism is required for a society of the size and with the population density that ours has.

      That's what's wrong with my people.

      --
      Check your premises.
    6. Re:How is this even... by mbkennel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In other words, yet another medical bankruptcy & destitution, which is almost uniquely American in developed nations.

  3. Re:I really hate this article by sjames · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're modded funny, but it's a serious matter. Remember this next time you decide that the poor and homeless are just bums who got where they are because of their own failings. The fact is any one of us could be there and might one day end up there through no fault of our own. It is by far more likely than it is for us to join the rich crowd.

    I hope this helps lift her and her family out of their situation.

  4. Re:Exception or the rule? by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In all probability, homeless people will follow the same distribution curve as everyone else

    Sorry, but I seriously doubt that. A very large percentage of the homeless population are there because they have mental disorders. I'm pretty sure that there's a much larger proportion of people with an IQ of 80 than those who have an IQ of 120

    --

    Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
  5. Re:I really hate this article by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, occasionally you'll find a sad story wherever you look, but a vast majority of homeless people are homeless people because they fucked up their shit.

    What about their kids?

  6. Re:I really hate this article by forkfail · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So much for "There but for the grace of God go I" (or whatever method of expressing empathy you care for).

    Nope - these days, it's all about lazy, entitlement seeking, dirty, smelly, socialist, thieving, parasitic trash sucking the life out of the economy.

    At least - right up to the point at which BigCorp your work for outsources your job and you can't even pay the mortgage on your rather modest home or feed the kids... suddenly, maybe, it occurs then that perhaps some of these folks just maybe weren't just lazy scum.

    --
    Check your premises.
  7. Re:I really hate this article by artor3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He could just be an upper-middle class young adult who still believes that if he works hard enough, he'll one day get to join the 1%. Just wait until he or someone he cares about gets sick and loses their home, or until Bain Capital or similar buys out his business and decides his job could be better done by a coworker working unpaid overtime, or until his life savings get wiped out by some Wall Streeters run amok and leave him with nothing to retire on.

    Sadly, for some people it takes experiencing bad luck themselves to realize that the poor aren't poor out of laziness.

  8. Re:I really hate this article by artor3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So we must allow the 1% to continue robbing us until we are literally starving to death. Only then can we raise a (feeble, emaciated) fist against them.

    Has it occurred to you that the longer we wait to solve the erosion of the middle class, the harder it will be?

  9. Re:I really hate this article by forkfail · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's turn your question around.

    What meritous work do the 1% do to deserve the rapidly increasing and disproportionate chunk of the wealth that they get?

    --
    Check your premises.
  10. Re:I really hate this article by Strider- · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What about them? I think that homeless shelters are a Good Thing, and certainly so in the case of helping kids who had no choice about the situation they were born into. But let's be real--the kids have the same genetics as their parents. If the parents were losers then odds are the kids are too.

    Translation: "Are there no prisons? Are there no poor houses?"

    --
    ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
  11. Re:I really hate this article by Jessified · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have mixed feelings about stories like this. While I hope that she is able to do something special and help her family, if she does, that only sends the message that any poor person can do so, and that they don't means they are lazy. You find one example of a person who clawed their way out of poverty and all of a sudden the countless others unable to do so are simply lazy.

    Like those you can already see in this thread...