Sean Alpert '01 won this year's Albert I. Dickerson '30 Freshman Essay Prize for his freshman seminar paper, "A Travesty of Justice: The Case of Leo Frank."
College President James Wright selected Alpert's essay from a group of four essays narrowed down from the entry pool chosen by the Committee on Freshmen Seminars.
The Dickerson prize, which includes a $250 cash award, is "aimed at effective expository writing," Wright said. Wright said he chose Alpert's essay because it was "a good paper and Sean had read relevant literature" and included these materials in his essay.
Alpert wrote the paper for Anthropology 7: Constructing Ethnic Identities in American Cultural History. He originally planned to write about the Dreyfuss Affair in France, but his professor, Dean of First Year Students Peter Goldsmith, suggested he write about the Frank case.
The Leo Frank case involved a Jewish pencil factory owner who was falsely accused of murdering a white female employee in 1913. After his death sentence was pardoned, a mob broke into the prison and killed him.
Alpert chose the topic because he wanted to know how something like this could happen. Alpert said he was shocked because no credible evidence against Frank was presented, and he questioned how this could have happened.
Goldsmith said the cash asset of the Dickerson award is "a very nice honor and a way of helping people to remember the primary principles of the seminar program." The First-Year Seminar Program was established around twenty-five years ago to honor former Freshman Dean Dickerson.
Dickerson also worked as assistant to the president, director of news services, executive secretary of the Alumni Fund and director of admissions during his tenure at the College.
Goldsmith, as the professor of Alpert's seminar, said he was "tickled to death" when he found out Sean's essay had won the award since Goldsmith had no idea that Sean's essay was among the finalists.
Alpert's winning entry was a 13 page research paper. He said his original sources led him to other sources, and eventually he "was down in the microfilm room and looking up New York Times articles from the 1910s."
Alpert said he "liked the paper. I was happy with it," but he did not think he was going to win. "It's one of those papers where the final form was due an hour before I turned it in. I made changes way after I should have been."
Wright said he enjoyed reading all of the entries. "It was great fun," he said. "I was proud to read them."
