Tuskawilla Middle student wins first-ever design contest

As first period was already underway at Tuskawilla Middle School Friday morning, Principal Randy Shuler quietly led an entourage of school officials through an echoing corridor – a right turn then a left, ending at an art class door. They were there for the girl in the dark braided hair and red sweater.  

The call had gone out in mid-February, spreading through elementary and middle schools in Seminole County: an art contest. Design the “I Voted” sticker for the upcoming elections. Fifty students had entered the contest in the past few weeks, ranging from a third grader to an eighth grader.

At 9:57 a.m. Shuler pulled the door open and the people flooded into a classroom full of unaware middle schoolers.

But as Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Amy Pennock started speaking, it looked clear that sixth grader Arwen Yan knew they were there for her. Under her jacket, Pennock hid the new “I Voted” logo on the front of her shirt as more than four dozen students, staff, reporters and photographers looked on. 

Then came the big reveal. 

“Arwen, as a sixth grader, was by far the biggest choice,” Pennock would later say of the SOE staff’s vote for the winner of the first-ever contest to design the logo that more than 100,000 voters could see this year. She held out a framed print of Arwen’s colored pencil design of a bald eagle flying over a background of red, white and blue stars clutching a U.S. flag in its talons, the words “I voted” underlined above it. 

“Kudos to you for taking the chance,” Pennock said to Arwen. “It was very impactful.” 

The winner stifled a smile as Pennock showed her the framed picture

“Arwen’s a really talented artist,” her art teacher, Olivia Manzone, said. “It really summed up being proud of voting and exercising your right.” 

Now more than ever, Manzone said, “we need people to be interested” in their community and being engaged in the voting process.  

Shuler, who’d just received the Seminole Association of School Administrators’ Lamp of Knowledge award a few days before, said he was proud of his student’s achievement. 

“It’s gorgeous,” he said of the winner of the SOE’s first student design contest. “I’m proud to have a Titan be that first one.” 

Arwen’s parents were there to see it, beaming just a few feet from their daughter. 

“She’s always been an artist,” her mother Jenni Yan said. “She did a lot of art projects with grandma at home. When she went to school, she really loved art class, from the beginning, like Pre-K.”

“She just started in this class and already she’s been talking about her teacher and her class and how much she loves it,” she added. 

And now, with it printed in the bottom right corner of t-shirts and stickers throughout the county, plenty of residents will know Arwen’s name. 

“They may not be able to vote yet, but it gives them a way to participate,” Manzone said of her students getting involved in the contest. “I look forward to getting my sticker when I go to vote.”