Marquette Senior High School honors Tom Baldini with Soapbox Challenge

MARQUETTE — Today Marquette Senior High School hosted the first ever Tom Baldini Soapbox challenge.

The Soapbox challenge honors the late Tom Baldini who can be described as a self servant and always looked to solve problems.

Students chose a topic that they believed was an important issue to bring to the community and they had 2 minutes to describe why it’s a problem and what they should do about it.

The concerns were fielded by a group of people, a few of which hold seats on the Marquette City Commission.

This challenge helps engage students on topics in their local area and beyond.

“We’ve just been so surprised at how strong our students have been and how supportive they’ve been of one another. One of things we are really going to emphasize here is that you might disagree with somebody is saying, but never the person. We are here to empower each other; we have been blown away with the level of respect and empathy that our students have shown,” said Blythe Raikko, History Teacher.

Lillian Biolo Thomsen’s speech on gun control left the biggest mark on judges and took home the whole competition and the student choice awards.

Marquette Senior High School hopes they can continue this challenge every year.