Trinity First-Year Student Mounts Valiant Effort in Loss
 
HARTFORD, Conn. – Trinity will be well represented on the West Hartford Board of Education as two faculty members, Naogan Ma and Elin Katz, swept to victory in Tuesday’s municipal election, helping the Democrats retain their 5-2 majority.

According to a report in The Hartford Courant, the outcome was not in doubt for very long. Ma, Principal Lecturer in Language and Culture Studies and International Studies, and Katz, Visiting Lecturer in the Allen K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric, knew the outcome about 12 minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m.

The contest for control of the school board was considered hard-fought and contentious even by West Hartford standards.

“I am thrilled and excited with my first venture into politics,” said Katz. “Our opponents made the race unnecessarily nasty and personal, so I am very pleased that West Hartford voters resoundingly rejected this kind of campaigning by maintaining the Democratic majority on both the Town Council and the Board of Education.”

However, Katz was gracious toward one of her opponents, Andrew Bannon-Guasp ’13, who ran on the Republican ticket. Katz commended Bannon-Guasp for “his enthusiasm and dedication,” adding, “We often hear complaints about America’s apathetic youth. Andrew is yet another example of just the opposite – a young man who cares deeply about his community.”

Although Bannon-Guasp went down to defeat in a rare bid by a college student for municipal office, managed to keep his loss in perspective. He told The Courant that he had begun his day reading the Book of Job in preparation for a paper on Biblical tradition. After learning of his defeat, Bannon-Guasp said, “I will be going back to the Bible tonight.”

Bannon-Guasp celebrated his 18th birthday only eight days before the election. An interest in education runs deep in his family, as his mother and aunt are both teachers, as were two of his grandparents.  One of the reasons he had tossed his hat in the ring was to bring a young person’s perspective to the school board. But it wasn’t to be, at least not this year.

The primary reason that the race was acrimonious was because of the specter of racial imbalance and redistricting of schools, an issue that had arisen in 1994 and had divided West Hartford residents. Republicans claimed that the issue was likely to rear its ugly head again, while Democrats countered that Republicans were guilty of fear mongering. Democrats said their focus was on maintaining reasonable class sizes and preserving the town’s high quality of education during a severe economic downturn.

Like Bannon-Guasp, both Ma and Katz come from families with deep backgrounds in education.

Katz, who earned her M.A. at Trinity, has a brother on the school board in Lansing, N.Y. In addition, her grandfather was the president of the school board in Windham, N.Y. and her mother was a teacher.

Ma, who has taught at Trinity for 23 years and whose children attended the West Hartford schools, has a daughter who is a teacher and a son at Connecticut College.

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