Awards night at High School North on Thursday, June 6, included one presentation that was several years in the making — the Kenny Baker Memorial Scholarship.
According to Tricia Baker, the mother of the deceased 2009 North graduate for whom the award is named, “the scholarship had been denied for the past three years due to the stigma of Kenny’s illness and the way he died. We are happy that policy has changed based on a new understanding that mental illness is a biological based illness, no different from other chronic, debilitating illnesses. The discrimination due to mental illness has been lifted at High School North.”
In an E-mail to the press, Baker thanked North principal Michael Zapicchi “for all of his support of our efforts to educate the students about good mental health and suicide prevention.” She also cited “the enlightenment” of the WW-P administration in making the policy change.
The recipient of the first Kenny Baker Memorial Scholarship is Neha Kulkarni. According to Baker Kulkarni “has seen the stigma of mental illness first hand. “A close family member has been recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, which has changed the way the family thinks. Her goal at John Hopkins University is to ‘allow society to view mental illness as they would cancer or heart disease.’”
Editor’s note: The next issue of the News will be published in three weeks, Friday, June 28, and will include a report on the high school graduations, which take place Friday, June 21, at the Sun Bank Arena. Photos and listings of the senior award winners will begin to appear in our next regular issue on Friday, July 12.
