KU News Release

KU junior’s essay on migrant crossing in Sonoran Desert wins Whitcomb prize

LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas junior has won the 2009 Philip W. Whitcomb Memorial Essay Contest for the account of her life-changing experience as a humanitarian worker in the Sonoran Desert.

Brenna Mae Thompson Daldorph, a Lawrence junior in journalism and French, will receive $500 for her prize-winning work, “Miles from Civilization: A Conscientization in the Borderlands.”

Daldorph assisted the Tucson-based No Mas Muertes/No More Deaths organization, which provides lawful aid to migrants, as a volunteer with KU’s Alternative Breaks program this March. The organization gives food, water and medical aid to migrants who might otherwise die of exposure in the desert.

John Bricke, professor of philosophy and a member of the prize committee, said Daldorph used well-crafted prose, haunting images and personal accounts to connect readers to migrants’ fear-filled desert journey. He also noted that by prompting thoughtful reflection on U.S. immigration policy, her essay addresses the Whitcomb theme of knowledge, thought and action in public affairs and policy.

The essay focuses on complex U.S. immigration problems and Daldorph’s personal observations along the border. Toward the end of her alternative break, she and other volunteers patrolled the desert for an injured migrant and found him dehydrated, blistered and in urgent need of help.

She wrote, “I had entered the desert a naïve 21-year-old; I left changed. How could I not? I had more than just statistics. I had faces and voices to haunt me at night. I had images burned into my memory.”

Daldorph is the daughter of Brian Daldorph and Sandra Issa and graduated from Lawrence High School. She attends KU as a National Merit Scholar and recently won an Undergraduate Research Award for a project advised by Madison Davis Lacy, associate professor of theatre and film. While at KU, she also has received a Chancellors Club Scholarship, Coca-Cola Scholarship, James and Alice Phelps Memorial Scholarship, Nunemaker College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Scholarship and Roger N. Wooldridge Journalism Scholarship. She was the first student selected as a Hall Center Scholar to serve as a liaison for the Hall Center for the Humanities lecture series.

The Whitcomb essay contest has taken place annually since 1988. The prize includes a book and the inscription of the winner’s name on the Whitcomb plaque in the Nunemaker Center. The contest is open to any KU undergraduate. Past winners have come from engineering, English, philosophy, architectural engineering, anthropology, mathematics and other disciplines.

The contest honors Philip W. Whitcomb (1891-1986), who earned a doctorate in philosophy at KU in 1981 at age 89. A journalist by trade, Whitcomb received a bachelor’s degree in 1910 from Washburn University and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University from 1911 to 1914. His career as a European journalist spanned 64 years and 17 countries. As an Associated Press correspondent, he covered the first and second world wars. He also was a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, Baltimore Sun, New York Tribune and Boston Evening Transcript. Upon his retirement from the Christian Science Monitor in 1978, he entered graduate school at KU.

Whitcomb’s dissertation was titled “Essence and Existence in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome and Francisco Suarez.” For part of his time at KU, he was a graduate teaching assistant in the Humanities and Western Civilization Program. He died in Paris in 1986 at age 94.

The prize fund is managed by KU Endowment, the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management foundation for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.

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