Malverne Senior Wins ERASE Racism's John Wenzel Scholarship For Advancing Racial Equity

MALVERNE, NY — Malverne High School senior Matthew DaCosta received the John Wenzel Scholarship for Advancing Racial Equity from Nassau County nonprofit ERASE Racism this week, giving the future Duke University student $1,500 to put toward college expenses.

DaCosta’s working relationship with ERASE Racism began after his sophomore year, when he took part in a summer internship at the nonprofit that culminated in a research project. While some high schoolers spend the summer before junior year as a lifeguard or a camp counselor, DaCosta spent it developing an elementary school curriculum focused on financial literacy and cultural awareness. Despite coming in as “kind of a quiet student,” ERASE Racism officials said DaCosta really took to the program during his initial internship.

Subscribe

“He was kind of a quiet student, but he blossomed and really took to the program, became a leader, and he's not someone who just did one thing,” ERASE Racism founder and president emerita Elaine Gross said. “When you hear him speak, you would not believe that he is his age. He's very mature and he understands structural racism deeply, and is very committed to advancing racial equity.”

As for where that understanding of structural racism and passion for eliminating it comes from, DaCosta said it started at home. He told Patch he’s the youngest of three kids in a home that's half-Jamaican, half-Filipino, a mix that introduced him to cultural diversity from a young age.

“It all draws back to my culture being mixed, and being immersed in diverse cultures and traditions early in my life,” DaCosta said. “I think I've always had cultural joy, and wanted to spread that pride with peers and create inclusive spaces.”

While the understanding of the issues might’ve started early, Gross said DaCosta goes beyond just understanding; he gets things done.

“He just goes above and beyond in terms of really being so committed to advancing racial equity and and then doing the work and following through,” Gross said. “Sometimes people are very enthusiastic, but that doesn't mean they actually get the work done. Of course, Matthew is enthusiastic, he follows through, he gets the work done, and he's just a really nice person.”

Looking to the future, DaCosta already knows where he’ll be getting work done for the next four years: Duke, where he hopes to pursue a public policy degree.

“I'm hoping to further explore a career in public service or somewhere in policy, because — through my experience with testifying at hearings with ERASE racism, or speaking with other professors that college institutes on education policy — I think my experiences have steered me in that direction,” DaCosta said. “I hope to further make positive societal change with my knowledge from college moving on.”

Among those hearings at which DaCosta testified was a state foundation aid hearing, where the young man from Malverne told state officials how the current state aid formula — which has not been updated since the 2000s — was shortchanging majority-minority school districts.

Just in high school thus far, DaCosta has also been part of ERASE Racism's student task force, leading a regional student conference that ERASE officials say, "brought together more
than 250 students from racially segregated schools on
Long Island, both schools with a majority of students of
color and schools with a majority of white students, to
collectively address structural racism and its impacts."

He also served as a panelist in a plenary session at Columbia University's Teachers College, giving a student's perspective to a seminar packed with over 1,200 educators from around the world.

As for the man whose name is on the scholarship that DaCosta won, John Wenzel was a lifelong Long Islander who Gross said she met through his work with the Rauch Foundation.

“He was very interested in racial equity and education equity in particular, and he was always interested in our youth work,” Gross said of Wenzel.

After his passing, the Rauch Foundation made a special grant award to ERASE Racism in Wenzel’s memory, Gross said. Now in its third year, the founder president emerita said the scholarship was a way to keep Wenzel’s interest in racial equity alive.

“This was another way for us to remember John,” Gross said. “And it really worked out nicely because of the combination of his interest in the youth program and his concerns about racial equity, especially in public school education. It just made all the sense to have this, you know, to institute this scholarship and name it after him.”

For DaCosta, the scholarship will help him pursue a passion he has had since he was young. As for what keeps him motivated to do that work, DaCosta said some of what he has learned working with ERASE Racism showed him how many areas there are where he could affect positive change.

“I knew that I had a passion, but I wanted to further advance it and further my education in that realm,” DaCosta said. “We got to learn more about disparities that occurred in the past, but also things that still hinder people today…Just seeing more disparities in the world, I think that fuels my passion. And [I] just wanted to make sure that each student, no matter their background, has a good access to education.”