Malcolm Leake’s approach to his high school years was to try everything so he wouldn’t regret missing out on a group or activity by the time he graduated.
So he joined the Fremont Ross High School orchestra and played the violin.
He was class president his senior year. He finished in the class’ top 15 out of 295 students and spoke at graduation.
He played tennis and was Ross’ top player all four years.
He served on the Black History Month Committee.
He was on the school’s climate committee, where he served as a liaison between students and faculty to help resolve any issues students might have had.
He was a representative to Buckeye Boys State, an intensive education program for high school students to learn about Ohio government.
The list goes on.
“You only get one shot at life, so you should do it the best you can,” said Leake, 18, who graduated last summer.
Today, he’s a freshman at the University of Mount Union in Alliance, and he’s continuing most of those activities on the college level, including playing tennis and playing violin in the university’s music program.
Leake is black, and his achievement is an exception in Ohio.
In recent years, less than half of the black males in the state have graduated high school — one of the worst high school graduation rates in the country for that minority group.
The 2009-10 Ohio rate was 45 percent, compared to 80 percent of whites, according to a recently released report from the Schott Foundation for Education in Cambridge, Mass. It was 41 percent in 2007-08. The latest year for which data was available was 2009-10.
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article courtesy of TheNews-Messenger.com
