At State High, “Lift Every Voice ” has become more than just an annual showcase. It is a space where students share their stories, celebrate their identities, and strengthen their community. For the seniors who have dedicated years to this LEV, it symbolises growth, resilience, and the courage to be seen.
For senior Lila Franklin, who has been involved since her freshman year, Lift Every Voice is all about perspective. As a marketing co-chair, leader, and emcee, she describes it as “just like a lens or a window for people who maybe don’t have a lot of experience with different cultures or things that are different from their own.”
Working with such a large and diverse group has also taught her essential leadership skills, especially since “it’s such a big group of kids; it’s a lot to wrangle all of those people,” pushing her to grow in communication and problem-solving. One of her favorite memories is dancing with her brother to music by Kendrick Lamar.
For performers like Audrey Thomas, the event is deeply personal.
“I’m a first-generation immigrant myself, and my parents are Nigerian. So just being able to spread my culture and make Nigerian dances aware to everyone is really fun,” she said.
Beyond performance, she hopes the show “makes people more accepting of other cultures and willing to acknowledge them.”
This year, she and her group reached a milestone: “I’m proud that this year we actually choreographed our dances ourselves.”
The same feeling really resonates with Sarah Ocampo, a senior and one of the lead performers of LEV. For her, Lift Every Voice is “just a little outlet for me to really showcase what is meaningful to me.”
How people might already see her identity on the surface, but this program lets her go deeper.
“The opportunities to really showcase what that really means for me and have, like, given that ability to share with other people is Lift Every Voice,” Ocampo said.
She also hopes it impacts other students too. “I hope it impacts other students the same way it’s impacted me,” she said.
Even though there were times she wanted to quit because of the levels of stress the show brings, she kept going and realized that “even if it’s just one person in the audience, they’re gonna resonate with it.”
As she gets ready to attend Penn State, she hopes the program keeps doing what it’s been doing and continues to uplift students and highlight voices that don’t always get heard.
For Alessandra Hoover, the experience has been transformative. “It was kind of a way for me to step out of my comfort zone,” she said.
Being mixed race made it hard at times to feel fully connected to her culture, but Lift Every Voice gave her that chance. She describes it as “a way for me to express that cultural side of me without being ashamed of it.”
She also thinks Lift Every Voice helps the school feel more connected.
“It really allows people to have more empathy for others and just the overall community,” Hoover said.
Even when things weren’t going great, she’s proud that everyone pushed through it: “I’m proud of everyone’s ability to kind of push through it and be like, you know what? Let’s just practice a little harder.”
Adrianne Costello also talked about the importance of representing your culture. As a second-generation Filipino American, she believes Lift Every Voice is “an opportunity to present my culture in a way that I don’t really have an opportunity to do anywhere else in my life.”
She said she’s most proud of “being able to perform…and being able to express my heritage in a way that I haven’t been able to before,” which is something that means a lot to her.
Behind the scenes, leadership is also a big part of LEV. Leila Crandall, who was both an emcee and communications chair, said the program helped her understand her identity more.
“It’s okay to embrace your culture no matter what your connection is to your heritage,” she said.
Crandall also talked about how important it is to meet different kinds of people, saying, “It’s good to always interact with and, like, be friends with people who are different because you’re never gonna expand your perspective if you only speak to one kind of person.”
She also learned a lot from helping run everything, especially when things didn’t go as planned: “We were able to adapt so quickly and still make the show as best as we can with what we have.”
For Grace Yang, the main goal is to give people a space to be heard. She described it as “having a stage or a place for students to literally live every voice and have those voices… that don’t often get heard to have a stage and a place to be heard.”
She wants people in the program to feel like they belong, and for the audience to learn something too, as she describes it, “awareness, gaining education, and also just seeing parts of students that they wanna celebrate that they normally don’t see.”
As they graduate, they leave with more than memories of dances, speeches, and early morning rehearsals. They leave knowing they helped build something meaningful. A space where, truly, every voice can be lifted.
