Dear President Biden and Vice President Harris, 

Before I start my letter, I would like to congratulate both of you on becoming the winners of the 2020 election. I can sympathize with how nerve-wrecking and excited you must’ve been throughout the election, and although your campaign has come to an end, the hardest part is about to begin.  My name is Mandy Yang, I am a senior from Edison High School in Fresno, California. Today, I am writing to you not for myself, but for the students at my school who can agree with me about the subjects I will shortly list. 

 First and foremost, I understand that for the safety of students and staff, we must stay at home and continue distance learning, however, I am a senior and I can’t deny that fact that no amount of virtual meetings can disguise how our senior year has been stripped away from us.  I know that there are many issues at hand right now, and that the pandemic we live in is a battle, you too, are trying to fight against. Yet I urge you to find a safe way to make us seniors finish our last year in high school standing side by side– together. If not for the class of 2021, then for the class of 2022, 23, 24. 

I also hope that you both can be a role model find solutions to end the racial injustice we’ve faced yesterday, today but hopefully not tomorrow. There have been countless times where black men, women, children, were unjustly profiled, hurt, and not given the same respect and rights that any white person would receive, countless times where people believe wearing a hijab, niqab, or burka makes you are a terrorist, countless times where if you are of Hispanic descent you are an alien, someone who sells drugs, countless times where Asians have been beaten up because a country where you may or may not live in was the origin of a pandemic, the list goes on and on.  

These are only a few highlighted issues which I believe should be addressed so that I can have children who live in a country they can be proud of. I hope that over the next four years, you both can bring overdue problems to light and create solutions to piece back the land where it is possible to dream once again.