Adilei Brown, a senior, won second place in the high school central division of the 2026 C-SPAN StudentCam documentary competition for her film.
In recognition of America's 250th anniversary, students were challenged to examine the "enduring power and relevance of the Declaration of Independence," by exploring how its values affect a contemporary issue in their communities.
Brown's film is titled, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: Is that Possible on an Empty Stomach?"
Michelle Brobston, COO of Hunger Free Oklahoma, explains in the film how the Trump Administration's Big, Beautiful Bill will impact the state's hungry.
"Oklahoma, even though we pay our taxes to the federal government, that money will no longer be used for benefits to feed our most vulnerable neighbors," Brobston said in the film. "It will be instead shifted to the state, that will have to pick up a surprise bill of $270 million."
The bill reduces Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding by approximately $186 billion over 10 years. It imposes stricter work requirements for SNAP recipients and expands those requirements to more age groups. States are also required to cover 75% of administrative costs — up from 50% — and must pay 15% of benefit costs if a state's error rate is 10% or higher.
More than 15% of Oklahoma households are food insecure.
"Food should be a human right," Brown said in the film. "I feel as though with enough pushback, we can restore the SNAP program to not only how it was before, but better."
Jenks film teacher Kenneth Ruggiano advised Brown in developing the film. With a background in documentary production, he said he was able to serve as a sounding board for Brown's ideas.
"I just listened a lot," Ruggiano said. "[She] had a good vision, a good idea of where [she] wanted to go. And it was just a lot of talking about how to get there and what are some things that you could be doing to help translate those ideas to visuals?"
Brown said she wants to bring awareness about how pervasive the issue is.
"My goal is to just kind of bring awareness to this issue," Brown said. "I feel like people think that [food insecurity] is a very foreign issue, they're like, 'Oh, that would never happen to me,' whenever it could. … Everybody is just one bad thing happening to them away from needing this help."
The documentary will air throughout the day Saturday on C-SPAN.
