Globe Newsmagazine, October 2020, Issue 2, Vol. 92

GL BE

police police police +pg. 18 After mounting calls to defund the police, the Globe investigates the history of the US police force, its current role and possible future.

. VOLUME 92 . ISSUE 2 .

CLAYTON HIGH SCHOOL. CLAYTON, MO. OCTOBER 2020.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! The Globe is an entirely self-funded publication. We receive no funding from the school district for printing. Each issue of the Globe costs approximately $2000 to print.

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PANDEMIC PATRONS Mark and Krista Sucher Julie Taylor Anneliese Schaefer Michael Reed Kimberly Carroll David Lotsoff Jannette Rusch Katie and Mark Sanquist Eudora Olsen

Ying Ma Kathy and Jeff Wilkerson Sultan Meghji Matthew Bower Layla Guillen Erin Sucher-O’Grady Peggy Guest Jessica Millner Patrick and Chris Win

Raihana Omri Dave Zahniser Mary Modzelewski Radha Krishnaswamy Qinghong Wang Olivia Marcucci Tim Erlin James Zahniser Laura Pierson

Sriram Venugopalan Ann Zahniser Elizabeth Cuneo Chris Meisl Matt Erlin Susana Erlin Katie and Mark Sandquist The Bruegenhemkes Will Murphy

Izzy Greenblatt Kelly Weygandt Marisa Johnson Linda Pieczynski Rachel Zahniser Aimee and Matt Snelling

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Gita Krishnaswamy Christy Hager DDS Ann Sachar Angela and Troy Quinn Chandrakant and Aruna Tailor Protzel’s Delicatessen Celsius Cryo-Therapy The Erlin Family Debbie and Andy Schwartz Chandrakant Tailor The Choo-Kang Family The Family of Lary Baker Go Inc. Kay Quinn Malone Geoffrey Espe David LaGesse and Laura Stanton

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9 Doherty Departs Bidding farewell to Superintendent Dr. Sean Doherty

32

Ranked Voting

Kaitlyn Tran explores the possibility of ranked voting

36 Uncertain Sports Sasha Keller discusses the fall season and the dangers of going forward with sports

+ 18 AMERICAN POLICING After mounting calls to defund the police, the Globe investigates the history of the US police force, its current role and possible future.

CONTENTS 3

GL BE STAFF

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Sofia Erlin and Shane LaGesse

CHIEF DIGITAL EDITOR Siddhi Narayan

CHIEF MANAGING EDITOR Angela Xiao

SENIOR MANAGING EDITORS Ella Cuneo Lulu Hawley Noor Jerath Kaitlyn Tran Yiyun Xu

SECTION EDITORS Alex Hagemeister & Ruthie Pierson, NEWS Emma Baum & Seraphina Corbo, FEATURE Ivy Reed and Disha Chatterjee, OPINION

REPORTERS Owen Auston-Babcock Graysha Benjamin Stella Bishop Jenna Bush Rachel Chung Alexandra Cohen Sonali Dayal Cecilia Dupor Isabel Erdmann Isra Kayani Tatum Ladner Enoch Lai Chloe Lin Sophia Lu Sophie Matiszik Ella McAuley Samantha McDonough Charlie Miller

Kirby Miller Isaac Millians Ana Mitreva Sofia Mutis Ruby Nadin Medha Narayan Katherine Perrin Abby Rosenfeld Samuel Smith Leo Taghert Andrew Thompson Sophia Thompson Carola Vaqueiro Espinosa Estella Windsor Chloe Wolfe Annie Xiao

Kaia Mills-Lee & Cece Cohen, SPORTS Kate Freedman and Moriah Lotsoff, REVIEW Max Keller, PRO/CON

COPY EDITORS Vivian Chen and Margy Mooney

PAGE EDITORS Luka Bassnett Eliot Blackmoore Chloe Creighton Sahithya Gokaraju Maya Goldwasser Noor Jerath Sasha Keller

Daphne Kraushaar Rachel Liang Naveed Naemi Emma Raine Sophie Srenco Sophie Yoshino

PHOTO EDITOR Eli Millner

PHOTOGRAPHERS Natalie Ashrafzadeh Celia Baer Audrey Deutsch Davia Goette Lucia Johnson Whitney Le Hayley Lewis Amy Ma

Charlie McDonough Deborah Park Maya Richter Madalyn Schroeder Emma Stipanovich Anna Walsh

Professional Affiliations: JournalismSTL, Missouri Interscholastic Press Association, Missouri Journalism Education Association, Journalism Education Association National Scholastic Press Association, Columbia Scholastic Press Association Please visit chsglobe.com for our editorial policy, mission statement, and ethics code. You can contact us at chsglobe@claytonschools.net with comments, story ideas or letters to the editor.

from the editor On Thursday, Sept. 24, six months after 24-year-old Breonna Taylor was shot while sleeping in her own bed by police officers, a grand jury announced a long-awaited decision: there were to be no indictments for the murderers of Taylor. The jury relied on evidence given by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who claimed that the officers were justified in shooting Taylor six times because her boyfriend had shot once at them.

All around the nation, individuals are protesting unjust deaths like Breonna Taylor’s caused by police officers -- deaths like George Floyd, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Abery and too many others. Here in St Louis, we have a personal connection to the issue; in 2014, 18-year-old Mike Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police. All these individuals who have been killed were Black.

The height of the protests was in June, soon after George Floyd was murdered. Since then, social media and news coverage of Black Lives Matter protests and police brutality against Black people has come down significantly.

Many non-Black people, hoping to return to ‘normalcy’, have stopped speaking about the national issue of police brutality that plagues our country.

What non-Black individuals must realize is that police brutality isn’t a one-time event for Black people in the U.S. Black people have made up 28% of those killed by the police in 2020 so far, despite only making up 13% of the population. They are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people are, yet 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed when killed. And this has been the case since police were established in the U.S., Black people were always the target of police violence.

So why do non-Black people try to ignore this issue-- implicitly or explicitly? Why does the media pretend that the problem isn’t as severe now as it was a few months ago-- even when Black people still face discrimination and violence by the police every single day?

It is easier for non-Black people to pretend the problem doesn’t exist when it doesn’t directly affect them-- when they aren’t in the shoes of Black people in America.

I, while still a person of color, will nonetheless never experience the same type of violence and cruelty from the police, simply because I am not Black. That statement is terrifying, and blatantly tells us something about the police system in America.

So, non-Black people don’t experience the

same problems as Black people. What do they do then?

It is necessary that the first step to take as non-Black people in America is to educate ourselves. I urge you to read about the history of policing in America. To look at statistics and studies published about racial inequality in our justice system, and try to make sense of them.

We must also listen to Black people about their experiences. It is of utmost importance that as allies we do not speak over Black individuals, but listen to them and amplify their voices.

They experience events that most of us will never have to, and that is a privilege we hold.

Finally, we have to face the difficult truth that this problem is not nearly solved. Chances are, it won’t be solved in our lifetime. Just because the problem isn’t headlining media anymore, doesn’t mean it ceases to exist. We must continue to educate ourselves and advocate for change.

The relationship between race and police is a complicated one, and a problem that needs a lot of work to be solved. The question is, will we help be part of the solution, or will we remain complacent from the sidelines?

siddhi narayan CHIEF DIGITAL EDITOR EDITOR’S LETTER 5

pandemic players The volleyball season is happening despite the pandemic. Volleyball is classified as a moderate risk sport.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page recently changed his ruling to allow game-play after backlash.

Photo by Whitney Le

COVID AND MUSIC

Local musicians adapt to performing in the age of COVID.

J

azz bassist Bob Deboo was performing on an international tour, playing with a world renowned saxophonist who he had admired since high school. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he had traveled halfway across the United States.

As he was getting off the plane in Cleveland, Ohio, he found out that the governor had just shut down all music venues. The only thing to do was to book another flight and go home.

With the exception of a few socially distanced outdoor performances, Deboo has since had to make music digitally from his house.

“Work has changed. I was doing a bunch of gigs, touring, teaching privately. I teach adjunct at a few different universities. All that is online,” Deboo said.

Deboo’s story is not unique. Since the COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged the United States, musicians have been forced out of their comfort zones, and many are rethinking the way they express their artform.

Some musicians are having a hard time finding a sufficient income altogether.

“I personally know musicians that have not adapted to going online, older musicians that were reliant upon gigs and that had gotten very comfortable just playing live,” Deboo explained.

In the realm of classical music, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has taken steps to ensure musicians get paid and a major factor in this is union advocacy.

“All major orchestras in the US are unionized… the union and the musicians have worked with symphony management to figure out a way for the orchestra to continue to be paid a portion of its salary and to allow certain other performances… so that the symphony can continue on its mission presenting concerts,” said Timothy Myers, principal trombonist of the SLSO, who is chair of the negotiating committee.

Many extra musicians affiliated with the orchestra are having a hard time finding work since live concerts have ended. Myers illustrated how “there are some musicians who are not members of the orchestra who get hired quite frequently, but are just dependent on whether they’re needed and they don’t have guaranteed income.”

Orchestra crew members are facing similar hardships. St. Louis Symphony crew members are all members of the International Alliance of

NEWS 8

Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE. Because of the pandemic, over 90% of IATSE members are unemployed.

The SLSO’s full time stage crew has been reduced to only two members who help set up recordings and pop up concerts, discovering what their projects will be on a weekly basis.

“Given that the entertainment industry is an on call basis for a lot of people, some people do their best to prepare for the slim times, but this is a really really tough one” said Jason Pruzin, the SLSO stage manager.

“The entertainment industry as a whole seems to not get a lot of attention. We were all able to get through the summer on government programs… but since that’s been cut off, people in the industry are really struggling. As a union we fight to make sure that work is getting distributed to us, but there’s just not a lot out there,” Pruzin said.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has cancelled all regular season concerts through December; however, they have been arranging ways for musicians to perform.

“At this point, we’ve reimagined our entire season… Previously planned concerts are all being replaced with different types of digital programming and smaller live performances until we can gradually phase in live concerts as conditions and health and safety standards permit,” explained Cacia Meeks, the orchestra’s personnel manager.

However, the occasional recording or performing opportunity is nothing compared with the busy schedule most symphony musicians face during a typical season. In fact, some musicians have used the extra time to pursue their own musical interests.

Myers has used extra time to pursue his interest in musician injury prevention and ergonomics, expanding his studies of human anatomy. Over the summer, Myers became a Licensed Body Mapping Educator.

Deboo has taken advantage of his additional time to focus on aspects of his career that were once tied down by more pertinent work.

Over the summer, Deboo was hired by an online jazz education website called Open Studio, where he produced a course with sixtime Grammy award winning bassist Christian McBride.

And all musicians tend to agree that performing live is the most fun way to work.

“Being a performer is tied up in our identities, so everybody wants to get back to playing concerts,” said Myers.

Ultimately, Deboo believes that flexibility is necessary, and for now, musicians have to continue reaching outside their comfort zone until the pandemic is over.

Deboo explains, “You have to be aware of what you’re comfortable with but still be flexible and try to rise to whatever occasion there is.

But that’s not particular to being a musician, that’s being human. It’s the same thing.”

thomas gustafson

PAGE EDITOR

REGISTER TO VOTE Clayton High School’s seniors will be able to vote for the first time in this year’s general election.

However, being able to vote and actually voting are not the same thing. It is a historical fact that young voters are the ones most likely to refrain from going to the polls–in 2018 for example, voter turnout among those between 18 and 29 years of age was 35.6%, in contrast with 66.1% for those over the age of 65. Low turnout among young voters may be partly a result of systems that make it difficult to vote for the first time, like the requirement for voter registration. In Missouri, a prospective voter must be at least 17 ½ to register, and while registration can be performed in several ways, each method requires that the relevant documents be sent to the state government by Oct. 7. Registering to vote is important–unlike some states, Missouri does not allow voter registration on Election Day, and even those voters who wish to vote by mail must still be registered beforehand.

Voter registration can be performed either online, by mail or in person. Physical voter registration forms (for submission by mail) can be found either at state government offices like the DMV, or online on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website. After the form is downloaded or otherwise acquired, it must be printed and filled out, and then sent by mail to the office of the county clerk.

An online registration form can also be found on the Secretary of State’s website. It consists of exactly the same questions as the physical form, in a digital format. Notably, Missouri’s online registration form requires a signature, and therefore must be completed on a device with a touchscreen. It’s a good idea to complete the online form either on a tablet or with a stylus, as it’s difficult to create a good likeness of a physical signature with only a finger on a small screen.

Finally, Missouri has an in-person alternative for voter registration. To register in person, one must travel to the county clerk’s office and fill out a registration form there. For St. Louis County, the office is located in St. Ann, near Lambert Airport; for St. Louis City, the office is located near the intersection of Olive and Tucker Blvd.

luka bassnett

PAGE EDITOR

DR. DOHERTY’S RETIREMENT Clayton Superintendent Dr. Sean Doherty plans to retire at the end of the 2020-2021 school year.

D

r. Sean N. Doherty, superintendent of the School District of Clayton, announced his retirement on Sept.

11, 2020. He will lead Clayton through the 2020 - 2021 school year and continue to help the District navigate these challenging times. After his retirement, he will determine which direction the next chapter in his life will take him.

Doherty started his Clayton career in 2010 as principal of Captain Elementary School, where he fostered a kind and nurturing environment.

Doherty worked to make every student feel welcome and focused on engaging students in critical thinking.

“I met Dr. Doherty when I was in second grade. He was such a bright light at the school,” said Adam Jaffe ‘20, Chair of the District Advisory Council. “One of the things I remember was that he knew everyone’s name, which was something I had never experienced from a principal. He would talk to every single kid. At recess, we used to play kickball, and he would pitch the ball to us. He wanted to know everyone. He was just so kind and so wonderful to all his students, no matter who they were. I think that’s been his throughline: working on creating connections with as many people as he possibly can.”

After being Captain’s principal for five years, Doherty moved on to serve as Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources while also working as the interim superintendent. In 2016, he was appointed superintendent by the Board of Education.

“The first year Sean was superintendent, on District Opening Day, he introduced himself to the staff as ‘your superintendent and lead learner,’ and the room went crazy - everyone was standing and cheering. I have never seen a staff respond with such enthusiasm for a superintendent,” wrote Dr. Milena Garganigo, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning.

Throughout his years as superintendent, Doherty has developed a reputation as a thoughtful and accessible leader. Typically, it is rare for students to know their superintendent, much less interact with them. However, Doherty is special. He consistently sends the message to the community that he cares about their input and wants to listen. Students feel comfortable having a conversation with him, whether a second-grader showing off an art project or a highschooler sharing new ideas.

“Everyone that works with him or that interacts with him feels comfortable around him. Dr. Doherty really cares about all the people in the District. He knows people’s kids, and he cares about families. He’s so personable.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an elementary school student or a parent or a teacher or administrator, there’s something about him that makes you feel special when you talk to him,

like he’s your friend,” said Clayton High School Principal, Dr. Dan Gutchewsky.

While Doherty has certainly made systemic changes to benefit students, his commitment to the community shines through his effortless acts of kindness.

“I remember once at the District soccer game, my friends and I forgot to bring money because we didn’t realize the game wasn’t free, and Dr. Doherty offered to pay for all of us so we wouldn’t miss the game. It was one of those moments that showed how much he cares about his students,” said Sofia Erlin ‘20 Doherty also has worked extensively within the community and local government, influencing policy for the sake of students Superintendent Dr. Sean Doherty has come to be known as a visionary leader for the District. and the District. He pushed for the passage LILY KLEINHENZ, PHOTOGRAPHER of Proposition E, the first tax levy to benefit Clayton schools in over lifelong learners and to continue growing and 15 years. Prop. E’s passage effectively saved the challenging ourselves in new ways. He really District from being forced to make detrimental lives it, and I think through his leadership he’s cuts to faculty and staff and has provided the brought that mentality of growth to the entire District with the financial stability it needs to District,” said Gutchewsky. continue to strive for excellence.

Doherty will continue to lead the District Additionally, throughout the 2018-2019 in a direction of growth while simultaneously school year, Doherty worked with over 700 helping to deliver learning safely for teachers, students, parents, staff and community staff and students alike during the pandemic. members to develop the Profile of the Clayton “He inspires people unlike any other Graduate, a model that informs the District’s superintendent we’ve had. I think that is his approach to learning. The plan showed lasting legacy: his inspiration to students, his continual commitment to growth and to parents, to staff, to community members. the emphasis he places on cultivating an Clayton will be lucky if they can have someone atmosphere where students can truly love like him again,” said Jaffe. to learn and feel valued. Doherty believes The Globe thanks Dr. Doherty for his support the plan will “take us from excellent to of our mission and wishes him all the best with transformational.” wherever life takes him next.

“One of the most notable things about his tenure here is his focus on being the lead learner in the District, and really modeling that margy mooney and encouraging a growth mindset, not just COPY EDITOR for students, but for all the administrators and teachers and staff, and encouraging us all to be

NEWS 9

IN THE SPOTLIGHT A Clayton alum lands the lead role in an Amazon Prime movie.

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any Clayton alums go on to pursue exceptional exploits in a wide variety of careers. But one in particular, Jeff Friedman, found himself a role in the spotlight-- and most recently, as the lead in an Amazon Prime film.

Friedman, class of 2015, dabbled in theater during middle school and chose to focus on academics and extracurriculars such as Globe in high school. It wasn’t until the end of his high school career that he began to enjoy presenting himself publicly, when he auditioned for the student run musical and was a commencement speaker at graduation.

However, it was truly his undergraduate experience at Pomona College that immersed him into the world of acting and entertainment.

He minored in theater and majored in film studies, participated in student-run shows and was involved with the theater department.

He was a part of an a capella group that made it to the quarterfinals of an international championship two years in a row.

In 2019, Friedman graduated from Pomona, and now continues his education through acting classes and auditions for a variety of roles. In addition to his agents submitting him to projects, he also submits to many himself, and one of these instances is how Friedman ended up as the lead in the upcoming movie It’s Not You, It’s Me. “It was during a really slow time, because the entertainment industry was basically shut down but I found this project for a Prime feature film in March or April and it sounded really cool,” Friedman said.

Although that specific project was not going to be in the works until the future, the director, producer and writer recommended Friedman for the movie. After a loose audition process, Friedman was cast as the main character.

“I had never been in anything this long before, and I had a big part. It was really weird the way it happened, but before I knew it, we were basically done,” Friedman said.

It’s Not You, It’s Me features a young rocket scientist and romantic ignoramus who finds the love of his life cheating on him with his exroommate just as he’s about to propose. He sets out to learn what went wrong in his previous relationships. For film fanatics, Friedman suggests it is similar to the early 2000s films, High Fidelity and Broken Flowers, with hints of director Mel Brooks’ influence.

The movie is set to release soon, but is still in the works with a few more scenes to shoot.

Upon completion and submission to Amazon Prime, the movie can take anywhere from three to eight weeks to premiere on the website.

“I’ve been really lucky to be able to work on this movie. We were very careful and followed protocols… just to have the privilege to be able to go work on something like this in the first

FEATURE 10

place is amazing. You can’t always see all of the blessings right in front of you until something so serious hits the world,” Friedman said.

Aside from It’s Not You, It’s Me, Friedman acts in the Instagram TV and YouTube comedy web series Unprofessionalism. Similar to hit shows such as The Office or Parks and Recreation, it features new hires at a company where the charismatic boss is not who he seems to be on the surface. In his spare time, he also writes projects like short films.

“I’ve made some just with friends, but I hope to get into that more and keep self-creating, just because it’s so important to do that at all times as a creative person, but especially now when an industry can almost completely shut down with no real predictability,” Friedman said.

In addition to his acting gigs, Friedman also recently became the face of an amusing calendar entitled “Nice Jewish Guys.” It was another project he submitted himself to, and he was accepted for an interview, which he didn’t attend alone.

“I actually brought my mom with me to the interview. She was visiting me here in LA from St. Louis. I didn’t want her to be idle and she was really curious so she had me take her in,” Friedman said.

He recalled the interviewer later praised him for it, saying it definitely scored some points with him. Next thing he knew, Friedman was being photographed in Elysian Park by Dodger Stadium, biting an apple and waving in the distance. A year later, he was surprised to see he made the cover of the magazine, which he didn’t realize was an option.

“It’s pretty weird because all of a sudden I was like, ‘Wow, my face is on Amazon!’ I looked it up and it was on [the websites of] Target, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble… It’s getting closer to 2021, I think it’ll actually be available in stores. It was just really weird to see my face,” Friedman said.

Although he has found opportunities in his relatively few years as an actor, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Friedman. For those wishing to pursue acting, he has some expertise to share. He emphasizes that anyone choosing acting as a career, if it is a viable option, should focus on their happiness above all. Finding success is tough with an enormous supply of actors and scarce demand, even with new content being churned out every day.

“You have to sustain yourself mentally, physically, emotionally and financially. The way to do that is to network and find likeminded people and create content that makes you fulfilled. It’s definitely been hard to figure that out in L.A. You see your friends getting opportunities and auditions… a lot of things here are just left to chance. Sometimes you put in a lot of hard work and it doesn’t pay off in the way that you’re expecting it to,” Friedman

Jeff Friedman, a CHS alumni, will be starring in an Amazon prime movie

PHOTO FROM JEFF FRIEDMAN said.

However, Friedman believes that the best way to find success is to persist.

“If I were to try acting for 3 months and stop, there’s almost no chance that I’d get somewhere. At the end of the day, you’re buying lottery ticket after lottery ticket and hoping that… maybe you start by doing a short film, then you get slightly longer films that’ll be on Amazon Prime, and then maybe you’ll get onto a big show or a big movie and things will start to build from there slowly. It’s a really weird industry for a lot of reasons, but one of the weirdest things is that you can literally transform overnight,” Friedman said.

Yet before Friedman went onto accomplish a variety of interesting feats, he was a highschooler at Clayton, and his years of experience have given him wisdom to share with current ones.

“You’re some of the hardest-working people. I received a lot of good advice in high school, but if there’s one thing I really wish someone had said to me, it’s that a million different things are going to influence the course of your life and your happiness. Where you go to college is one of those things, but it’s so insignificant. My entire life in high school was defined by where I may or may not go to college, but it was just the fact that I had the preparation and tools to go to college that actually mattered.”

disha chatterjee OPINION SECTION EDITOR

HALLOWEEN DURING COVID What age old tradition will have to change? What can we do to keep the spirit of the holiday alive?

ELLA CUNEO, ARTIST “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“Because the chicken behind him didn’t know how to social distance.”

Jokes like these are the kind we’re expecting this Halloween. Although we know this year will be different, there are still plenty of fun ways to safely celebrate the spooky season.

But, first here are some answers to the questions you’ve all been asking. Is it safe to go trick or treating? Should I just leave out a bowl of candy? Or should we skip Halloween altogether? While we know this Halloween is going to be unique for all families, here are the facts…

Medical professionals are urging people to find alternatives to Trick or Treating in communities where infection rates are high.

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that a city’s positivity rate be under 5% for at least 2 weeks before the process of returning to normal begins. St. Louis’s positivity rate is currently at 8.4%, with a 10.7% value for Missouri. If this year has taught us anything, it’s that the data can change fast, but if the positivity rate is still above 5% come Oct. 31, celebrating from your house will be the safest option for everyone.

Let’s say that by the spookiest night of the year, the positivity rate has dropped below 5%- ideally for at least two weeks prior to Halloween. If your family has decided that Trick or Treating is a good option, here are some steps you can take to protect yourselves and your neighbors: 1. Wear a mask at all times during your Halloween outing. That fun-size Snickers might be calling your name from the top of your candy bag, but it’s best to wait until you are home to take off your mask and indulge instead of taking the risk of someone walking by you when your face is exposed. Worried about a costume-face mask clash? Check out our guide to COVID costumes for some fun ideas on how to incorporate a mask into your costume!

2. Avoid Trick or Treating with a group of people. A group of friends always makes knocking on strangers’ doors to ask for candy

more fun, but this year, consider Trick or Treating separately and then going through your candy together over Zoom or FaceTime.

Medical professionals warn that a group Trick or Treating outing is the most likely place to pick up coronavirus on Halloween.

3. If you do happen to run into a friend while Trick or Treating, resist the urge to trade your wand for their sword, even for a minute. COVID particles can live on objects for anywhere from a few hours to a few daysincluding costume props.

4. Once you pick a candy, stick to it. We all know the disappointment of grabbing a notso-delicious candy from the bowl only to find our favorite sweet hiding underneath, but this year, the not-so-delicious candy will have to do. Digging through the bowl not only exposes you to more germs, but also spreads your germs to the entire contents of the bowl. If you are planning on handing out candy, consider having individually wrapped packages with a few pieces of candy that you can pass out.

No matter how you decide to celebrate Halloween, remember that it is okay not to go Trick or Treating this year. It is okay to refrain from handing out candy. If you feel comfortable going out in public, the local numbers are down, and you are prepared to take the proper precautions to protect yourself and others, you can consider celebrating Halloween in the traditional way. But, if you would prefer to hold off on Trick or Treating until next year, there are plenty of other ways you can get in the Halloween spirit from the safety of your home.

So what can you do? Even for folks at higher risk that have decided to take a year off from the outdoor festivities, there is something for you! For younger children, in-home trick-ortreating might be the perfect solution. Decorate the inside of your house to show off your spirit, and allow each member of the family their own room to give out candy. This way kids can still

experience going door to door, telling jokes, and of course the candy!

Although we believe you’re never too old to trick-or-treat, we understand that it may not be the right option for every family. Perhaps you would prefer to have a scary movie marathon, with popcorn and candy. Or maybe a monster mash dance party.

For people not in the high risk population, trick-or-treating outdoors could still potentially be a safe option. We recommend that those handing out the candy wear gloves, or even trick-or-treaters themselves, if it makes them more comfortable. However, it should be noted that there is a very small risk of contracting COVID from a candy bar wrapper. Still, we recommend bringing some hand sanitizer as you go from house to house, or even leaving a bottle by your candy bowl. And of course wear a mask!

But not just any mask… it’s Halloween!

Depending on how creative and crafty you’re willing to be, the mask can really add some flare to your costume. Here are some costumes, with a built in mask: You’re sure to be safe from COVID-19 on an expedition to the moon! An astronaut’s mask covers your entire face, but is transparent, allowing everyone to still be able see your face.

Perhaps you prefer to make wishes come true.

As a genie, you can easily wrap a folded scarf around your nose and mouth to go perfectly with those harem pants!

Or maybe you are a ninja who’s identity must be concealed. You’ll surely be safe sneaking around with your face covered.

If you’re following the hidden identity route, every superhero needs a good mask, and if they don’t already have one, make one to match their super suit!

Lastly, if you’re looking to rob a train this Halloween as a bandit or a cowboy, consider using a bandana to make sure you don’t get caught, while still protecting others from covid.

emma baum & daphne kraushaar, ana mitreva

FEATURE SECTION EDITOR | PAGE EDITOR | PAGE EDITOR FEATURE 11

CORONA UNIVERSITY The Globe explores different colleges’ responses to the pandemic. his fall, thousands of universities across the country have made tough decisions regarding the fall semester. Some schools have decided to go completely online, while others have welcomed their entire student bodies back with open arms. According to the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, out of 2,958 universities, 795 schools are either fully in-person or primarily in-person, 622 are hybrid, and 1,302 are either fully online or primarily online. All this variation begs the question: what is the right approach?

Some universities have instituted mandatory COVID testing weekly while others allow students to get tested at their own discretion. Already, headlines are filled with stories of students partying and COVID

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outbreaks in dorms. According to the New York Times, the University of Alabama has 2,225 positive cases, Mizzou has 1,178 cases and the University of South Carolina has 1,904 cases (as of Sept. 10, 2020).

In-person schools have defended their decisions by stating that they are necessary to continue providing quality education to students.

Additionally, many schools would have to close without the tuition money.

With all these factors in play, the Globe decided to interview students at various schools to get to the bottom of which approach to the fall semester is best.

LILA TAYLOR | DUKE Recently, the national headlines have been filled with stories of surging case numbers in college towns across the country. Unlike certain college towns that have been making headlines, such as Tuscaloosa, Alabama or Columbia, South Carolina, there have been several colleges which reported very few cases since students returned to campus about a month ago.

One of these colleges is Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina. Although nervous that Covid-19 would make for a socially challenging college experience, CHS and Globe alum Lila Taylor was eager to arrive on campus to start her freshman year at Duke this fall.

“It hasn’t been that bad socially,” said Taylor.

“Obviously there aren’t big parties and you have to limit the people you hangout with.”

One thing that separates Duke from other universities is that the majority of undergraduate students live on campus all four years. This certainly makes it easier to contain students and control the spread of the virus.

“The rule is you can go off campus, you just can’t leave Durham county,” said Taylor.

As far as disciplinary action goes at the university, they have been fairly strict.

“As far as I know they haven’t sent anyone home.

But they have been writing people up for violating different coronavirus policies,” said Taylor.

Since the beginning of the school year, Duke has strongly encouraged students to report names of people who have violated certain coronavirus policies.

“The only problem with that is that it creates a divide among the students, obviously you want to be safe, but I think putting students against one another is not the way to go about that,” said Taylor. “It really created a disjoint among the Duke community.”

As of Sept. 17, Duke reported only six positive cases, among both students and faculty. Despite the fact that it is almost impossible to stop the spread of coronavirus on a college campus, Duke has proved that certain safety measures and policies can make it much easier to contain the virus.

KATE LAY | ALABAMA The University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has been high on the charts of colleges with the most coronavirus cases. As of September 17, the university has seen a total of 2,461 positive coronavirus cases since students returned to campus at the beginning of August.

CHS alum, Kate Lay, began her freshman year at Alabama this fall.

“I moved in for online recruitment for sorority rush August 5th, and I had to get tested four days prior to moving in,” Lay said.

Although previously being told that she would have some of her classes in person, Lay received word soon after moving in that all of her classes would be online.

“I personally like the online class set-up. I think it’s really doable,” Lay said.

Many people know the University of Alabama as the school with one of the largest greek life programs in the country. This aspect of the Alabama culture has been upended by the pandemic.

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“Our bid day was in person but basically we were allowed to have 30 minutes at the house with a mask on, socially distanced, in groups. We basically received our bid day bags, took pictures, then had to leave,” Lay said.

Additionally, according to Lay, the majority of students on campus have been following the coronavirus policies implemented by the university.

“Walking around campus, you’re required to have a mask regardless of whether you’re outside or by yourself. I would say people probably follow that rule 75% of the time. There are definitely people who walk around outside by themselves without a mask,” Lay said.

Despite the fact that the University of Alabama experienced a surge in coronavirus cases in the first month of students arriving on campus, the school has more recently seen a weekly decrease in cases. Hopefully this is a sign that the university is beginning to slow the spread of the virus among faculty and students on campus.

Data from the College Crisis Initiative.

JACOB LAGESSE | MIZZOU When campuses across the country closed last spring, CHS and Globe alum Jacob LaGesse did what any journalism major would: begin working at the New York Times. LaGesse joined the COVID-19 data tracking team which comprised of college and graduate students.

“In the beginning there weren’t a ton of cases in the US [so we would] scan Twitter feeds, looking for official announcements of cases, stuff like that. [We] were building basically a spreadsheet with a ton of data that they can use for making graphics,” LaGesse said.

However, the pandemic took off with cases everywhere skyrocketing. To keep up with the growing case numbers, more students were hired. To count the national case numbers, the Times used web scrapers to automate the process and moved the tracking team to specific outbreaks.

“The fact that the mortality rate was a lot larger in nursing homes was really interesting so we spent a lot of time tracking cases in nursing homes around the country,” LaGesse said.

Prisons were also the center of the tracking

team’s attention, but as we entered into the late summer a new source of outbreaks emerged: college campuses. As a current sophomore at Mizzou, LaGesse is on the ground at one of the largest college outbreaks. As of September 10, 2020, Mizzou has reported 1,178 positive COVID-19 tests.

Because of his position, the Times has asked LaGesse to do some reporting on Mizzou.

Additionally, since he has a background in computer science, LaGesse has been coding web scrapers.

“I’ll write scrapers that will collect data from various sources for each state and then they will spot check and verify ‘does this data look right?’” LaGesse said.

Although LaGesse is still working with the Times, he has returned to being a full time student.

“I was talking to someone from the News Bureau and he said that at least recently around two thirds of classes have some in person component… I do have an in person class every day,” LaGesse said.

Mizzou has chosen to take a COVID

approach similar to other large institutions.

Mizzou only provides testing to students who have symptoms or who have had contact with someone who tested positive which means they have an extremely high positivity rate compared to the rest of the country. They also require masks on campus and will be allowing limited spectators to watch football games.

Since Mizzou has a large student body, many students disagree on how much precaution to take. While many students wear masks and only interact with a small group of friends, others have been going out to bars and parties.

“You walk through Greek town, you’ll see parties happening… Just this week, Mizzou suspended 10 Greek life organizations.. for violating school COVID guidelines,” LaGesse said.

But, despite Mizzou’s shortcomings, LaGesse has hope that the case numbers will continue decreasing.

“Hopefully, we can turn a corner on this and we’ll start seeing cases go down more than they have,” LaGesse said.

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KATIE SNELLING | MICHIGAN Normally, CHS alum Katie Snelling, currently a freshman at University of Michigan, would be enjoying her music theory classes in a lecture hall with real pianos and orchestra rehearsals with every section together in one concert hall. This year, however, due to the University’s precautions for COVID, most of her classes have been moved online, and for the remaining ones that aren’t, classes are divided into smaller groups so that no more than 15 people can be in the same room.

“For my music theory classes, professors use the site Canvas to post modules for us to complete,” Snelling said. “We also use zoom in addition to Canvas. Depending on the day, sometimes we’ll have both the zoom discussion sections and independent modules to complete, but other times we only have video lectures online that we’re expected to complete.”

Other classes, such as orchestra chamber group rehearsals, are still completed in person, but students are spread out in big hall spaces to minimize contact.

“We also have assigned practice rooms with a whole new system. You’re only allowed to use the room for 90 minutes, after which the room has to rest for 30 minutes before another person can come and use it,” Snelling said. “They’re trying to make sure that we’re always at a 50% capacity in the entire music building.”

Another rule that students here have to follow is mask on 100% of the time. Even woodwind and brass players have to put their masks back on whenever they have a break and stop playing. As long as one is on campus, then mask on is a must. Before a student is admitted to campus, they are supposed to conduct a self COVID test at home and send in the results to the school. Students are also encouraged to self quarantine for two weeks before arriving at the school, but there are no requirements for students to isolate once they move in.

“In fact, for the past few weeks our teaching assistants have been on strike because of the lack of precautions that are given by the school,” Snelling said. “We’re having a big lack of testing. Like, I haven’t gotten tested since that initial self test, which wasn’t very reliable to begin with.”

Despite the lack of testing and certain precautions, Snelling still decided to experience a college life on campus.

“There was an option to stay home, or I could come here, and I was debating for a long time whether or not I wanted to come,” Snelling said.

“But we’re doing a lot of in-person classes, so I think that is what helped me make my decision to come here in person.”

WashU requires students to wear masks around campus.

CLAUDIA MILLER | IOWA

When Claudia Miller, a sophomore at the University of Iowa and a Clayton High School alum, came back for classes on campus, she was given a PPD kit with disposable and cloth masks, tissues, hand sanitizer and thermometer. She was told to wear a mask if inside a building or near people. She was told no more than two people in a dorm and that all classes over 50 people would be online.

One would think that the University of Iowa was completely prepared for opening up again, especially with Iowa being the third most rapidly increasing state in America for Covid-19.

“There are soars of people going out, even now there’s less because the governor closed down all the bars. The first night I got here… there were dozens of kids without masks going to party,” Miller said.

With the amount of people ignoring CDC guidelines, the whole school has been affected. Testing is crucial to keeping schools safe and the University of Iowa’s methods are questionable. If someone at the university thinks that they have the virus, they call a nurse line. But the catch is, you have to have symptoms.

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“They aren’t testing asymptomatic people, even though, one thing we have learned through all this research is that it is very common to be asymptomatic with Covid-19 especially amongst our age group.”(According to a recent study co-authored by Oshitani in Japan, the number of coronavirus clusters back to young people who did not feel sick.

Miller guesses that the school may be doing this to improve the numbers.

“We probably have about 1500 cases of Covid-19 among the students in Iowa City,” Miller said.

There is a definite fact that more people have Covid-19 than the numbers shown; but since asymptomatic people aren’t being tested, the numbers do not reflect reality. Students are happy to be back, but with the amount of confusion with testing, partying, the chaotic dining hall situation; people are fed up.

“If you have lived through these last six months and you still think to party. How did you ever expect to have a normal college experience? You are slowing down this country’s progress by going out, It’s just selfish,” said Miller.

ANNA ZUIKER | UNC GREENSBORO Anna Zuiker, a sophomore in pre-nursing at UNC Greensboro can be seen studying in her dorm or heading to her next class at a lecture hall. That’s the reality for many students at UNC Greensboro; a mix of in person and online classes. Slipping on a mask and heading slowly into the lecture hall, students are spaced out from each other at six to seven seats.

At first, everyone was cautious and unsure about how things would turn out, but this has become the new norm and most people are adjusting easily. You would think that most of the student body would be partying and ignoring CDC guidelines.

“The first week or two, there were a couple of parties. But I think that everybody here is aware of the pandemic and wants to follow the rules and have their classes here,” said Zuiker.

Getting food is quite easy as well, the dining hall prepares the food for you to pick up. There are multiple restaurants around campus as well as on campus dining. For activities, UNC Greensboro has many ways that students can have fun while still staying safe.

“The university owns a bunch of land, there’s a lake, and there’s an

area where you can do arts and crafts. It’s five minutes from the campus, which is nice. There are always activities during the weekends,” said Zuiker.

Activities are a great way to relieve stress from online classes and such, but online classes are very difficult nonetheless.

“The students are very visual people and like to be in the classroom.

It’s hard getting your classes done and feeling motivated to do your work when you’re not always going to be in the classroom,” said Zuiker.

Along with the lack of engagement, new college students are missing out on the in-person experience of lectures. Consistently sitting through your online classes through a screen can be really stressful and time consuming. Zuiker stresses the importance of finding support groups as the weather starts to get colder and seasonal depression may begin to hit for some people. As classes go on, finding a support group to lean on is a good thing to do. Most importantly, to make sure you are making time for yourself and being there for others.

WashU has enlisted in the help of students to help contain the virus.

Photos from Avery Klienhenz

sofia erlin, yiyun xu, kate freedman & isabella bamnolker EDITOR IN CHIEF, SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR, REVIEW EDITOR, PAGE EDITOR FEATURE 15

COVID READING RECS

The Globe compiles a list based on CHS English teacher recommendations.

1200 minutes. That’s enough time to watch all the Harry Potter movies from start to finish with time to spare. That’s also the minimum amount of time (pretending that students spend their lunch hour offline and completely ignoring lab time and homework) CHS students will be spending online each week at

least through the end of the quarter.

Needless to say, this can be quite taxing for the eyes, so to help combat the adverse effects of increased screen-time, we have compiled a COVID-19 reading list based on the recommendations of CHS English and journalism teachers.

AMY HAMILTON

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ear a loved one to feel safe - or to question your own safety.”

This is where Amy Hamilton recommends reading her COVID pick, “Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men by Harold Schechter.” A good read for true crime fanatics, this book is about one of the few female serial killers in history, Belle Gunness. Hamilton, who heard of the book in a true crime podcast, summarizes the story by describing Belle as “a Norwegian immigrant who owned a farm in Indiana and who lured suitors to her home where they were never seen again -- until people went digging in her garden.”

Though Hamilton does point out that the writing itself is not stunning, the premise of the story sounds like reason enough to dive into this enticingly gruesome narrative.

ADAM DUNSKER

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ver the summer, Adam Dunsker turned to science-fiction in order to read about “people from different frames of reference overcoming the challenges of trying to understand each other.”

His picks, “The Peripheral” and “Agency,” are both by William Gibson and are set many years in the future when people have discovered how to communicate electronically with people from their past.

Though both books were written before COVID, Dunsker said, “the people living in the more-distant future lived in a world that had survived some kind of devastating historical disaster that’s never specified.”

Oftentimes, particularly in the face of huge, life-altering events such as a global pandemic, it is easier to see and apply the message of a story about a world similar to ours facing similar challenges than it is when the book is about the actual problems we face today.

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ERIN SUCHER-O’GRADY

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lobe advisor, Erin Sucher-O’Grady, suggests “The Education of an Idealist”

by Samantha Power as a perfect COVID read for anyone looking to expand their knowledge about foreign policy and stay up-to-date with the happenings of the world. The book is Power’s autobiography and details her job as a war correspondent who covered conflict in countries such as Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan, as well as her time serving as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama.

“I think the process of following the news of the pandemic, the social unrest in the United States, and the growing threat of nationalism worldwide, made this book an important read during an important time,” Sucher-O’Grady said.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY RESPECTIVE TEACHERS

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BEN MURPHY

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ne of Ben Murphy’s top COVID reading suggestions is “Ducks, Newburyport” by Lucy Ellmann. This 1,000 page book, shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize, is unique in that it is all one sentence.

The story follows the stream of consciousness of a middle-aged woman and, as put by Murphy, “illustrates the tensions faced by a ‘normal’ person in the suburbs who is grappling with raising her kids amidst the rise of guntoting fanatics and environmental degradation.

Oh, and there’s a lioness on the loose in 2018 Ohio.”

During this time of limited social interaction, Murphy appreciates the book for allowing its reader a look into the head of someone else, as he is “sure we can all relate to being too much in our own heads right now.”

Also focusing on the subject of “girls’ need to be seen and heard in a world that works against them in so many ways” is Jennifer Mathieu’s “Moxie.” Murphy read this book, which he describes as a riveting “punk-rock feminist anthem,” over the past few months in preparation for his first time teaching the College Prep English I course here at CHS, as the book is one of the potential required readings in the class.

While a book that has been taught in years prior, its content has taken on new meaning and significance in light of some recent events.

“Moxie speaks to the importance of protesting even though there are risks associated with it,” Murphy said. “So those of us who have set out in crowds of BLM protesters in the time of COVID might feel validated.”

MOXIE SPEAKS TO THE IMPORTANCE OF PROTESTING EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH IT.

JOHN RYAN

CHECKLIST Hell’s Princess by Harold Schechter The Peripheral by William Gibson Agency by William Gibson The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

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ver the past few months the 2011 film “Contagion” has surged in popularity as many have remarked on and marveled over its recent pertinence. Less mentioned yet equally timely is Albert Camus’ “The Plague”, John Ryan’s recommendation.

Succinctly summarized by Ryan, the plot of the book is that “rats spread plague around the town of Oran, and the whole town must go under quarantine; members of the community react in disparate ways to the conditions of lockdown, both negatively and positively.”

Having first read the book years ago, Ryan was aware of its newfound relevance and revisited the story shortly after our lockdown was first imposed. He said, “I was sharing passages from “The Plague” on social media throughout the month of April: “Look, Camus gets us yet again!’”

Though certainly an apt read and a fabulous alternative to spending more time online watching “Contagion,” Ryan does warn that this book covers depressing subject matter.

His advice? If you need something uplifting at this time, read “Calvin and Hobbes.”

Ducks, Newburyport

by Lucy Ellmann The Plague by Albert Camus Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

noor jerath

SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR FEATURE 17

by angela xiao, ana mitreva, ivy reed, siddhi narayan, alexandra hagemeister, rachel liang & seraphina corbo

ame r po l

PHOTOS BY ELI MILLNER

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e rican o licing 19

Boston Police watch over the Liberty Bell circa 1903.

Library of Congress / Getty Images Until the early 1800’s, most of the United States relied on scheduled night-watches to keep cities safe at night. Volunteers would sign up for a certain day and time to watch over parts of their town. The earliest records of the night-watching system began in Boston in 1636, followed by New York in 1658 and Philadelphia in 1700.

Night-watch officers were not high class people, per say. According to Gary Potter, a crime historian from Eastern Kentucky University, many upper class citizens would pay someone to do the night-watch for them.

Often officers did not wear badges because “these guys had bad reputations to begin with, and they didn’t want to be identified as people that other people didn’t like,” said Potter in an interview with TIME Magazine.

Throughout the country the early beginnings of police (the night-watch officers) had different jobs depending on the location.

For example, in St. Louis police were founded mostly to protect residents from Native Americans who were thought to be dangerous.

Many night-watches and early police forces in the South were meant to serve as slave patrols.

In 1704, the colony of Carolina created the first slave patrol which served to “maintain the economic order and assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property,” wrote Potter in “A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing.”

The night-watch system was unsustainable and unreliable for a multitude of reasons.

People who were put on watch duty often slept or drank throughout their shift. Community members could also be placed on duty as a form of punishment and ironically the upper class would enlist criminals or community thugs to do the night-watches for them.

Ultimately the biggest reason for moving into more organized police forces was increasing

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history

urbanization, more people moved into urban areas causing communities to grow too large for the night watches to control.

As a result of industrialization, many people flocked to cities hoping to find steady employment, particularly in factories. In addition, a large wave of immigration brought millions of people to America’s urban areas. As populations grew, public disorder and mob violence- usually directed at immigrants or African Americansbecame an issue. As bigger populations became too difficult to manage with the formerly used night-watch system, cities had to institute publicly-funded, organized police forces.

In 1838, the city of Boston established the first American police force. During this time, the Port of Boston was experiencing economic growth due to the increase in commercial activities and manufacturing, as well as the influx of immigrants and new railroads.

Many locals made money through maritime commerce in the Port of Boston, and businesses hired citizens to protect their goods and oversee their transport. These businesses then chose to reallocate their funds towards creating and maintaining a public police force that would have full-time officers with continuous employment.

In 1845, New York City established a municipal police force, followed by Albany and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855 and Newark and Baltimore in 1857.

By the 1880s all major U.S. cities had municipal police forces in place. These police departments had set rules and regulations and were accountable to a centralized governmental authority.

The development of policing in the Southern

states followed a different path, as police forces originated as slave patrols, which served the purpose of catching, apprehending and returning runaway enslaved people to their owners, as well as to deter other enslaved people from revolting.

Although the Civil War abolished slavery in the Unites States, policing institutions in the South continued to target African Americans by controlling freed slaves who became laborers and by enforcing Jim Crow laws.

Beginning in the 1920s, there was a push for police professionalization. This push was led by then Berkeley police chief, August Vollmer. With this professionalization came new technology such as automatic weapons, lie detectors, eugenics and fingerprinting.

“Vollmer believed strongly that police need to protect their community and separate themselves from the unprofessional activities they had done before,” CHS history teacher Daniel Glossenger said.

However, this national professionalization didn’t solve the problem of corrupt policing.

Throughout Prohibition, police took bribes from the upper class in exchange for doing their bidding.

They also continued their pattern of violence against the lower classes. This was done through a heavy focus on vice laws regarding alcohol, cannabis and prostitution. These laws primarily targeted lower class people, furthering the cycle of violence and oppression towards them.

“I can’t breathe.” These words, uttered multiple times by a 46-year-old Black man named George Floyd right before his death from a police officer kneeling on his neck, took the nation’s attention and echo on the surfaces of Black Lives Matter posters, murals mourning Floyd’s death, T-shirts that NBA stars wore during pregame warm-ups and in the minds of countless individuals around the world.

As Floyd’s brutal murder made it to the headlines, the nation erupted into outcries against police violence, the circulation of #JusticeforFloyd hashtags and many other posts dedicated to victims of police brutality on social media and controversial riots.

Floyd’s death, which occurred on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, led to a massive movement that reflects the first international uprising of anti-policing perspectives that spurred six years ago after the shooting of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri.

For Ferguson’s 3rd Ward Councilwoman Fran Griffin and St. Louis Post Dispatch photographer David Carson, the Ferguson protests became their daily lives.

Carson captured a multitude of Pulitzer Prize winning close-up photos from different perspectives of the protesters holding their hands up, looters breaking into convenience stores and police officers tear-gassing rioters in Ferguson.

“On the first day [at the riots], I had no idea how large this would become,” Carson said, “I was out there, covering the events in my community, because that’s what I’ve been doing for years. And that’s what I continue to do. As it turns out, Ferguson was known around the world, and that’s something I never thought I would do. Ferguson is 10 miles from the front door of my house. I’ve been out there over the years covering other things. It [the Ferguson uprising] kind of took on its own life on social

media and I was there to document it along the way.”

For Fran Griffin, the Ferguson protests were even more personal. Griffin, a Black woman who formerly worked full-time as an office manager for a health and dental clinic and a mother of three, had lived in Ferguson since 2005. Griffin looks back at the events that led to her becoming involved in the Ferguson protests in 2014, BLM activism and her later involvement in politics.

Griffin previously lived in Canfield, where she would later return to mourn the death of Michael Brown Jr. with other residents.

“The place [in Canfield] where I was raised was the same place where my mother and her siblings were raised. My grandfather had owned that house for years … So for me, the neighborhood was very family oriented.

We were the type of community where you could literally go on anybody’s porch because everybody had grown up with everybody,” Griffin said.

“And so when I moved out to Ferguson, for me, it was different. That sense of a close community was not there. And when I went to Canfield in 2014, which was the day after Michael Brown was killed, I felt that for the first time, I felt the sense of community again.

I mean, even in a time of us just grieving together, we were trying to figure out ways to address it without even knowing who it is that we should be addressing because a lot of it just simply weren’t active in the community.

We were living there, but we weren’t active and having conversations with each other, and realizing that some of the things that we dealt with in terms of the police -- it wasn’t something that we were just simply experiencing ourselves. Everybody in the community was experiencing the same things.

And so from that point, we really started coming together as a community for the first

Jamelle Bouie/Wikimedia Commons

time, which was out of a tragedy. But the sense of belonging, the sense of connecting and the sense of us coming together as one was really, really strong.”

Griffin reflects on how these conversations led to an attempted sit-in at the police station and a protest march from Canfield Road to West Florissant that the police attempted to prevent with riot gear and batons.

“I saw the police line open up, and a police car literally just drove through the crowd [of protesters]. And as they drove through the crowd, people jumped out the way and just picked up whatever they could. And from that point, it just went from zero to one hundred,” Griffin said.

“The police started shooting rubber bullets at people, we took off running. My daughter who was seven at the time was so scared. We were running hand in hand and she literally broke away from my hand to run around the building to get away from the shock of what was happening. I’ve always raised my kids not to fear anybody, to always speak the truth and to stand up for what’s right. And so in my mind, if I couldn’t do anything else, it would be to keep my body [protesting]. I literally came out the very next day and the day after that and the day after that because I refused to go inside.”

As the Ferguson protests reached national headlines and more Americans began to see what protesters like Griffin and photographers like Carson were witnessing first hand, Carson became more aware of how important it was to capture the nuanced relationship between the Ferguson movement and the police force.

“You can’t define a protest as one thing, because in one moment, a protest can be both joyful and tragic. And I think you have to be aware of that, as a newspaper photographer that people will base their opinions on what these events look like based on your photographs,” Carson said.

“So, I tried to capture that full range of emotions … because, you know, these social movements are complex ... As a local newspaper, we would be negligent if we didn’t report on these events. It was one of the most surreal things of the world, though, to be out at some of these events the night before and then sitting in my living room and hearing President Barack Obama talk about them on live television. Yeah, it was crazy. I was right there and I knew that the president and all these people were seeing these photos and that were helping shape their perspective of what

revisiting ferguson

was going out there so I felt that responsibility to really do a good job.”

Not only did the murder of Michael Brown and other instances of police violence appearing in the media cause a massive upheaval in Black Lives Matter protests, but it also resulted in a surge of African Americans, including Fran Griffin, turning to politics for reform.

Griffin found out through Ferguson that issues, such as the extensive ticketing by police officers, and an inability to pay off warrants, were not only problems that she faced, but were also prevalent in predominantly Black neighborhoods around the country.

Determined to learn about and eradicate the systematic racism in the city’s legislature, Griffin joined the Neighborhood Policing Steering Committee (one of the organizations that were established after Ferguson signed the long term Consent Decree which implements plans to reform the unconstitutional racial bias in policing, municipal court practices and increase community engagement) and began attending city council meetings.

“We saw that there were people in those seats that were supposed to represent us but were not trying to put money into certain parts of the community. I knew there was something I needed to do in terms of being able to represent people without voices,” Griffin said.

In 2016, Griffin ran for councilwoman with a write-in campaign dedicated to addressing the community’s needs. Even though she did not win, she gained the support of many community members that she met during the campaign. In 2019, she ran again and won.

“I’m not your average politician,” Griffin said. “You’re not going to see the, you know, the collar and everything because I told myself that if I’m going to do this work, I have to be as authentic as possible. I can’t pretend to be something that I’m not and then try to get other people to believe in me when what I’m showing is not who I really am. So I told myself, I have to be authentic in it, you know, and I’ve stayed that way. I’m definitely not considered a traditional politician. I don’t even consider myself a politician. I consider myself a public

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servant. Because that’s what my responsibility is: to serve the public.”

Since she became a councilwoman, Griffin had worked with other council members under the Consent Decree to reduce the number of police officers in Ferguson (a city with a demographic of almost 70% Black residents), increase diversity within what originally was a virtually all-white police department and offer police training designed to restrict the force used by police officers during arrests and increase policing accountability.

“If we have a community that is predominantly one particular culture, everyone knows how to communicate. There’s no language barrier, there’s no culture barrier, and not only that, they [police officers] also know what an oppressive system does to a community, because they’ve experienced it themselves, so they’re a little more tolerant on how to deal with the issues,” Griffin said.

Griffin has also been trying to move Ferguson forward economically and socially with plans of providing more social services to assist financially and emotionally troubled community members in order to reduce crime and arrest rates as well as more businesses.

“Originally, they [the city] were generating revenue off of fines and fees. Now that those are no longer in place, we need to deal with the economics of our community. In order to keep Ferguson Ferguson, we need to generate revenue, so that comes with businesses in the area. We got two streets in the city of Ferguson-South Florissant and West Florrisant. If you go down South Florissant, you see nothing but businesses. You go down West Florissant and it’s a desert. If we can put businesses on both streets, then that means more revenue for the city. More sales tax that goes towards our community, our school districts, taking care of basic needs like keeping the grass cut and maintaining street lights,” Griffin said.

Griffin added that she and the other council members are working on forming a reparations committee consisting of individuals with educational background in Black History, the City of Ferguson or economics to design a

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Michael Brown’s name has taken on a whole symbology of its own.

DAVID CARSON

comprehensive plan that creates and lays out the structure for economic development within Ferguson for the next 20 years through a “racial equity” lens.

As political demographics and the general public’s view on policing have continued to shift since the Ferguson uprising and the death of George Floyd, David Carson exhibits optimism for more understanding and equity in the future.

“Michael Brown’s name has taken on a whole symbology of its own. His father has an entire organization called Chosen for Change that is dedicated to keeping the memory of his son alive … If you do some research on this [Trayvon Martin’s murder], I think you’ll see that Black Lives Matter was barely a blip on social media prior to Ferguson. In a way, Michael Brown’s death breathed life into Black Lives Matter. For me, Ferguson itself was the second civil rights movement ... and while I think the country still has a very long way to go to rectifying this, change is only going to happen through some tough conversations and at least there are some going on now. Hopefully, we will start to see some more solid changes,” Carson said.

Councilwoman Griffin also demonstrates hope for the younger generations’ ability to eradicate systemic racism in higher institutions.

“My daughter, my 7-year-old, was the one that stuck with me like glue the whole time … so she saw a lot. She experienced a lot.

Unfortunately, it took a toll on her, as far as the trauma that she saw as a young kid. But, it definitely made her a much stronger person,” Griffin said.

“Those babies that came out on the streets saw what we saw, I knew that when they became of age … yeah, you’re talking about some fighters. They [police force] did not know what they created by doing what they did. And so now we’ve got a whole other generation of strong leaders in the making that I am so proud of. Like, I am so proud of them because they’re not willing to give up either. They’ve seen from a very early age, the reality of what happens in our communities. They got a quick lesson and they are refusing to back down just like everybody else. So I know this change is going to happen in my lifetime. I feel it.”

Police departments are mostly funded by municipal tax money, but state and federal taxes also provide departments around the United States with funds. However, sometimes taxes do not provide as much money as the department or the city wants. This leads police departments to seek out other sources of revenue, like ticket quotas.

Whether police quotas are real or not has been debated for years, and while departments do not give their officers quotas, some set “productivity goals.”

An example of quotas was used to increase police revenue is the Ferguson Police Department. According to the Department of Justice’s Report on Ferguson, the city did have some emphasis on profit gains. The focus on profit gains ultimately had an effect on the Ferguson Police Department’s law enforcement practices which made profit collection a higher priority than complying with the citizens’ safety needs.

In 2010, Ferguson’s Chief of Police Thomas Jackson was notified by the City of Ferguson’s Finance Director that if ticket writings did not have a large increase by the end of the year that “it will be harder to significantly raise collections next year… Given that [they] are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall.”

(DOJ).

Again, three years later in 2013, the City Finance Director contacted the City Manager and said that he once again contacted the Chief of Police to increase revenues by 10%, in which the Chief responded, saying that he would try.

In the Department of Justice’s investigation, they asked Ferguson police officers of all ranks whether or not the FDP was focused on profit collection, to which they responded that it was “stressed heavily” by City leadership.

As previously mentioned, taxes do fund police stations. But, as shown by the Report on Ferguson, some police stations also rely on revenue funded by tickets. This can ultimately lead to unjust ticket writings, where people are unfairly forced to pay for a police station that is actively seeking crime for revenue.

For example, Natural Bridge Road (also known as Route 115), is a 10-mile stretch off of I-70 in St. Louis County. This roadway is known for its infamous speed trap where in 10 miles it hosts 16 municipalities.

Each municipality has its own police force and court house where they collect money for speeding and other traffic violations.

With a population of around 52,000, Florissant is on the larger side of some of the towns in St. Louis County. Economically, Florissant’s employment rate is lower than the state average (pre COVID-19). The town’s police officers issued 29,072 traffic tickets in 2013. This made up 13% of Florissant’s yearly revenue, around $3 million in fines. In June of 2013, Florissant’s municipal court also held over 11,000 outstanding arrest warrants.

Comparing those numbers to a suburb in Kansas City, Lee’s Summit, in Jackson County, that hosts a population of 92,000, almost twice the population of Florissant, Lee’s Summit distributed only 9,651 tickets in the same month.

A town with almost twice the population of Florissant issued almost a third less tickets.

Lee’s Summit also gained $1.44 million, less than half as much revenue from its municipal court. Lee’s Summit held 2,872 outstanding arrest warrants as of June 2013, one fourth as many as Florissant.

To compare the discrepancy between the towns’ warrants, Kansas City has around one arrest warrant for every 1.8 residents, Independence (a suburb of Kansas City) around one warrant for 3.5 residents, and Grandview (also a part of the Kansas City Metro area) around one warrant for every 3.7 residents.

In St. Louis County, however, it is not rare for municipalities to have more arrest warrants than the number of residents.

But some action has been taken.

“Missouri statutes limit the amount of revenue a city can derive from tickets and fines.

It’s limited to 20%,” Clayton Police Chief Mark Smith said.

The enforcement of this statute began on Jan. 1, 2016 and was made to stop municipalities relying on ticketing for funding.

At one point some towns were relying up to 40% of their annual revenue on ticketing.

Traffic violation quotas were also made prohibited by statute.

“Here in the City of Clayton, we don’t practice quotas. We never have,” Chief Smith said.

According to a number of legal organizations like ArchCity Defenders, run down older cars get targeted often because police suspect they’re more likely to be driven by people who they can countlessly fine for “poverty violations.”

“Poverty violations” is a term used to describe violations including driving with expired license plates, expired registration, a suspended license and not being able to provide proof of

insurance.

With many Americans a paycheck away from poverty, a traffic ticket can be devastating. Not to mention how hard it can be for low income families to take time off work to go to court.

Furthermore, if people miss their court date because they can’t take time off of work, they get an arrest warrant. Arrest warrants are visible to potential employers or landlords since they are public information. This can prevent people unable to go to court from getting a job, housing, loans or financial aid. It’s a vicious cycle.

And with 16 municipalities across 10 miles, a single violation across the Natural Bridge Road (ex. missing license plate) can result in a driver being pulled over 16 different times.

For many individuals without the needed understanding of the legal system, dealing with a handful of charges from different towns makes it almost impossible to get through the system alone.

Smith shines a light on what these quotas do for police opinion: “I think that quotas actually undermine the trust in the community. People look at police officers as tax collectors instead of people who are there to protect them and enforce law.”

“

I think that quotas actually undermine the trust in the community.

MARK SMITH

police expenses

defunding the police

The death of George Floyd is not the first police killing of an unarmed Black man that has sparked widespread outrage over police brutality and systemic racism.

Protests following the deaths of Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and many more laid the foundation for the current uprising. However, many activists and movement leaders contend that this time, it’s different. Almost immediately after Floyd’s death on May 25 in Minneapolis, protests spread rapidly across the globe, from Beirut to St. Louis and Melbourne to Nairobi. The global movement has become a major flash point in the 2020 presidential race, with President Trump attempting to win over white suburban voters with law-and-order rhetoric while Democratic nominee Joe Biden condemns looting, but joins protesters in calls for police reform.

Some Americans had never encountered the slogan “defund the police” before this mass movement took root over the summer.

However, calls for divesting money from or abolishing policing as we know it have grown prevalent in recent months. The Trump campaign has run ads framing Biden as a supporter of defunding the police, while Biden has repeatedly expressed contrary claims. Despite its increasing ubiquity, there is significant disagreement and misinformation around what this slogan actually means.

For example, when asked in an interview by

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progressive activist Ady Barkan whether he supports re-allocating some funds away from policing to mental health, social services, and affordable housing, Biden agreed - despite claiming he does not support defunding the police.

“What it means to some people is to radically reduce the city budget for policing and transfer those funds to other agencies in the city, or to efforts to invest in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city,” said Richard Rosenfeld, Founders Professor at the University of Missouri - St. Louis Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. “For others, defund the police doesn’t mean any radical reduction in police budget. It simply means to rethink what we expect of the police, and what other agencies might do to assist the police or even take over some of the functions traditionally assigned to the police. And that can lead to some reduction in the budget for policing.”

Jae Shepherd, Abolition Organizer for Action St. Louis, also had an answer for what it means to defund police: “Defunding the police is the process of reallocating funds and responsibilities from police departments to community-based systems of safety, prevention and de-escalation.”

Before understanding what defunding the police could look like in St. Louis, we need to examine the current situation.

However, it’s important to note before going into budget numbers on policing that transparent data on exactly how police budgets are spent is hard to find.

Shepherd pointed out, “We recently had a petition going around to get the line item budget of the police because it’s not released anywhere, and even some city officials like the alders don’t have their hands on it. So we don’t know exactly what our tax dollars are going to when it comes to funding the police.”

With that in mind, the total fiscal year 2021 budget for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is $204 million, excluding grants but including pension and retirement costs.

Additionally, the department receives about $11 million in miscellaneous grants. That’s the same police department that Shepherd explained “kills more people per capita than any other police department in the country.”

According to the Mapping Police Violence project, using data from 2013 to 2019, the department’s average annual police homicide rate was 17.9. That’s significantly higher than every other police department in the country. Black people were killed at 10.3 times the rate of white people in St. Louis.

Public Safety accounts for 55% of the total general fund budget, while the Health and Human Services department receives 0.5%. 33% of the general fund is allocated towards the Police Department.

According to St. Louis County’s Open Budget database, policing receives a revised budget of $147.71 million for FY2020. In addition, the St. Louis County Police Department receives about $4 million in grants each year, as explained by St. Louis

County Budget Director Paul Kreidler. Broken down by service, almost 36% of total appropriations is allocated towards Public Safety, while 20% of appropriations go towards the Health and Well-Being service.

Many lawmakers and activists have supported the case for decreasing police funding by pointing out the budget breakdown of majority-white suburbs.

For example, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York explained in a June interview on Good Morning America that suburban affluent communities are essentially already models of defunding police because they prioritize health and education over policing.

For example, Clayton spends 44% of its general fund expenditures on Public Safety, while Public Safety accounts for 11 percentage points more of the City of St. Louis’ general fund budget.

However, some say that defunding the police would require radical change beyond anything America has seen before, and the role of policing in communities will need to be fundamentally re-examined or abolished.

Rosenfeld, one the one hand, asserted that the core function of police is to prevent violent crime, and that re-assigning some of the other functions police currently perform would allow them to focus on preventing and solving serious crime.

However, John Chasnoff, co-chair of the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, explained that police have always served another role in Black communities.

According to Chasnoff, the “even more fundamental mission of the police department has always been to serve as a repressive arm of the status quo,” and that’s why a radical shift in how we think about public safety is necessary.

Chasnoff pointed to academic and political activist Angela Davis’ book “Are Prisons Obsolete?”, in which Davis advocates for the abolition of the carceral system.

“She says in that book that we can’t quite imagine what it would be like to have a world without prisons. But, we can imagine the steps we need to take to get to a place where we can imagine a world without prisons,” said Chasnoff.

Rosenfeld agreed that the first step to police reform is to step back and examine both police funding and the role policing plays in society: “I don’t think we know yet - I don’t, and I’m not certain most people do, including most policymakers - exactly which of the functions of the police can be safely reallocated elsewhere.

And that’s the discussion that needs to be held. [...] The police and other city leaders need to listen to the protesters.

And the task of the policymaker is to translate protest ideals - something on the order of defund the police, let’s say - into practical policy.”

There are several areas of policing that some experts, policymakers and activists say are examples of unnecessary overfunding and excessive burdens placed on police that worsen situations and allow racial discrimination to go unchecked.

For example, Rosenfeld pointed to large crowd events, such as concerts and sporting events.

“It’s certainly worth considering, as the number of fires has plummeted over time, why firefighters cannot be used to either assist the police or take over some of that patrolling of big crowd events,” he said. “I think for many kinds of traffic control one can make the same argument - it’s not clear why you need uniformed police officers with firearms to engage in routine traffic control.”

Rosenfeld also explained that there is still more research that needs to go into examining the viability and safety of reallocating police funding.

Homelessness is an example.

“What we need to know is what fraction of all the calls that the police get about homelessness problems carry a high risk of violence, and what fraction do not. I don’t think we know that right now. But assuming that certainly not all carry high risk of violence - and I would argue probably fewer than half, certainly - then it makes sense to have other agencies respond with the police, perhaps available as backup.”

Taymaz Valley/Wikimedia Commons What we do know about the homelessness situation is that compared to the 33% of the general fund budget that is spent on the Police Department, “zero percent of that fund goes to homelessness,” as Shepherd explained.

Shepherd also pointed out other ways that police departments could be defunded: “Really, they’re only trained to use force and violence in any and all situations, so instead of having them respond to traffic accidents, having some sort of unarmed traffic monitor. Instead of having them respond to mental health crises, have some sort of mental health professionals.

Instead of having police in our schools, have counselors in our schools. Instead of having police respond to drug overdose, having some sort of street nurses and recovery outreach programs.”

Violence prevention and anti-poverty programs that address the root cause of crime, Shepherd explained, would be more effective than the current arrest-and-incarcerate model.

Motley also pointed out how the training for police emphasizes a quick resort to violence as opposed to safe diffusion of a tense situation.

“We see that you’re only really making less than five percent of arrests for violent crimes.

They spent over 80 percent of their training on shooting. So they’re being trained for those violent crimes, not for someone who [is having a mental health crisis]” There are also larger structural issues with policing that must be resolved, said Chasnoff.

One example is the War on Drugs. In Missouri, Black people are 2.6 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people.

Chasnoff referenced a statistic from a 2013 report released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, which found an 18-1 disparity in marijuana arrests of Black and white people in St. Louis City.

Advocates agree that defunding the police will come with a reinvestment in communities and areas like education, affordable housing, and social services.

Tishaura Jones, Treasurer of the City of St. Louis, explained that these are areas that have long been systematically overlooked in policymaking.

“We’ve been defunding education for years and no one is screaming about that. We’ve been defunding healthcare for years and no one’s screaming about that, but all of a sudden, police seem to be untouchable,” she said.

Building strong community organizations is also essential, according to Romona Taylor Williams, longtime activist and former Executive Director of the Metro St. Louis Coalition for Inclusion and Equity.

“St. Louis is not investing in its people,” Williams said. “I believe in not only identifying the problems and talking about the problems, but we have to also come up with innovations and innovative solutions in order to resolve the problems. And a lot of that starts at the

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grassroots level. You know, one thing that is void in St. Louis is strong community based organizations.”

Money needs to be divested from sources like the St. Louis penitentiary known as the Workhouse, Williams said, and invested into long-neglected and disadvantaged communities such as North St. Louis.

The process to defund the police will not be an easy one, Chasnoff explained, because no end result is in sight yet. However, many movement leaders are hopeful as the concept continues to gain traction and awareness increases.

Shepherd said, “In 2014, it was radical to say Black lives matter, but now it’s like, super radical to say defund the police [...] If you believe Black lives matter, you should be saying defund the police.”

Jones also expressed hope for future progress under new leadership: “Do I think that it’ll happen under the current leadership? No. Do I think that if we had more bold leadership that would challenge that and possibly defund or reallocate funds [...] Yes, under different leadership I think we would.”

While several academics and policymakers see reasoning behind the idea of defunding the police, there are several others who disagree with the idea-- bringing up the necessity for police and the ‘impracticality’

of police defunding within the nation. Even top Democrats including Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip James Clyburn have steered away from supporting the cause.

“I think people are afraid of the phrase ‘defund the police,’ and not realizing that we’re talking about expanding public safety to include all of the things that make people safe in their homes and their neighborhoods,” said Jones.

St. Louis County Police Officer Shanette Hall agrees that oftentimes the idea of defunding the police is misunderstood. Hall is a board member of the Ethical Society of Police, an organization founded by African-American police officers in 1972 to address and expose problems of racial discrimination within the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

“I think we have to understand what people are asking for when they say defund the police.

And oftentimes, we will have pro-police people or even police departments who take that as, you just want to take away all of of our money, or you want to cut our jobs, or you want to cut our salaries,” she said.

However, Hall explained that defunding the police is about addressing root problems and systemic issues with policing.

“Sometimes we are requiring police officers to do more than what they are trained to do.

“

If you believe Black lives matter, you should be saying defund the police.

JAE SHEPHERD And the people are being affected by that because you have police officers responding to things that they’re not adequately able to or able to effectively do. And so this is where I wholeheartedly support the reallocation of funds. I think if we want to leave the same amount of funding in police departments then we need to expand the type of people who work within police departments [...] police departments should hire social workers, police department should hire a liaison, let’s say, for the unhoused.”

On the other hand, a big problem that Tim Fitch, former St Louis County Police Chief and Councilman of St Louis County District 3, sees

Jason Hargrove/Flickr

is that defunding the police would take away something that police officers need the most: crisis situation training.

“The first thing that go when there is a budget crunch is training and travel. So if you take away the training that you just demanded, like additional crisis intervention training, or de escalation training, or any of those things, how now are you going to deal with the public wants to know, additional training?”

Fitch also argued that defunding of police is not needed because police officers are trained to deal with crisis situations, especially within such a big police department like St Louis County’s.

“They’re already doing social work. They’re already doing crisis intervention, trained and to do that. To take money away from the county police, and give it to some other group to do the same thing [police officers are] already doing doesn’t make sense to me,” Fitch also questions what would happen if social workers did replace police officers, and went into dangerous situations alone.

“You can have a house where somebody wants to report that their sick brother is not on his medicine. And what happens when that social worker gets there and [the brother] hurts the social worker?”

Fitch believes that the real problem is the defunding of mental health services in St. Louis. He explained that there used to be a lot more support from the state for mental health

services, but those eventually got removed due to tax increases.

“I used to have a place when I was a young police officer when I found a person that was drunk. We used to have a place we could take them [to] detox. None of those [places] exists in St. Louis region anymore.”

Another problem that several opponents bring up is that police defunding simply won’t work-- the example most used being the defunding of police in Camden, New Jersey.

In 2012, Camden disbanded its police force. Hundreds of officers were fired from their jobs and made to reapply following new training and psychological evaluations. From first glance, the program looks like a success (crime having decreased 42%), but community members have consistently argued that they feel unsafe within their own neighborhoods.

Motley argues that this is due to how Camden disbanded their police department. “[The disabanding] was really a cost saving measure. Instead of paying police officers 90,000 a year, we can pay them 40,000 so now [they] can get two police officers instead of one.

So now you have more police officers but it just exacerbated the [previous] problem.”

Defunding the police has never officially been done before. However, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement this summer means that both large-scale social change and policy change concerning the issue of police funding may be imminent.

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“

We, as officers, really need to do a better job of reaching out, communicating, building positive relationships, getting out in the community, and showing that, hey, I’m human, I’m just like you.

”

OFFICER WHITTAKER

police in schools

Kaia Rolle with her grandmother, Meralyn Kirkland.

SARAH ESPEDIDO/ORLANDO SENTINEL/TNS At 6-years-old, children begin to understand the concept of numbers, knowing day from night and left from right.

And for a 6-year-old girl in Orlando, Florida, she was trying to understand why she was being arrested for misdemeanor battery.

On Sept. 19, 2019, Kaia Rolle, a first grader, was sitting at a table, coloring with crayons, when two police officers walked in to arrest her. As they zip-tied her hands, she wailed in desperation. “No ... no, don’t put handcuffs on!” she said.

After the officers led her out of her elementary school, she said, “Please, give me a second chance.” The officers proceeded to put her in the police car. She was taken to a juvenile center to be fingerprinted and got a mugshot.

Earlier that day, Rolle threw a tantrum because she wanted to wear her sunglasses.

She began pulling on her classroom door and screaming. The assistant principal then took Rolle to his office, where she began to hit and kick him.

At this point, the assistant principal called the school’s student resource officer over, and he attempted to calm Rolle down. After about ten minutes, Rolle calmed down.

By the time the officers walked in to arrest

Rolle, she was sitting in the office, calm and reading books and coloring with crayons.

The officers that arrested Rolle were student resource officers at her school, Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy. Officer Dennis Turner, the main arresting officer, was fired days after news of the arrest went public.

According to the National Center for Education’s statistics about Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety, U.S. Public Schools 45% of public schools had SROs during the 2017-2018 school year. Another 35% of public schools had some sworn type of law enforcement officer or security personnel.

But, schools weren’t always like this.

Police began emerging in schools in the 1990’s, when schools attempted to cut down on serious crimes by implementing zero tolerance policies.

These policies caused harsh punishments and even arrests for minor issues.

After the Columbine High School shooting, the number of police officers in schools skyrocketed.

Although these School Resource Officers (SROs) were initially put in schools to prevent school shootings, they are now commonly known for being responsible for general safety

and crime prevention in schools.

Mo Canady, the Executive Director of the National Association of Student Resource Officers (NASRO), said, “A misconception is that we’re just there to defend the school against an active shooter situation. Well, most schools are never going to face an active shooter incident. So you know, are we really there for something that’s probably never going to happen? We have to be trained and prepared to respond to that. But, we’re there for so much more. It’s a community based policing approach.”

NASRO is a nonprofit organization that provides training to SROs, holding classes and conferences around the nation. A SRO’s participation in NASRO is completely voluntary, as it is member-based.

As of 2020, there are more than 3,000 NASRO members around the world. However, this number is still only a small fraction of SROs and police officers in schools across the country.

Canady said, “I wish that every SRO in this country came to our training and learned to do the job the way we espouse the job should be done. I think we would rarely see a story about someone wanting to remove an SRO. I think that if everyone came through our training, I think most schools would see the value and would want an SRO. I firmly believe that.”

Officers who choose to be a member of NASRO have the opportunity to gain greater distinction. Upon receiving advanced training from NASRO and meeting certain criteria, SROs can become a “NASRO Practitioner.”

However, NASRO only trains officers, not certifying them at all. Certification would constitute an expiration date, renewal requirement, or a revocation procedure if misconduct were to occur.

Currently, in the U.S., there are no specific requirements SROs must fulfill before serving in schools. Prospective SROs must simply be a sworn, career law enforcement officer. There is no other national regulation; each individual police department and school district establish their own protocols.

The School District of Clayton has two SROs: Officer Jack Boeger at Wydown Middle School and Officer Herman Whittaker at Clayton High School.

Both officers have taken the NASRO basic 40-hour SRO course, which discusses topics ranging from the teenage brain to understanding special needs students. Officers Boeger and Whittaker also underwent a screening process before being appointed to their respective schools.

Clayton Police Chief, Mark Smith, said, “[Officer Boeger and Whittaker] had to volunteer for the job. We want people who want to be school resource officers. We want

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them to want to work with kids, and with staff and parents. They also go through an interview process. We evaluate their background, we look at their personnel file, make sure that they have an appropriate background to go over there and we do assessments. Finally, when we pick that officer, we make sure the school is comfortable with them.”

Both officers have to meet the goals that the Clayton Police Department defines for a SRO. Chief Smith said, “Their main role is to keep the school safe. It’s also important that the SROs foster positive relationships with the students.

We want to pick officers who can build trust with the students, because sometimes they actually deal with problems that students may have at home. We want them to be good role models for the students.”

Officer Whittaker is in his fourth year as the SRO at CHS. Throughout his time, Whittaker has cherished the positive relationships he’s formed with students.

“My job is to build relationships. Here, I’m able to see development. On the street, you’re pretty much going from call to call. You are getting to see some of the things that you’ve helped with. But, here, you see it every day. So, you see the hard work that you put in into the students, and it’s fulfilling.”

CHS athletics and activities director, T’Shon Young emphasized Officer Whittaker’s support of students.

Young said, “He has more of an impact than he or others may know. Black men and police officers do not go well together. Many of our Black students, families, and even staff are harassed by police officers. Officer Whittaker is definitely making ground and proving that

30

all officers are not misled. He is definitely a positive role model for a lot of our students, and not just our black students. You see him not just doing his job, but actually engaging with students and showing a genuine interest in them and their well being. [...] He is highly engaged with our Black Student Union. He comes to the meetings and supports all the efforts.”

Along with a SRO’s ability to form relationships with students, successful SRO’s possess a certain temperament.

Director Canady said, “It takes a unique personality, and individual and skill set to do this particular job. [...] We’re talking about putting officers in an environment with our most valuable commodity, which is our youth.

Really, our future.”

When SROs aren’t the right fit for the position or lose sight of their broader mission, problems can arise.

In the case of Kaia Rolle, the 6-year-old, her main arresting officer, SRO Dennis Turner, was plagued by a long list of disciplinary actions.

Throughout his 20 year tenure as an officer, Turner was disciplined seven times for violating department policy. Previously, his youngest arrest had been a 7-year-old boy.

Officers are in agreement that cases like Kaia Rolle’s should not be occurring.

“As a father of a 7-year-old, I just can’t imagine someone doing that to my son,” said Officer Whittaker. “That’s a difficult question, as a father and officer, for someone who gets there to protect. You’re there to help but ultimately put yourself in a position where you restrain a student, a 7-year-old with handcuffs. He overstepped his boundaries… Yeah, that’s very

“

It takes a unique personality, and individual and skill set to do this particular job. [...] We’re talking about putting officers in an environment with our most valuable commodity, which is our youth. Really, our future.

MO CANADY

upsetting.”

Director Canady said, “Good SROs don’t make a lot of arrests. I was actually at a table today with six SROs from Montana. And I asked all of them, I said, How many arrests did you make during the last school year? The answer: zero. Six SROs, zero arrests. Now, that’s not because we ignore crimes that happen. And sometimes, unfortunately, a situation does have to end in an arrest. But a carefully selected, specifically trained SRO, we teach them other strategies, how to de-escalate situations, how to work with the school administration. [...] I can speak to that myself. I was a SRO for 12 years. I didn’t arrest five students in those 12 years.”

When SROs overstep their boundaries or become harmful to students, it is crucial that these officers be addressed, whether it be through disciplinary action or removal from the school.

Director Canady said, “Let’s suppose that we mess up on that front end and put the wrong person in. As a former SRO supervisor, I’ve made that mistake twice. Then, we have to do our due diligence in getting that person out of that position. We can’t leave a problem person in. It’s the most high profile position in law enforcement. The SROs are going to be the most well known officers in their community. [...] So, it has to be the right person.”

With publicized cases of SRO misconduct and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, opposition to a police presence in schools has been mounting. Many argue that SROs should be replaced with mental health experts or more guidance counselors.

However, Canady said, “Replacing the SRO with anything is a mistake. We’re talking about apples and oranges. A psychologist, social worker, is not a law enforcement officer; and an enforcement officer is not a social worker, or psychologist, but we need each other desperately… When I was an SRO, if it had not been for our social workers, and our school district, there’s no way that I or the other people working around me would have been nearly as effective in our roles. They were our teammates.

One does not cancel out the other.”

Some schools have shifted away from SROs. St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) doesn’t utilize SROs. Instead, they have their own safety officer team, which is run by the district. None of the safety officers are licensed police officers.

Dr. Michael Brown, the SLPS Deputy Superintendent, explained that the district’s safety officers go through de-escalation training and work closely with school social workers.

Many of them have also fostered close bonds with students.

“Those relationships provide an opportunity for students to have someone to talk to. And sometimes when they’re on the fence, someone that can talk them off that fence,” said Dr. Brown.

These relationships are key to stopping the pipeline to prison: a national phenomenon where students are being pushed out of public schools and into the criminal justice system.

When a student is suspended or expelled, their chances of dropping out increase drastically, and once a student drops out, they are more likely to be involved in crime later in

life.

Jason Jabbari, a Washington University in St. Louis Data Analyst and co-author of several research papers on the school-toprison pipeline explained that social exclusion increases under the carceral system in schools: “At first, with in-school suspension, you’re excluded from your classmates. Out-of schoolsuspension, you’re excluded from your school environment. When you’re dropped out, you’re excluded from mainstream educational institutions and are typically not in college, when you drop out when you’re incarcerated now. [...] So, the odds of being excluded tend to increase.”

According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, the amount of out of school suspension has doubled since the 1970’s and has been on the rise ever since.

But, that doesn’t mean kids are misbehaving more. The same source says that crime rates for children ages 10-17 have been decreasing.

However, discipline rates differ with race.

Students of color are disciplined at a much higher rate than their white counterparts.

Injustices against people of color in the criminal justice system start as early as preschool. A 2015 University of Los Angeles California study found that Missouri ranked first in the nation in racial disparities of elementary school suspension.

The study said, “Statewide, elementary schools in Missouri suspended 14.4 percent of their black students at least once in 2011-12 compared to 1.8 percent of white students.”

And these suspensions aren’t just harming the suspended students, they are harming their peers as well.

Jabbari says, “We wanted to deploy a similar strategy to look at the collateral damages of

suspensions. We found that students that attend high suspension schools are less likely to enroll in advanced math courses. They’re less likely to have higher math achievement and less likely to attend college.”

School districts are re-evaluating what student discipline looks like. In particular, schools are moving away from a reliance on suspending and expelling students.

In 2016, SLPS adopted a new student discipline code, encouraging the use of restorative discipline and trauma-informed practices. In addition, SLPS banned out-ofschool suspensions for students in preschool through second grade.

Dr. Brown said, “For the rest of the grades [three through twelve], we do suspensions, but we’re really trying to put a lot of positive things within the schools, so that we’re reinforcing a positive behavior, rather than the negative reinforcements. Sometimes suspensions can be just a kid having a bad day. So, let’s wait until tomorrow and see what happens. A lot of kids will come back the next day and say to you, Hey, I was having a bad day. I apologize. Thanks for not suspending me. It won’t happen again.”

As calls for police reform in schools across the nation increase, sometimes the simplest solutions can be the most effective.

Officer Whittaker said, “We, as officers, really need to do a better job of reaching out, communicating, building positive relationships, getting out in the community, and showing that, hey, I’m human, I’m just like you. You are able to see me as a person and look past the uniform. And the police officer should be able to look at a person who’s walking down the street as a human being, as a person, not as a suspect. Once we’re able to do that, we’ll make a positive change.”

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CHOOSING RANKED CHOICE

How plurality voting has failed us and why ranked choice is an answer to reforming our voting system.

A ballot worker places mail-in ballots into a box.

JOSHUA GUNTER / CLEVELAND.COM

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his year marks a significant election year: an opportunity to decide our nation’s leader amidst a global pandemic, the largest racial movement in U.S. history, and the ticking time bomb of climate change.

Our decisions in 2020 and nearing election years will shift the future of America in unprecedented ways.

During this unparalleled, pandemiccoinciding election year, we must take a leap to think outside the status quo of the way we elect our officials.

Voters have been set into the century-old box of a plurality voting system and been told to choose a winner, an action we’ve blindly done again and again at the ballot box. But as 2016 has demonstrated, simply showing up at the polls isn’t enough to ensure majority rule. On the 2020 ballot and in future elections, voters can’t simply just keep voting. We need to reevaluate the way we choose who takes on the role of being our collective voice across local, state and federal offices.

Is the way we choose our representatives fair, or is it outdated? How can we best reflect majority opinions through voting?

Let’s take on these questions and make ourselves heard not just by voting but by

also advocating for the way we should vote, whatever your opinion may be.

Ranked choice voting (RCV), also known as instant runoff voting (IRV), has been arguably the most popular alternative listed to plurality voting. RCV works by having voters rank their favorite to least favorite pick of the candidates.

The ballots are then calculated by looking at the first choice; if any of the candidates has a majority, they win the election. If no

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can win without a majority and even by a slim margin, RCV offers a method of voting that has the potential to more accurately represent constituent opinions. RCV can minimize what is dubbed the “spoiler” effect, when a popular candidate barely loses the election because other, less-popular candidates who had similar values split the vote.

This happened in the Massachusetts 4th District Democratic Congressional Primary where Jake Auchincloss, a candidate plagued with controversy who ran on a “pragmatic progressive” platform narrowly edged out the popular and highly progressive Jesse Mermell.

The 9-way race had 3 other female candidates with similar progressive values to Mermell, and many believe this split Mermell’s vote and led her to lose with 21.4% of the vote to Auchincloss’s 22.4%.

RCV reduces the “spoiler effect” because it implores voters to grant their first choice preference to perhaps a less popular candidate who they like the most, instead of picking a single winner that is not their ideal candidate but has similar values and is more popular. Since the voter is ranking and not selecting a single winner, there’s more freedom to actually mark their favorite candidate in first place, instead of

“OUR DECISIONS IN 2020 AND NEARING ELECTION YEARS WILL SHIFT THE FUTURE OF AMERICA IN UNPRECEDENTED WAYS.”

OPINION 32

candidate has a majority, the candidate who had the lowest number of first-choice votes is eliminated and all the ballots that ranked the now eliminated candidate first are re-allocated to go to whoever was the second choice candidate on each of said ballots. The process repeats until an outright majority is declared.

In the current system where a candidate

RANKED CHOICE AT A GLANCE

= implemented RCV at state or local level

ART BY ELLA CUNEO

= jurisdictions that adopted but not implemented RCV settling in an attempt to avoid the “spoiler effect.”

In addition, RCV has the benefit of pushing campaigns toward a more positive and uplifting culture. Political tactics like “mudslinging” are less likely to occur, since it can reflect poorly on candidate A’s ranking on a voter’s ballot when candidate A once attacked candidate B, the voter’s favorite candidate. Furthermore, RCV races could build coalitions between candidates of similar values, who would now be motivated to help each other in rankings, rather than the status quo of aligning candidates placing heavy emphasis on the issues that divide them in order to stand out. Elizabeth Warren in the Boston Globe advocates that this “replace[s] the politics of personal destruction with positive coalition.”

There are also less straightforward benefits that, although still need to be further researched, could potentially be widely concluded as an effect of RCV. RepresentWomen, a research advocacy 501(c) (3) organization, found that RCV has a positive impact on female and person of color representation in a decade-long analysis over 156 local level elections.

FairVote, another 501(c)(3) that is well known for championing the spread of RCV, claimed a greater voter turnout in the 6 largest

U.S. cities using RCV through their own analysis. FairVote also cites a 2016 University of Missouri - St. Louis study by Professor David Kimball and Ph.D. candidate Joseph Anthony, which concludes that RCV reduces the substantial drop in voter participation between primary and runoff elections (although an overall strong impact has yet to be found).

Although more diverse studies need to be conducted on RCV and it should be trialed in many more elections, much of the data collected on RCV points in an optimistic direction.

RCV is a rapidly growing idea. Over the past few decades, 18 cities have decided their city or county-wide elections through RCV. And now in 2020, we can see that it’s certainly made a breakthrough. RCV was used in this year’s Democratic primaries in Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and Wyoming. In Massachusetts, the choice to make RCV the voting system for primary and general elections is on the ballot.

Maine will make history in November for being the first state to use RCV in a presidential election.

The momentum for RCV reiterates our obligation to constantly revise and reform our democracy when needed. In general, beyond just looking at RCV, there is a need to consider re-evaluating our current election system as a

whole.

RCV seems to have many benefits, but I don’t think we are yet in a place where we can be completely sold on it. There are limited studies and it hasn’t yet been implemented in enough elections to report clear and measurable positive impact. Scouring the Internet will also give you some division on the topic, with strongly worded articles deeming RCV a necessary action and others saying it’s a mistake.

There should be one main idea that resonates above all and it’s that we need to mobilize for some form of change to protect our democracy.

2020 elections are in about a month and a half and the partisanship in Washington is eroding a concept that may not have even been there from the start: the representation of all voices.

But looking toward 2024, I encourage you to start thinking beyond the status quo in voting and as a whole.

Start the discussion. Advocate. And push for the representation you want to see in our democracy. If there ever was a year to make our voices heard, it would be now.

kaitlyn tran

SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR OPINION 33

IS AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM DANGEROUS? annie xiao |REPORTER SOPHIE MATISZIK | PHOTOGRAPHER

7.4 million reported cases in the United States. 209,448 deaths*.

There is little doubt that the U.S.’ handling of COVID-19 is less than adequate. After the initial shock of the pandemic passed, I grasped to understand why the U.S.’ response differed so greatly from other countries’.

How did the U.S., a global superpower with unmatched resources, allow the pandemic to consume the country, and how is this response reflective of our nation?

Americans have long held the notion that America is unique, even exceptional. In 1630, John Winthrop touted the Massachusetts Bay colony “the city upon a hill”; this idea soon translated to the nation as a whole.

The Declaration of Independence and Constitution furthered this idea, establishing the U.S. as separate from the rest of the world, both physically and ideologically In The Atlantic article, “Why America Resists Learning From Other Countries,” Rutgers University political scientist, R. Daniel Kelemen, describes American exceptionalism as “the notion that the United States is fundamentally different from and superior to other nations.”

The idea that the U.S. is fundamentally different from other countries frequently appears in arguments against change.

Opponents of universal healthcare commonly retreat to this argument, claiming that these systems simply would not work in the U.S.; the structure of the U.S. is too different.

Just in the context of healthcare arguments, the idea of exceptionalism begins appearing dangerous. The fixed mindset of Americans, perpetuated by a notion of exceptionalism, prevents new ideas from being considered and

OPINON 34

prevents new ideas from being considered and implemented, despite possible positive impacts.

Throughout the pandemic, the U.S. has remained hesitant to learn from other countries. Struck with the virus relatively late, the U.S. was given the opportunity to build off of the successes of other countries, adopting these methods to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

However, the U.S. failed to capitalize on this opportunity and continues refusing to learn from other countries, maintaining the world’s highest caseload as a result.

The response to the pandemic reveals the American mindset of complacency. The U.S. continues refusing to adapt, relying on a belief of superiority instead of facts and evidence Clayton AP U.S. History teacher, Mr. Josh Meyers says, “I think there’s a continuum and a healthy balance between loving your country and feeling proud of your country and being blind to its faults.” In this situation, American pride has overshadowed its faults, and this blindness has come at the cost of numerous lives and livelihoods.

This danger extends past just the present.

This sense of complacency and unwillingness to learn is a dangerous mentality to carry into the future. If this continues, the America will remain in its ignorance, halting progress and innovation, while the world carries on.

Clinging onto the notion of exceptionalism, the U.S. will lose sight of the principles that made America exceptional in the beginning.

We cannot blindly relish in our past success, thinking this is sufficient for the future.

Mr. Meyers returns to the origins of American exceptionalism, saying, “I tend to look at the Declaration of Independence as

and the true open story is our failures to live up to that standard, but the constant pursuit of it. I think that that’s kind of the American story.”

The Declaration of Independence gave Americans the freedom to dream, to reach new heights. We have since moved away from this mentality, growing indifferent to reaching the next bar. Only after we actively strive for a higher standard, putting aside past American success, will we prove ourselves as truly exceptional.

Here we will find not only the solution to the pandemic but to continuing progress into the future.

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THE TRUE OPEN STORY IS OUR FAILURES TO LIVE UP TO THAT STANDARD, BUT THE CONSTANT PURSUIT OF IT. I THINK THAT THAT’S KIND OF THE AMERICAN STORY. *Both statistics as of October 3, 2020.

THE FUTURE OF THE SENATE Over the years, the US Senate has lost the prestige it once held.

The United States Senate calls itself the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” but is this still the case? The United States Senate is one of the two legislative bodies that make up the United States Congress. The Senate is a select group of 100 members who not only introduce and vote on laws, but also confirm the president’s cabinet, try impeachment, confirm federal judges and approve entry into treaties and international groups.

So, what is the Senate? What is wrong with it and how can we fix it?

The United States Senate has been called the worst idea in the constitution by scholars.

“The Senate is the most unrepresentative upper house in the world with the sole exception of the British House of Lords, which is powerless,” Freed Zakarian, former editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, said.

The issues in the Senate date back to the Connecticut Compromise of 1787, when in order to convince the smaller colonies to join the Union, the constitutional framers decided to make every state have two senators no matter the population. The reason behind this is that the Founding Fathers feared “big government” and wanted the federal government to be weak and the states to be strong enough to topple a federal government that could eventually take away the rights of the people.

The Senate is composed of two senators per state, which gives Wyoming one Senator per 250,000 constituents, while California gets one Senator per twenty million constituents. This inequality has more implications than just bills.

The Senate also has the power to confirm the President’s cabinet, investigatory powers, impeachment powers and judge approval power for federal courts and the Supreme Court.

There is also a demographic issue. 25 percent of the United States population lives within just three states and has just six senators. The seventeen least populated states make up just nine percent of the population while having thirty four senators.

There are also political representation issues, giving the Republican Party an edge over the Democratic Party. In the United States, we have a two-party system: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Within the one hundred fifteenth congress, the Democrats controlled twenty-five Senate seats in the thirty smallest states, while Republicans controlled thirty-five seats in the thirty smallest states.

Another way to put this is that in the one hundred and fifteenth Congress, the Republican 51-seat majority represented 143 million Americans, while the Democrats 49-seat minority represented 182 million Americans.

That is a 40 million person difference.

In the less populated states they are almost entirely Republican held and in the smaller

The United States Capital, meeting place of the U.S. Senate

PHOTO FROM DREAMTIME states in the east, the Democrats have much more of a hold. When nominating Supreme Court justices, Wyoming and Montana have one hundred times more of a say by population than California, New York, and Florida. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico both have larger populations than many of the other states but still have not been granted statehood and equal representation in congress.

There are also economic issues.

California is now the fifth largest economy on Earth. The economy of California is worth around 3.2 trillion dollars while the economy of Wyoming is just 38 billion dollars, and yet they have equal say in financial issues that affect the nation as a whole.

This can give the less populated states much more of say in bills that directly affect the economy of states like New York or California, specifically right now when the Senate has failed to pass a COVID stimulus bill.

Another reason for this is the Senate rule known as the filibuster. The filibuster is a part of Senate procedure that previously allowed Senators to talk as much as they wanted to hold up a vote on a bill. Though over time the rule has evolved so now just 40 Senators can vote against a bill to prevent it from passing.

This procedure makes any sort of important bipartisan bills nearly impossible to pass especially during this age of increased political partisanship.

Alan Weisberg, former assistant district attorney for the Southern District of Florida, notes the increase in political partisanship

specifically when it comes to confirming federal judges.

“They (Senate Republicans) have become very effective and nominating more and more judges who are younger and younger, for the purpose that they will serve for a long time,” Weisberg said.

The Republicans in the Senate have used their constitutionally granted advantages to confirm more and more judges to federal courts whose opinions will shape the future of American jurisprudence.

Quite frankly, not much can be done to remedy the issues in the Senate. One way would be to pass constitutional amendments, but it is very unlikely that any of them would pass the House, Senate and then make ratification by 38 states.

The easiest motion would be to first abolish the filibuster in the Senate, requiring just a simple majority for a bill to pass, and then to give DC and Puerto Rico statehood needing just majorities in the House and Senate states there by granting political representation to two historically underrepresented populations and thereby helping even out the political representation in the Senate.

The United States Senate no longer is the greatest deliberative body, but with some changes it may be able to once again hold that lofty title.

alex slen

REPORTER OPINION 35

FALL SPORTS CONTINUED? In the midst of COVID, CHS has continued the fall sports season with a few safety precaution.

CHS girls tennis players practice at Shaw Park tennis courts for the start of the season.

AMY MA, PHOTOGRAPHER

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ike many schools in the St. Louis area, Clayton High School has decided to commit to virtual learning for the fall 2020 semester due to rising cases in Missouri and lack of control for the virus nationwide. Despite online classes, CHS made the decision to continue with the fall sports season in person. Although sports participation is important at CHS, having practices and games everyday, in the midst of COVID-19, puts the health of students, faculty, and Clayton families at risk.

But CHS is not alone. St. Louis Public Schools set August 24 as the starting date for fall sports along with the schools in the Metro Catholic Conference. Each sport is categorized by its contact level and assigned certain health parameters based on that level. According to an article from STL High School Sports, “high contact sports have up to 20 athletes and two coaches working in a group. Low contact sports are allowed full practices and intrasquad scrimmages.” Despite the viral risk associated with high contact sports, 22 people are allowed to practice together without masks.

Even though the risk of contraction decreases in low contact sports, entire teams are allowed to participate at one time, meaning risk of

OPINION 36

infection is high.

On September 9, Sam Page, St. Louis County Executive, announced that high contact and moderate contact sports will not have games.

Although games are the most dangerous aspect, practices will continue with higher contact sports including football, soccer, field hockey, and volleyball. Social-distancing guidelines were also implemented. The guidelines state that groups of athletes will be put in a 20 foot barrier between different groups, but these groups can have up to 30 people. This means risk of infection is still high since students are not required to wear masks during vigorous activity.

CHS has put guidelines in place for each sports team regarding the virus. Wendy Humphreys, a junior on the field hockey team, said, “We all have to do temperature checks before practice and then during practice we wear masks whenever we aren’t actively doing an exercise.” Although these precautions prevent symptomatic team members from participating in practice, Harvard Medical School reports that about 16% of teenagers are asymptomatic. On a team of 30 students, four could have the virus and show no symptoms, which puts the rest of the students and coaches

at risk.

Some students are also concerned about attending practices on a regular basis. Annie Xiao, a senior at CHS, is part of the volleyball team. When asked if CHS should have sports this fall, she said, “I think the decision for school to be virtual demonstrates that we’re not in a place where large group activities should be facilitated. I think that Clayton’s main priority should be getting students back to inperson classes safely, and the return to sports contradicts this.”

So how are so many schools allowed to have full team practices everyday with minimum regulation? Although originally the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) stated all schools operating virtually would be prohibited from participating in sports, they later revised their decision and stated at the beginning of August that all schools who have decided to pursue virtual learning this fall are still eligible to participate in sports and school-related activities. Many coaches and administrators in Missouri took part in a conference call with MSHSAA to convince the state that having a ‘different’ season is better than having no season at all. Almost every coastal state has

either delayed or shortened their sports season due to COVID-19, while states in the Midwest and some southern states have decided to have a regularly scheduled season.

Not only do practices put the athletes at risk, but they also put unnecessary pressure on students. Returning to sports this fall puts an ultimatum on many students. Xiao said, “Students, specifically those who had been strictly social distancing, were forced to decide whether to return to sports practice, putting themselves and others at greater risk, or to continue social distancing slowing the spread of the virus, but becoming increasingly ostracized from their peers in the process.”

Those who decide not to put themselves at risk by skipping the fall season feel as though they are falling behind or missing out. Students are forced to pick between their safety and having the high school experience they want.

Select sports teams are also continuing their seasons as scheduled. For example, Lou Fusz, a St. Louis based select soccer team, has commenced practices and are looking to start having games with other leagues soon.

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STUDENTS ARE FORCED TO PICK BETWEEN THEIR SAFETY AND HAVING THE HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE THEY WANT Lauren Hill, a junior at CHS and part of a Lou Fusz team, states that regulation has not been strict among the league thus far. Hill said, “In phase one they would split us into grids and there were 10 players per grid and we couldn’t

commingle. Then it got more relaxed and the grids stopped, and we just did smaller drills in smaller groups, then we were able to scrimmage and actually play games, most of the time they checked everyone’s temperature.” Although there were attempts to regulate the teams at first, the league has become less concerned with the virus. Hill said, “There have been a couple times where they’ve had to cancel our practices because someone on the team or a parent tested positive.”

Many could argue that the mental health of student athletes would be compromised if sports were postponed or cancelled this season, but the physical health of the district is more important in order to return back to an in-person school schedule as soon as possible.

Continuing with practices strongly increases the risk of infection in each of the students and faculty as well. While inconvenient for athletes, cancelling sports would help CHS, and the Clayton district as a whole, remain as safe as possible while trying to return back to a hybrid/ in-person academic schedule.

MAYA RICHTER, PHOTOGRAPHER The CHS girls field hockey team trains with practice matches.

sasha keller

PAGE EDITOR OPINION 37

GIRLS’ VOLLEYBALL Players to watch: Sophia Boyd Sarah Taylor Sophie Srenco

2019-2020 Record: 12-7-1

Goal: To improve on last year’s re-cord and play as a team.

GIRLS’ TENNIS Players to watch: Sarah Centeno Anna Walsh Madeline Blatt

2019-2020 Record: N/A

FOOTBALL Players to watch: Ozzie Keil Frank Wilson Ki Henderson

2019-2020 Record: 1-9

Goal: To improve on 1-9 record and make a run in the playoffs.

GIRLS’ GOLF Players to watch: Sophie Thompson Natalie Noonan Regan Wade

2019-2020 Record: 8-1

Goal:

Goal:

To have a good mentality on the court.

To beat Ladue.

GIRLS’ FIELD HOCKEY Players to watch: Ingrid Stahl Cece Cohen Madalyn Schroeder

2019-2020 Record: 11-6

Goal: To grow as a team and improve on last year’s record.

BOYS’ SWIMMING Players to watch: Jiabei Han Peter Beardslee Ashton Belzer

2019-2020 Record: N/A

Goal:

To win conference year in a row.

Photo by Eli Millner

38 SPORTS

FALL SPORTS PREVIEW

cece cohen & kaia mills-lee SPORTS SECTION EDITORS

Photo by Eli Millner

BOYS’ CROSS COUNTRY Players to watch: Anand Mysorekar Milan Patel Shane LaGesse

2019-2020 Record:

GIRLS’ CROSS COUNTRY Players to watch: Ruthie Pierson Sophia Pelligreen Izzy Erdmann

2019-2020 Record:

N/A

N/A

Goal:

Goal:

To improve on last year’s 4th place state finish.

To build on last season’s success with the entire team returning.

BOYS’ SOCCER Players to watch: Zan Wellmon Ned Thompson Ben Brewer Zach Stapleton

2019-2020 Record: 15-7-1

Goal: To build off of last year’s success and win the district championship.

SPORTS 39

DON’T BE A MASKHOLE! Moriah and Sahithya weigh the pros and cons of the proposed alternatives to correctly wearing a mask

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oronavirus or Covid-19 is a virus spreading through the world, with about 7 million cases so far in the United States. Due to the fatal risk to potentially anyone, especially the immunocompromised and those with preexisting conditions, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests wearing masks and cleaning them regularly when outside of your home. Although this is not a big ask, many have tried to repeatedly weasel their way out of properly wearing masks, or have put forth creative alternatives to the correct and effective method. We have decided to evaluate these creative styles of mask wearing and choose which in fact is the best.

Not At All This is by far the most advocated method of incorrectly wearing a mask.

Advocates say that it is too warm, they can’t breathe, and that it’s their body, their choice. Obviously having and possibly spreading covid is much more acceptable to them than wearing a mask for a few minutes while in public. While opting for this style can possibly spread the virus, these people are otherwise harmless, and you should not worry about their stupidity spreading. You may have seen several politicians rocking this method, but don’t be fooled: this style definitely doesn’t Trump any of the others below. We do not recommend this method of wearing a mask for it makes the wearer look ignorant and overall it is intellectually unflattering.

We review it 0/10.

On The Chin This alternative to concealer might be one of the best ways to hide your chin acne. However, it completely defeats the purpose of the mask. At least it’s only one small hand movement away from being worn correctly, so brownie points are given for that. If you manage to not sneeze, cough, or breathe through your mouth or nose, and you stay more than 6 feet away, then feel free to use this chin acne hack, because that is about all it is useful for. We review this as a 0/10.

REVIEW 40

sahithya gokaraju & moriah lotsoff PAGE EDITOR, REVIEW SECTION EDITOR

Cutting A Hole Some unique individuals have decided to wear the mask correctly, but add a special little DIY twist to it. They decided to cut out a hole right in the middle of their face covering. One variation of this might include cutting a small hole directly in front of the mouth. The hole, just big enough for the straw of a Starbucks Frappuccino to get through, seems to be purposeful for those who believe their drink has more importance than another person’s life. The alternative, cutting a vertical hole that exposes both the nose and mouth, is perfect for those who get hungry throughout the day, and the act of lowering their mask for a few seconds is just too much work. Though both of these ways may allow you to finish your sweet treats and may help curb your hunger, they are almost incapable of preventing the particles from the nose and mouth from escaping because of the hole. Overall, we rate this a 0/10.

Under The Nose So close. These people are so close to having it on correctly. This style does not include the occasional slip that may happen, an oversized mask gradually falling down under the nose. No. This is when someone puts on their mask so it only covers their mouth and not their nose. This method shows off the fact that the wearer doesn’t understand the actual purpose of wearing a mask. Doing this is like wearing a bulletproof vest, but with a giant hole over the heart, it kind of protects you but there is still a chance of being hurt. However, there is one exception to this possibly fatal method of mask-wearing. The person has no function in their nose and therefore can’t sneeze or breathe out of their nose. If there is no possibility of particles leaving their nose, not covering it is totally fine for these mouth breathers.

However, if you do have function of your nose, cover it with a mask.

Overall we review this 0/10.

The Right Way If this is your go-to, congratulations! You care about other people and realize this small sacrifice you must make for an occasional few minutes is not going to kill you. This correct method is accomplished by putting on the mask so that it completely covers both your nose and mouth. Although occasionally uncomfortable, the reward of not infecting and possibly killing others makes it all worthwhile. We are all going through this pandemic together, and although you may witness some that choose not to take it seriously, those that wear the mask correctly with no objections can sleep well at night knowing that they are showing respect for all of those around them. We confidently review this as 10/10.

All drawings are made by Sonali Dayal REVIEW 41

FOZZIE’S Reporter Enoch Lai reviews the hidden gem of St. Louis’s suburbs.

PHOTO FROM FOZZIE’S

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ocated just feet from the intersection between Big Bend and Interstate 64, Fozzies seemed like a typical “run-of-the-mill” small restaurant.

It was opened in 2010 by Mark Lucas, and the sandwich emporium has gotten widespread attention and praise. Lucas was named one of the “20 Sandwich Chefs to know” in 2012 by the STL magazine.

Even so, is Fozzies a sandwich shop to know?

From my experience, the answer is yes. Fozzies is a hidden gem within the outskirts of the St. Louis suburbs. In this review, I ordered takeout from Fozzies to maximize safety. Without this pandemic though, I could have eaten inside or outside the restaurant.

The entrance to the family-owned business, which has two locations in the St. Louis area, seemed slightly unorthodox. Upon arrival at the Richmond Heights location, it wasn’t apparent how to get into the restaurant. There was a large, slightly overgrown garden full of fresh herbs basking in the sun. There was a somewhat run-down trailer in the grass, which bordered the outskirts of the property. Within the area, well organized and colorful chairs and tables served as an outdoor dining space for guests, and the entrance was located on the other side of the building of the parking lot, facing Interstate 64.

42 REVIEW

Within the restaurant, the space was small and cozy. However, it wasn’t a desirable dining area, as the square footage inside wasn’t large enough for personal space. Within the interior, a large window facing Big Bend let in lots of natural light, while everything seemed to be sanitary and in order. My takeout order of a milkshake, a lamb gyro, and Tzatziki Spread were on time on a rack within the restaurant.

Even so, I had to ask for my milkshake, which wasn’t placed within the takeout bag. I would have loved it if this detail was more apparent, as other customers would’ve taken the bag, assuming that there was a milkshake within (only to find the opposite). I believe it should be made clear what the customer should do if they ordered a milkshake as part of a takeout order. Nevertheless, the milkshake I asked for was delivered quickly and efficiently.

My impression of the food from Fozzies was generally positive. The S’mores milkshake had a nice thick consistency with bits of chocolate and marshmallows scattered throughout.

The Tzatziki Spread I ordered was oversized, flavorful, and slightly acidic. It complemented the traditionally plain pita bread that came with the order. I believe the lamb gyro I ordered also contained the dip and had a nice balance of meat and vegetables. The peppers in the gyro gave it some heat, but it wasn’t overwhelming.

The vegetables were fresh tasting and high quality. I thought the cucumbers were a little too big within the gyro and would have fared better in smaller pieces.

The quality of food at Fozzie’s didn’t disappoint. There were no glaring flaws, and the food was flavorful and existed within its traditional European theme. With such great ingredients, the food was reasonably priced. The gyro cost $8, the Tzatziki Spread and bread cost $7, and the shake cost $3. The gyro was enough for a meal, and I ate way too much for this review. While the food wasn’t “revolutionary,” it was very tasty and high quality.

Overall, Fozzies is a great local restaurant for those willing to try something a bit unorthodox. While they sell burgers and traditional American foods, their focus on greek style foods (such as gyros and different types of spreads) will expand the palette in your mouth. While Fozzie’s doesn’t have an ideal indoor dining spot, it’s superior to other restaurants in terms of outdoor dining, ease of takeout, and value. Minor nuances exist (mainly the milkshake fiasco), but my chances of returning are very high.

enoch lai

REPORTER

MULAN Reporter Rachel Chung offers her perspective on the new live action Mulan movie.

M

ulan, a live-action remake of the 1998 animated movie, is currently available on Disney+ for $30.

With impressive action scenes and beautiful backgrounds from the trailer, I expected a whole new story and a way to revive one of my favorite childhood movies. However, Mulan falls under the shadow of the previous film and ends up as bland as a run-of-the-mill action movie.

Directed by Niki Caro, it retells the ancient Ballad of Mulan in live-action. Hua Mulan, the heroine, is an adept user of chi, an energy that people can harness to perform supernatural acts like defying gravity, but its use is prohibited for women. The Rourans, led by antagonists Böri Khan and Xianniang, aim to take over China. As the Chinese emperor tries to fight back with a better army, Mulan’s frail father, a famous war-veteran, is conscripted to the war effort. Fearing he will die, Mulan decides to take her father’s place in disguise as a man despite severe punishment if she is found out.

During Mulan’s military training, I increasingly became disappointed with the lack of life and personality in the characters. The side characters, Mulan’s friends, flashed by and introduced themselves, but none of them stuck out to me or had much character. By the end of the animated movie, her fellow soldiers were her friends, but by the end of the live-action, I wasn’t even sure of their names.

Mulan also lacks character. From the start, Mulan possesses chi, a roughly defined power.

OFFICIAL MOVIE POSTER In the old film, there is a montage that is paired with “I’ll Make a Man out of You,” where Mulan gradually becomes wiser and stronger to finally climb the pole with the weights. Instead of just physically trying to climb the pole, she uses her logic and her new strength to get to the top. However, the climax of her training in this movie is when she finally shows her chi powers to carry buckets of water to the top of a mountain. This was disappointing, as in the animated version, you could really see her character develop instead of Mulan just revealing powers she has had since she was a child.

The largest disappointment, however, was Xianniang, who was exiled from her village for using her chi as a woman. As a new character with interesting motives, she was overflowing with potential. However, the movie barely mentions her backstory or what caused her to join forces with Böri Khan despite being much more powerful than him. I believe if they had given her full character development and backstory, she could have compensated for the lack of life in the rest of the characters.

Unfortunately, we are only left with minimal remarks on her life, and nothing else.

The rest of the movie went by and between intense battle scenes, there wasn’t much. The structure was a simple action movie-- beautiful visuals, average acting, and a straightforward plot. It was fine as an action movie, but as Mulan, I expected something a little more. The animated movie displayed Mulan’s character

and emotion, whether it was through song or speaking with her fellow soldiers. The live-action plowed through the dialogue and replaced the time that could have deepened the plot and character with gravity-defying arrowcatching scenes. Dazzling, perhaps, but in the end, they left no impression upon me.

Mulan has also faced problems off-screen as well. Even though it sports an all-Asian cast, it still lacks in certain departments of Asian representation- particularly behind the scenes.

For example, Mulan has been criticized for its lack of hiring an Asian costume designer and the number of white people in prominent behind-the-scenes roles. The director, composer, cinematographer, casting director, and the screenwriters of Mulan are white. Not only that, but Mulan has also faced controversy over credits offering special thanks to officials in Xinjiang province, a province that has been accused of severe human rights abuse to Uighur Muslims. Liu Yifei, the actress for Mulan, has also supported the Hong Kong police which has caused people to boycott Mulan.

Overall, Mulan had beautiful scenes and thrilling battle sequences. But the movie, chock full of those action scenes, leaves little left for development of anything truly captivating.

rachel chung

REPORTER REVIEW 43

PRO: BLOCK SCHEDULING With the new online school schedule comes a chance for CHS to permanently change its normal scheduling to a block system.

P

magine this: You wake up with your eyes foggy and your head pounding, completely sleep-deprived. You get dressed to go to school after a long night of homework. This was a reality for many Clayton High School students before the pandemic. But with the new schedule for the first quarter of the 2020-2021 school year, many struggling students are catching a break.

There are many differences between the new block schedule, and the schedule CHS had for the 2019-2020 school year before the pandemic.

Previously, we had all eight periods in one day, with each class lasting 45 minutes long. The school day used to start at 8 AM and end at 3 PM. Currently, we only have four periods every day with the new schedule, alternating every other day with classes lasting 55 minutes long.

The school day now starts at 9 AM and ends at 2 PM. With this new change, students have been getting more sleep than ever. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, earlier start times before 8:30 are “a key modifiable contributor to insufficient sleep, as well as circadian rhythm disruption, in this population.” There are many health benefits that come with more sleep, like getting sick

I

less often (which is very important, especially during these times), decrease in risks for serious health problems, reduction in stress, and improvement in school and at work, which are well worth the sacrifice of pushing school back an hour.

Another benefit of the new schedule is that students have more time to manage their homework. Students at CHS have been known to have heavy workloads. The mix of Honors and AP classes with extracurricular activities like clubs and sports can be overwhelming for even the smartest and most productive students. With the new schedule, students only have to worry about four classes worth of homework a night.

The new schedule shares many similarities to a college student’s schedule because of the freedom throughout the day that is given to students. Every student has a built-in study period every other day and lunch period every day that is one hour long. During these periods, students can eat, call friends, reach out to teachers, or get homework done.

The combination of the study period and the decreased workload will allow students more time to complete schoolwork, participate in extracurriculars, and spend with friends and

family.

Although the newest version of the school schedule for CHS has received a lot of praise, people might be concerned with this schedule because it cuts the number of classes we have in a semester in half. While we will have less class time, teachers have developed their curriculum to match the requirements needed to pass the class. This could lead to finals being less stressful, and it could help students retain more information.

The new block schedule for CHS has countless benefits: students have more time to sleep, do homework, and to have fun. During the pandemic, people have found that there are many things internally wrong with our country and healthcare systems. Since these problems have surfaced, people are trying to fix them to create a better way of life.

The flaws in our old schedule have been found, so why can’t we try another version of the schedule that fixes its imperfections?

max hagemeister 44 PRO/CON

PAGE EDITOR

CON: BLOCK SCHEDULING While the online block periods work for the time being, they can never be used as a standard school schedule for CHS.

W

ith the implementation of a new block schedule for online learning, some students are beginning to wonder: could this schedule be employed for a normal school year? While this fantasy might seem tangible, a closer examination reveals that this new schedule would be almost impossible to achieve while still maintaining the level of educational excellence expected from the Clayton School District.

This new block schedule reduces the number of times a student has a specific class, from five times a week to only two or three. However, unlike the block schedule that has been employed in the past years at CHS, the class time is not increased adequately to make up for the lost time.

During a normal school week (in person), each class would take up 225 minutes. With the new online block schedule, each class only takes up 110-165 minutes a week. This decreased class time will force teachers to shorten their curriculums significantly, in addition to only allowing students to see their teachers every other day.

Student-teacher interactions are crucial for developing trust and bonds between the learner and their instructor. Many aspects of student life, such as recommendation letters, are built upon relationships with their teachers, and this would be lost if we permanently switched to the new block schedule.

Another deterrent for switching to the new block schedule is the fact that while Clayton might be able to switch their schedules, other

schools will not.

This applies to sports most of all, as games and tournaments will still be built around the standard 8-3 schedule. While athletes will still be able to attend these games, it will create an awkward hour-long gap between the final bell of the day and the first blowing of the whistle.

And because the school will probably still want to bus all of their athletes to each game, these students will have to stay at school for long periods of time before their games.

Without most schools in St. Louis changing their schedules, the proposed block schedule will only hurt the athletic life of students.

It’s easy to see teachers shortening their curriculums to accommodate the new schedule. While this isn’t necessarily a good thing, it certainly won’t be the end of the world.

However, the content of AP tests will not change. This creates a stressful environment for AP students, as they have to learn the same material in a decreased amount of time. AP teachers will most likely be stressed as well, trying to teach their students the knowledge needed to pass the AP test.

If CHS does switch to a block schedule, AP classes will most likely become much harder than previous years.

One of the most convincing arguments in favor of the new block schedule is being able to start an hour later, allowing students to get more sleep.

While starting later would undoubtedly be popular with students, CHS is still a public school and would need to abide by the state’s time requirements, which is 1,044 school hours

per year. Doing the math, with a 9-2 schedule, CHS would need to have school for 209 days every year. That’s at least 41 normal five day school weeks with no breaks, half-days, or early releases. Which, if we started at the same time we did this year in mid-August, would cause the school year to last until the end of May, with no winter, spring, or thanksgiving breaks.

So unless we are able to change the public school laws in place for the state, which is highly unlikely, a block schedule would only make the school year worse.

In an ideal world, where the City of Clayton could influence the state government and other schools, a block schedule might be a good idea.

However, this is not our world. While CHS may be a great school, it is still a public school, and must abide by the restrictions and guidelines set in place by our peers and government.

Even with intensive research and planning, I doubt administrators could come up with a schedule that meets student expectations.

We should instead appreciate the increased freedom that online learning gives us; we are probably never getting it again.

max keller

PRO/CON SECTION EDITOR

45 PRO/CON

PAWPAW

The pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to the US. So why haven’t many heard of it?

Pawpaws hanging on a tree

D

o you see it? It’s supposed to be in the front of the garden.”

My mom and I continued walking through the trees, searching for something we’d never seen before.

“Is that it?” I pointed at a tall tree with large teardrop shaped leaves.

“No, there’s no fruit on that one.”

We continued walking until we reached a space under two huge trees. Nestled in between the larger trees was a small tree. Nestled in its branches were a cluster of glorious green fruit.

“I see it! Look, there are pawpaw everywhere!”

The pawpaw is a small deciduous tree native to North America. According to the National Park Service, the pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to North America. But while this fruit is indigenous to the US, most Americans have never heard of it.

According to the Atlantic, the pawpaw was voted the American fruit most likely to become popular by agricultural experts in 1916. But, because it is difficult to grow, doesn’t have as large of a yield as other fruits and has a short shelf life, fruit-growers stopped growing pawpaw and it never came close to the status scientists predicted.

Pawpaws look similar to a mango except they’re green and range in size. The ones I found were about half the size of my palm. On the inside, pawpaws have yellow flesh and large

STAFF ED 46

SOFIA ERLIN | PHOTOGRAPHER brown seeds running down the center. Many describe the flavor as a mix between banana and mango with hints of pineapple, apple and vanilla. Pawpaws can be eaten raw, cooked in pies and most popularly, made into ice cream.

CHS sophomore Ivy Reed described the taste as “Like a banana-papaya gummy bear, but with a little bit of funkiness, a hint of tartness and a slightly bitter aftertaste.”

Pawpaw season is September to October so now is the perfect time to try it. It’s not everyday you get to taste a new fruit! Especially one that grows right next door. Since pawpaw is still hard to find, the best place to look is the farmer’s market. However, if you’re up for a challenge you can either go foraging for pawpaw in a park known to have the trees (the Globe is not responsible for any damage caused by eating random fruits from the woods) or plant your own pawpaw tree.

However, if none of these options sound appealing, you can check out Bulrush STL, a local restaurant that serves modern Ozark cuisine. Bulrush owner and chef Rob Connoley harvests and serves pawpaw in unique ways.

“I prefer to do savory things with it. So I made a big pot of Mexican mole… and [pawpaw] becomes the sweetener,” Connoley said.

Similarly to Reed, Connoley described the pawpaw flavor as having hints of papaya and funk. But, unlike many, Connoley doesn’t taste

the banana flavor.

“I hear all the time ‘it’s a mixture of banana and pineapple and mango.’ I guess I understand why you’re saying that and I don’t know that they’re right or I’m right. But I think it’s just our brain saying this is tropical fruit, I don’t know what to do with it. To me, it’s more of a combination of a funky or fermented mango and papaya,” Connoley said.

Connoley’s advice for those looking to harvest their own pawpaw is to look in the low spots in forests. Because pawpaw rot so quickly, the fallen pawpaw has a strong fermented smell that guides foragers to it. Once you find a pawpaw tree, lightly shake it and harvest the fallen fruit. Once you harvest the fruit, cut it open longways around, pull the seeds out and enjoy!

“People go out and gather pawpaw when they’re not ripe and put them in a bag and ripen them in their kitchen. A couple of years ago, my sous chef and I did an experiment. We gathered fresh ones. And then we did a blind side by side taste test. There’s no comparison. Right on the tree is the only way to go,” Connoley said.

As we enter a strange and isolating fall, there’s no better time to connect to our local community. And what better way to connect to Missouri than to eat some pawpaw.

sofia erlin EDITOR IN CHIEF

FREE Jewish Books

and Music for your kids

PJ Library sends FREE, high-quality Jewish-themed books and music each month to children between the ages of 6 months and 11 years.

Families with kids 6 months-8 years, register at PJLibrary.org; 9-11 years old, register at PJOurWay.org.

Contact Jennifer Baer Lotsoff with questions at JLotsoff@JFedSTL.org, 314-442-3867.

YOU AREN’T ALONE. CHS STUDENTS SAY...

“I don’t know where to get any from.”

“I don’t smoke marijuana because I have asthma and I don’t want to have an asthma attack.”

“I don’t like feeling out of my body, no control.”

NOT

USING MARIJUANA

IS NORMAL “My parents only have a few rules and not doing drugs is a really important thing for them, so I would feel like a total jerk if I couldn’t even follow one little rule”

“I would lose trust from my parents and I’d hurt our relationship.”

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The Clayton Education Foundation advances the School District of Clayton’s culture of academic excellence and helps students reach their full potential by:

Funding classroom innovations Providing increased access to educational opportunities Promoting lifelong connections for alumni Our Teacher Innovation Grants foster creativity in the classroom. By providing innovative learning experiences that are not covered by tax dollars alone, we are helping Clayton students become critical thinkers, creative problem solvers and lifelong learners.

In 2017, a grant from CEF supplied the seed money to support a pilot class designed to provide Clayton High School students with real-world, entrepreneurial business experiences. Today, it has become the Catalyst program, including 40 students from Clayton, Ladue, Brentwood and University City High Schools.

Students learn from business professionals and develop an idea for a new business they pitch in a competition like TV’s “Shark Tank.”

Donate Today! www.claytoneducationfoundation.org The Clayton Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization; all gifts are tax deductible.