November 2016 -- Silver Chips Print

Montgomery Blair High School SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

A public forum for student expression since 1937

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November 15, 2016

Hogan MCEA proposes new bell times for 2017 acts on school start dates

By Leila Jackson

By Henry Wiebe

On Oct. 11, Governor Larry Hogan released another executive order clarifying the requirements for school districts looking to receive an exemption from starting school after Labor Day. His original executive order mandated that all schools start after Labor Day and end before June 15 and said that districts could request waivers if they had a “compelling justification.” His second order stated that schools would only be granted waivers if they were charter, at-risk, or low-income schools. Schools with unique programs may also receive waivers.

According to Montgomery County Board Members Jill Ortman-Fouse and Patricia O’Neill, the manipulation of school calendars has historically been a job reserved for local school boards.

Despite this, Hogan chose to implement a broad policy that encompasses all schools in Maryland.

Prior to the second order being passed, the Board of Education submitted a waiver request. “Before, we had voted to put a recommendation forward that would be inclusive of requesting a waiver… but then the governor came out with his second proclamation that narrowed the scope of what you could use to apply for a waiver, which would make it very, very hard for us to get one,” OrtmanFouse said.

The original order gave some

see WAIVER REQUESTS page A2

On Wednesday, Nov. 2 the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) sent a proposal to the BOE to revert school bell times to their previous schedule before the 20 minute shift.

MCEA, an organization that represents more than 12,000 professional educators in MCPS, created a Bell Times workgroup to discuss different schedule options.

Many teachers and parents had voiced discontent with the Board’s 2014 decision to advance the bell

times by 20 minutes. The workgroup originally developed three schedule proposals.

MCEA took a vote at an MCEA Representative Assembly on Nov. 2. According to MCEA UniServ Director Lauren-Ashley Villa, two major factors that prompted this proposal were ending high school extracurricular activities at a decent time and starting elementary schools earlier. “There was real concern over how the current bell times are impacting elementary students, including Pre-K pro-

grams of three and four year olds,” Villa said.

These suggested changes responded to elementary school parents’ frustration about the shift in the bell schedule that resulted in their children coming home at late hours. Montgomery County elementary schools are split up into two tiers that have different bell schedules. Currently, the first tier of schools starts at 9:00 a.m. and finishes at 3:25 p.m., and the

see START TIMES page A3

Post-election tension

GRIFFIN REILLY

SIGN VANDALIZED A Black Lives Matter sign was defaced at Christ Congregational Church on Colesville Road. The banner was vandalized on Wednesday, Nov. 9 after Donald Trump won the presidential election, defeating Hillary Clinton.

For more about the election, see the special politics issue on pages SP1 to SP7.

VOL 79 NO 2

County term limits passed

By Serena Debesai

Montgomery County residents voted to impose term limits on the County Council and the county executive on Nov. 8. The measure, called Question B on the ballot, passed with 68.9 percent of voters in favor of the proposition.

The new term limits prevent councilmembers and the county executive from seeking more than three four-year terms. As a result, Council President Nancy Floreen, Councilmembers George Leventhal, Marc Elrich, Roger Berliner, and County Executive Isaiah Leggett will be barred from reelection in 2018.

Tom Moore, chairman of the “No on B” movement, spearheaded the opposition to the charter, and believes that the term limits are “bad public policy” and reduce accountability in county officials.

“You know…that you can’t be up on the ballot next time. There is nothing keeping you from doing all kinds of stuff,” Moore said.

Moore was not surprised with the results of the election and partly attributed them to the appealing nature of term limits. “If you don’t know anything else about [term limits], it…intuitively sounds good,” he said.

Voters rejected similar measures in 2000 and 2004. According to Moore, this year was different because fewer individuals had their political careers at stake.

“This time, fighting it was more of a pure issue of is this good government or not… so the budget and level of activity…was a lot lower,” Moore said. Moore does not see the law changing, and will most likely not pursue efforts to repeal term limits. “Term limits, once they are in, they are very difficult to get out,” he said.

March on, Blair: An evolving ensemble

By Cole Greenberg

Two lightsaber-wielding figures circle each other menacingly as the music begins to rise in intensity. The crowd watches intently as their bright weapons cut through the chilly night air. A rendition of the beloved “Star Wars” theme song reaches a climactic note as the two duelers arrive at a moment of stillness, and then launch into a dramatic showdown, twirling, slashing, and hacking across the field. The galactic gladiators enter the final stage of their battle and end with a classic hero-beatsvillain finale.

This is not a showing of the latest “Star Wars” film. This dramatic showdown is actually the latest Friday night routine of the Blair marching band AKA the Mont-

NEWS A2

HANNAH SCHWARTZ

gomery Blair Blazer Pride Marching Band.

This kind of vibrant performance can be expected with greater frequency in the future, an element of this year’s larger marching band. While dramatized performances are the most noticeable change, the band has grown from 14 strong to 40 strong over the course of three years and has continued to develop its music skills.

Trebles with growing Considering Blair’s population of 3,000 students, the small size of the marching band is an unexpected sight. According to Raife Oldham, director of the Blair marching band and Blair music teacher, the national average rate of par-

ticipation in high school marching bands is roughly 20 percent of the student population. In comparison, Blair’s band participation is at a mere 1.5 percent.

According to senior Allen Esibe, a bass clarinet player in the band, students tend to associate the words “marching band” with a slow, boring performance. “When [people] hear the word band, they think of classical music... All our songs are really upbeat. It is kind of exciting,” Esibe says.

While perception is the largest factor in the club’s small-scale turnout, Oldham considers the band’s volunteer-only policy as an additional obstacle in growing the band. Unlike other schools in

see MARCHING BAND page C2

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CHAMINDA HANGIILIPOLA

MARCHING BAND Students perform at a home football game.

Hidden process

History made

Bathrooms

Sports roundup

The obstacles to diversifying required literature

A first hand look at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture

A review of Blair’s best and worst bathrooms

Everything you need to know about fall sports

B3

OP/ED B1

SAMI MALLON

FEATURES C1

C1

ENTERTAINMENT D1

CALEB BAUMAN

D2

CHIPS CLIPS D6

SAMI MALLON

F3

LA ESQUINA LATINA E1

SPORTS F1

A2 News

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November 15, 2016

MCPS launches Digital Citizenship Curriculum for students

Program promotes responsible and safe behavior and activity online

By Hermela Mengesha Beginning this school year, all middle school students in the county will have four hours of digital citizenship instruction integrated into classes. The program, created in partnership between MCPS and Common Sense Education, officially launched on Oct. 19 at Takoma Park Middle School. The course addresses issues such as cyber bullying, Internet safety, privacy, and plagiarism.

The program will expand to some elementary schools and high schools next year, according to Danny Weiss, Vice President of Federal Policy at Common Sense Kids Action. In the 2018-2019 school year, all grade levels will receive some form of instruction in digital citizenship.

Schools have considerable autonomy in how they implement the program, according to Barbara Huth, the local Education Program Manager at Common Sense Education. “The big thing is that the instruction is delivered in whatever way is best for that school ... so that the students see a great meaning in the instruction along with their regular content,”

she said.

The digital citizenship course varies based on grade level. High schoolers use a version called “Digital Bytes,” a project-based system that tackles real-world issues. Students watch news clips and case study videos associated with a specific topic, and then collaborate with peers to discuss and create media about the topic.

For middle schoolers, “Digital Compass” presents a story where students are able to choose their own path based on different scenarios. The story features positive and negative outcomes to represent the consequences of students’ actions online.

Elementary school students between grades three and five use “Digital Passport,” which features games that integrate digital citizenship lessons.

Students learn five lessons throughout the year for four total hours of instruction. At the end of the year, schools receive certification for completing the course.

Latrice Rogers, assistant to the Associate Superintendent in MCPS, worked with Common Sense Education to implement the program, and she said that an increase in online conflicts affecting

the school environment inspired the program. “You have things like cyberbullying, you might have inappropriate pictures,” Rogers said.

According to Weiss, the goal of the Digital Citizenship Curriculum is for students to understand the potential impact of their actions online. “[Through the program] children and families can take the greatest advantage of social media and technology for learning and for fun ... But without the right education, the downsides can be very, very serious,” Weiss said.

A task force of parents, staff, and students was formed to assess the best solution to the danger that the growing use of technology posed to students. The task force met with Common Sense Education about implementing the Digital Citizenship Curriculum.

In MCPS, the program is funded by April McClain-Delaney and her husband, U.S. Representative John Delaney. “Now with the financing that the Delaney family fund has put forward and the eagerness of Montgomery County Districts, we’re finally able to launch this program,” Weiss said.

COURTESY OF GBOYINDE ONIJALA, MCPS

DONE DEAL MCPS Superintendent Jack Smith poses with MCPS and Common Sense Education staff at a press event on October 19 at Takoma Park Middle School.

By the official launch on Oct. 19, every middle school had conducted at least one lesson. Both Huth and Rogers said they received positive feedback from schools, and a student at Takoma Park spoke at the press event about his experience with the curriculum. “The student was saying, since he’s been exposed to the lessons he’s noticed a change in his peers and they’re more respectful [in] how they treat each other in the online environment,” Rogers said.

Rogers and other members of the task force plan to create a website for Digital Citizenship.

The website would make resources available for teachers, students, and parents outside of the classroom. MCPS also plans to host a

parent night to inform the community of the resources available to them about digital citizenship.

“It’s a whole community approach,” Rogers said.

In the past, Common Sense Education conducted surveys of students and educators to assess their experience with the curriculum. MCPS and Common Sense Education staff are considering an ongoing survey to gauge how much students have taken away from the course, as well as to receive feedback from teachers.

Common Sense Education published the curriculum in July 2011, and it is used in more than 50,000 schools across the country, including Baltimore County, the District of Columbia, Alexandria City, and Loudon County.

Hogan issues second order from WAIVER REQUESTS page AI

freedom to the individual school districts by making it easy for them to submit waivers. “[The first] executive order allows for waivers, or requests for waivers, to the state board of education,” O’Neill said. “His second executive order basically says that if you are a special education school or a charter school, or if you have some unique program, you would be able to get a waiver…

The circumstances would be very, very difficult.”

The Board has yet to make a decision about further waiver requests. “We haven’t met as a board since the governor made his decision, so we have not had the opportunity to deliberate on next steps yet,” Ortman-Fouse said.

Ortman-Fouse says that Hogan’s decision disrupts the system that is already set up between the school board and community it serves. “It is deeply concerning as well, because we have processes in place to gather stakeholder input, review feedback, [and become] informed by the values of our community…” Ortman-Fouse said. She also believes that Hogan’s decision does not take into account interests specific to individual counties. “By the governor deciding that he has this power, it takes away the voice of our stakeholders in Montgomery County.

There are a number of different things that our stakeholders have expressed to us that make a difference for them, [things that] it

doesn’t seem as though the governor took into consideration in his executive order.”

Ortman-Fouse describes that there is no way of knowing for sure how well Hogan’s executive orders will work, and for some of the counties, his decisions bring a sense of ambiguity. “What if the governor didn’t agree with our legislative platform? I don’t know where that stops. It just seems like a very slippery slope, and that’s why these roles are delineated between our state board of education and our local boards,” she said.

According to O’Neill, the parameters set forth by Hogan also do not allow for much room for extreme weather emergencies where schools would be forced to close. “His plan leaves us with a question: what if we have, suddenly, 10 snow days in a year?

What do we do with meeting the 180 days?” O’Neill said.

According to Ortman-Fouse, regardless of the benefits that the executive orders may or may not bring to the school districts in Maryland, Governor Hogan’s decision to introduce more control over an area that has traditionally been delegated as a power for the local school boards could be troubling. “It’s a concern for everyone, because we have our priorities in Montgomery County for our students, and our particular needs for our families,” Ortman-Fouse said, “We want to make sure that that is respected.”

Blair student charged after distributing marijuana brownies

By Cole Greenberg A student was charged by the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) for distributing brownies containing marijuana to multiple students on school grounds.

The student was removed from Blair’s homecoming dance on Oct. 22, and was questioned by security after the brownies resulted in the illness of at least two dance-goers.

According to Principal Renay Johnson, the students involved in the distribution of the marijuana brownies received 10 days of in-school-suspension and were recommended for expulsion— consequences outlined by the Montgomery County Student Code of Conduct.

According to security team leader Darryl Cooper, security suspects that the marijuana

brownies ingested by the two students contained narcotics, but they are unable to acquire a brownie for testing to confirm or deny their suspicions.

At approximately 9:30 p.m. school officials noticed a student sitting down outside the dance floor, and according to School Resource Officer Soukayna Junious, the student appeared to be sick.

“Her pupils were slightly dilated.

She basically couldn’t stand up and she was swaying a little bit.

Her skin became very pale, then she vomited a lot,” Junious said.

The student informed security that she had ingested a druglaced brownie before the dance and identified the student who allegedly sold her the brownie.

“Once we heard a name of the student that may have brought the brownies here, or may have been the reason for the brownies being here, we got that student

and spoke with them,” Cooper said. “And then as more names and stuff became involved we got all those students and pretty much spoke with them.”

On Oct. 24, administrators confirmed a second student’s involvement in the distribution of the marijuana brownies, and while the distribution was off school grounds, the student will receive 10 days of suspension and expulsion hearings as well.

According to Junious, only one of the distributors— the one questioned on the night of homecoming— is facing police charges.

“As far as I know just the one student was charged, but that does not mean that [the other student] won’t be charged later on. It just may require more of an investigation before they charge,” Junious said.

According to Cooper, an ambulance took the ill student to the

hospital for medical attention and met her parents there.

A second student also required medical attention from paramedics, but was released to his parent without a trip to the hospital after being questioned by administrators.

As stated by Mrs. Johnson, both of the students who consumed the brownies received appropriate consequences according to the Code of Conduct.

“I want the consumer to take some ownership too. Let’s not only blame the seller, but the consumer. Brownies do not cost 20 dollars. If you buy[a brownie] for 20 dollars, you know it’s drugs in the brownie,” Johnson said.

School officials are unsure of what caused the students’ severe reactions, and they stressed the dangers of concentrated marijuana.

According to Junious, ingest-

ing marijuana brownies and other edibles pose a greater risk of overdose than smoking marijuana does.

“Leave weed brownies alone, that’s the only thing I can really say. It’s all fun and games until you’re that person that’s overdosing and taking a trip to the emergency room, because you had too much or you ate something that you didn’t know what was in it,” Junious said.

Johnson made it clear that this year’s homecoming incident will not deter the school from holding dances in the future. “One student wrote me and said, ‘does this mean will never have dances again.’ No, we still will have prom, we will have homecoming next year,” she said. “This one incident will not tarnish what we do at Blair. Those few kids will not stop us from having successful events.”

News A3

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November 15, 2016

MCEA proposes new bell schedule for Board to review from START TIMES page A1 second tier of schools starts at 9:25 a.m. and ends at 3:50 p.m. Henoch Hailu, a member of the MCEA Board of Directors and a special education teacher at White Oak Middle School, explained that part of it is a transportation issue. “Parents are complaining that their kids are getting home too late and buses are getting stuck in traffic, especially in more congested areas,” Hailu said.

Another issue brought up by opponents of the current bell schedule is child care before school. “Some elementary schools do not start until around 9:30 and for a working parent that is really hard. It is forcing parents to have before care as well as after care so it becomes a bigger expense,” said Adam Clay, an MCEA Elected Faculty Representative. In the first and second proposed bell time options, elementary schools would start earlier. In the first proposal, Tier 1 would start at 7:45 a.m. and Tier 2 at 8:10 a.m. and in the second proposal Tier 1 would start at 8:45 a.m. and Tier 2 would start at 9:10 a.m.

The bell schedule was originally changed because a group of parents were concerned

High School Bell Times Current Schedule

7:45 a.m.

2:30 p.m.

that high school students were not getting enough rest. “A group of very vocal parents felt that high school kids were getting up

soapbox What is your ideal school start time?

“My ideal school start time is 9:45 because that makes getting enough sleep way easier. Even though we would get out later, we would perform way better in school.”

— Keshaun Anderson, junior “My ideal school start time is the one we have now, 7:40 AM. It’s not too early, nor too late, and leaving at 2:10-2:30 PM is perfect. Starting late is not a good idea. Leaving later would affect people who do sports and other extracurricular activities.

— Mariela Melgar, junior

Proposed Schedule

7:25 a.m.

too early,” said MCEA Building Representative David Stein. “They wanted the Board of Education to change start times by an hour and a half but they could not do it because it was too expensive and it was only a small group.”

The schedule implemented during the 2015-2016 school year pushed back start times for all school levels by 20 minutes and added ten more minutes to the elementary school day. Villa said that in most discussions with students at town halls, students were still having to wake up at the same time because of traffic. However, Villa said, “It was clear that this current schedule was providing more sleep-time, depending on the student and location, to high school and middle school students, but at the detriment to our most vulnerable students.”

An MCEA Bell Times Survey conducted between Jan. 23 and Feb. 2 revealed that MCPS teachers overwhelmingly opposed the 2015-16 bell time changes.

It also suggested that parents thought

2:10 p.m.

JULIAN BROWN

that later start times would create problems for students, especially those who are involved in sports, have a job, or need to take care of siblings. Paint Branch junior John Adams, a guest speaker at an MCEA Bell Times Town Hall, mentioned that MCPS had only recently changed bell times. “Readjusting right after adjusting is challenging. The new bell schedule is barely two years old,” Adams said.

Board of Education member Phil Kauffman, whose term ends Dec. 1, said that the Board is still in the process of evaluating the current schedule. “I think we have been monitoring the situation to see how things have been and how we have been doing with the bell times,” Kauffman said.

There is a general feeling that the change did not do much for high school students and caused a host of other problems. “I think it is a universally disliked change,” Clay said. “The whole county has been disrupted for the extra 20 minutes for high school which does nothing.”

Up and Coming November 14-18 Interracial dialogue in rooms 157, 162, and 164.

November 17 Report Cards Distributed

November 17-19 Fall play: Hamlet

November 23 Early Release Day

November 24 Thanksgiving

December 1 Orchestra Concert 7:00 PM

December 8 Band and Jazz Ensemble Concert 7:00 PM

December 13 Guitar and Choral Music Concert 7:00 PM

Student & Teacher Awards & Honors Juniors Caitlin Lee and Gillian Lee won second place in the doubles division at the Montgomery County Girls’ Tennis Tournament.

Sophomore Margaret Lin, juniors Guangqi Cui and Robert Yang, and seniors Sambuddha Chattopadhyay, Angela Yang, and Linden Yuan were named semifinalists in the Siemens STEM Competition.

The Blazer Pride marching band won eighth place in the 2016 USBands Maryland State Marching Band Championships.

Junior Mikaela Moore was accepted into the MCPS Sr. Honors Jazz Ensemble for piano.

A team of Magnet juniors, Noah Kim, George Klees, Andrew Komo, Noah Singer, and Theodore Tosini, won first place in the Mitre Capture the Flag cybersecurity competition.

Sophomores Ryan Cho and Steven Qu were selected for the All-National Orchestra.

A4 News

Newsbriefs

Pepper spray incident at Watkins Mill

Fourteen students from Watkins Mill Elementary School were transported to the hospital after they were exposed to pepper spray on a school bus on Nov. 2. A student allegedly set off the pepper spray accidentally while showing it to a friend, and 56 students in total were affected. The incident occurred shortly after the end of the school day, while the bus was still outside of the school.

Fire, emergency medical services, and hazmat units from the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Department arrived at the scene minutes after the school reported the incident. “Additional resources were called, including two medical buses,” said Peter Piringer, Chief Spokesperson for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service. Multiple students were treated for pepper spray exposure.

According to Piringer, the incident was probably the result of an accident. The Montgomery County Police Department is conducting an investigation on the event.

Counselors held post-election forum Counselors held an open discussion with staff and students in the Media Center about the results of the recent election during lunch on Wednesday, Nov. 9. Principal Renay Johnson announced the meeting as a means for students to express their opinions and concerns about the election.

According to counselor Susanne Bray, many students from the ESOL program and who have immigrated from another country attended. “There was a lot of conversation going on, specifically in Spanish with our ESOL counselor, and then an individual from CASA de Maryland came so those students went into a separate room to discuss [their concerns],” she said.

Bray anticipates that students will be more active in politics due to their feelings about this election.

“My hope is that the people...who feel that their voices were not represented in this election cycle, then next election cycle they will be more involved,” Bray said.

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November 15, 2016

SAT scores reach lowest point in ten years

Test changes may explain the dip in college entrance exam scores

By Olivia Gonzalez SAT scores dropped to the lowest they have been since 2006, according to the College Board’s annual score report. The report, released on Sept. 27, revealed threeto five-point decreases in each of the sections of the exam: critical reading, mathematics, and writing, which is optional. The 2016 scores were the first results to come from the redesigned SAT. Scores on the critical reading section, the category American students historically do the worst in, were the lowest they have been in over 40 years, with an average of 492. Writing and mathematics had average scores of 482 and 508, respectively, according to the College Board’s report.

The SAT was changed in March 2016 as part of an effort to make it more representative of what students are taught in school, rather than testing aptitude. As a result, the SAT is now closely aligned with the Common Core curriculum, which has been gradually adopted by numerous states, including Maryland, following President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address.

Students who took the new SAT were more limited in their study materials in comparison to those who took it prior to the changes.

The test no longer requires writing and is scored out of 1600 points, instead of 2400.

Few test books and prep classes were aligned to the new format, according to Jasmine Scott, a senior who took both versions of the SAT. “I was talking to my counselor or someone and they said that there’s no point in taking a class

for the new one,” she said. “Because no one actually knows what the test looks like, no one knows any good strategies.”

Additionally, a Reuters investigation of the redesigned SAT found that the math section was too wordy. The study reported that several professional SAT prep tutors ran out of time when taking the exam.

Scott, too, found the math section to be too long. “There were definitely math questions where it would be like ‘find X but then also find Y’ but then they want you to find ‘Z’ as the final answer,” she THE COLLEGE BOARD said. “[It’s] a lot of extra words and wasted time to try to figure out what they actually want.”

Blair counselor Emily Putney is not concerned about a national dip in scores. “There’s all these other contributing factors, so I think all of that [should be factored] in too, especially with what’s going on in the economy, and people having access,” she said. “If you test everybody, you’re going to have a wider range of scores, more on the lower end, because everybody is not ready to go to college … they don’t need the SAT scores, but they’re going to be forced to take something.”

According to an article by Kaitlin Mulhere in Time magazine,

BRIANNA FORTE

increased accessibility to the SAT was another reason for lower scores. Michigan, Connecticut, and New Hampshire have changed their state tests to the new SAT, meaning it was offered to the entire student population of these states for free, including students of lower socioeconomic status who might not typically take the test.

“That increased accessibility is one reason test officials say the partial year average scores of the Class of 2016 decreased slightly from the previous cohort of test takers,” Mulhere wrote. “ACT officials offered a similar explanation for the decline in average ACT scores.”

According to College/Career Center Coordinator Phalia West,

Black CAP starts mentoring program at Parkland

Blair club tutors work to promote diversity in Magnet programs

By Elias Monastersky Black Communication Arts Program (CAP), a Blair club that promotes diversity in Magnet programs, started a mentoring program on Sept. 28 at Parkland Middle School to raise awareness of the application process for high school Magnet programs for mi-

and with testing preparation, and essay preparation to help them, hopefully, get into the programs,” junior Alix Swann, a member of Black CAP, said. The program also helps students decide which programs they may want to apply for.

Black CAP members go to Parkland every Tuesday from 3:20 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. while the eighth grad-

any application programs. A lot of them have never even heard about the Communication Arts Program or Richard Montgomery’s International Baccalaureate program, so we just wanted to give them a broader perspective,” Swann said.

The mentoring helps students who normally wouldn’t have the support and the resources to apply in

Lawsuits filed following Flower Branch apartment fire The advocacy group CASA de Maryland, in partnership with law firms Bailey & Glasser and Gupta Wessler filed class-action and wrongful-death lawsuits against Kay Apartment Communities and Washington Gas on Nov. 2.

The prosecutors are suing on behalf of the victims of the Aug. 10 explosion at the Flower Branch Apartments. They accuse Washington Gas and Kay of not taking proper precautions to prevent the fire and failing to warn residents of the potential threat.

John Barrett, a lawyer at Bailey & Glasser, spoke at the press conference and said that the victims are seeking accountability. “We’re asking for justice; we’re asking for substantial damages; we’re asking for safety reforms,” Barrett said, according to a WTOP article.

Washington Gas refused to publicly comment on the lawsuits because the company is “a signed party to the [National Transportation Safety Board’s] investigation.”

Kay released a statement explaining that they met with and provided resources to victims of the fire soon after the explosion.

Newsbriefs compiled by Serena Debesai and Grady Jakobsberg

lower SAT scores are not necessarily a problem for students applying to college. “This all depends on the schools you are trying to get into,” she said. “If you are applying to test-optional schools, your test scores are not considered in the admission process.”

Putney agrees that SAT scores will not make or break a student’s application. “Especially at those upper schools where everyone feels it’s such a big deal, they really are looking at the whole picture,” she said. “Everyone applying there virtually looks the same, [so] whether it’s a couple of points difference, they don’t care. They really want to look at everything else.”

ELIAS MONASTERSKY

BLACK CAP IN ACTION Mentors help students at Parkland Middle School with the application process. nority middle school students.

The mentoring program helps middle school students apply for Magnet programs like Richard Montgomery’s International Baccalaureate (IB) program and Blair’s Math and Science Magnet program. During mentoring sessions, Black CAP tutors go over important parts of the applications with students and earn Student Service Learning (SSL) hours for their participation. “We are helping them with their applications

ers are working on the application process. When the students have finished the process, the mentors work with the Parkland sixth and seventh graders every other Tuesday on homework or schoolwork.

According to Swann, Black CAP works with Parkland students because they did not receive sufficient information regarding the county’s high school Magnet programs. “We chose Parkland because we’ve heard that...most of the students don’t know about

the first place. “I think the main idea was to get students of color ... particularly those who don’t have, necessarily, the support at home to apply for the different Magnet and specialized programs in the county to apply for them and to have the assistance that they needed to fill out the application,” said Melissa Graham, the mentoring program sponsor at Parkland.

Parkland has an extremely diverse community. According to MCPS Schools at a Glance, only

11 percent of Parkland students are white. “Parkland has a lot of students of color, and it is an aerospace Magnet program so the kids are already smart and have potential. They just don’t know about a lot of the application programs,” Swann said.

Currently, seven Black CAP tutors are mentoring about 20 students selected by Parkland administration. “We are mentoring students of color that have been identified by the administrators, eighth graders that have potential to get into an application program,” Swann said. The selection process allows anyone that meets a grade point average (GPA) cutoff to be tutored.

Because this was the first year for the program, Graham explains that it was important to tutor specific students who would be successful in the programs. “This is the pilot year for it here at Parkland, and because we started late, near the application deadline, we really did want to target students who we felt would be successful in the application programs and in filling out the applications, so we did, for this particular session, set a GPA requirement that matched the GPA cutoffs for the different application programs,” Graham said.

Black CAP plans to expand the mentoring program to other schools in the future. “Right now we have four people working on setting up a program at Silver Spring International Middle School, and then after that, hopefully … we [will] get in contact with a lot of the other application programs, like with people in Richard Montgomery’s IB program,” Swann said.

November 15, 2016

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silverchips

November 15, 2016

Putting the College Board’s motives to the test

AP and SAT exams do not give you enough bang for your buck

By Olivia Gonzalez

An opinion For 90 years, the College Board has been the puppet master of American students. Through societal pressures, government lobbying, and relentless emailing, the College Board has branded the SAT and AP exams as the keys to getting into college.

The so-called nonprofit has essentially monopolized the college entrance industry, and, in turn, used its wealth and status to influence curriculums. The College Board overcharges students for standardized tests, lacks transparency in its finances, and mismarkets AP curricula as college level courses.

The AP and SAT exams, although vastly different in price, are almost equal cash cows for the College Board. The AP exams, which cost $93 per test, generated a gross of almost $68 million in 2016.

The SAT, at the relative bargain price of $45, brought in $76.5 million. A haul of $150 million seems steep for a “nonprofit.” Its assets are even more shocking. For the tax year 2014, it was sitting on a golden egg of almost $800 million.

The College Board’s mission statement says that it is trying to “level the playing field.” So what exactly are they doing with this money to further this goal?

The College Board is on record as saying that the money earned from AP exams goes to paying the 11,000 teachers who grade them.

With $1,555 per grader, that ac-

counts for $17 million. What happens to the remaining 75 percent?

According to its tax filings, over $3 million goes to lobbying, advertising, and marketing. A huge chunk goes to College Board’s executive salaries, including nearly $1 million for its CEO. Where does

Maximum Financial Aid for a $93 AP Exam

$53

out of pocket

$9 from the school $31 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0

from the College Board SERENA DEBESAI

$0 of the money go? Oh yeah, leveling the playing field. The College Board will not even waive the whole cost of an AP exam to those with financial need.

Unfortunately, the joke is on students and parents. While the College Board, for years, has been roping in students by promoting the idea that earning a four or a five on an AP exam will prepare them for college, more schools are no longer even giving college credit for AP exams.

And, colleges are doing so for a good reason. A study by Dartmouth University revealed that AP curricula do not match the rigor of college courses, calling into question whether the College Board’s influence on curricula is geared more towards funneling students into taking the test than in preparing them for college.

The study tested students who had taken AP Psychology in high school and compared the results to those of students who had taken an introductory psychology course in college. Those who took the intro course performed overwhelmingly higher.

The fire is dying for the SAT, as well. The SAT has lost its title as the dominant college entrance exam to the ACT, which emphasizes more practical knowledge.

Another chink in the College Board’s armor are the SAT optional colleges -- 850 at last count.

The College Board is trying to salvage its reputation by joining forces with Khan Academy, an online educational resource

for students, but even that is all show and no substance. The Khan Academy prep falls short, perhaps intentionally, in teaching the real tricks to outsmarting the exam, according to an article by PrepScholar.

But even with all of these facts and figures laid out in front of us, students are still pressured to take these courses and exams.

Clearly the College Board’s marketing spending is accomplishing its goal. But there has to be an alternative to the current system.

What are students supposed to do? Take AP classes because they interest you or are taught by a great teacher, rather than because they have the AP label attached.

Pushing yourself academically by taking challenging courses can better prepare you for the rigor of college, as well as boost your transcript.

But keep in mind that you do not have to take the AP exams; they are entirely optional. So take those 93 bucks and treat yourself to a spa day.

And before you register for the SAT, take a look at some of those 850 colleges that are SAT optional.

Surely at least one of them will catch your eye. With the extra $50 in your pocket, you will be one step closer to paying off those student loans.

After all, making your own decisions is what college is all about.

And, yes, sometimes the answer to which standardized test to take is “none of the above.”

Programming computer science into our future

Requiring one year of the subject would benefit MCPS students

By Serena Debesai

An opinion You are sitting in math class, attempting to stay focused as your teacher drones on about some formula. Suddenly, it dawns on you: What is the point? Never have you encountered a situation outside of math class where the formula was necessary.

Not so with computer science.

Computer science is defined as the “study of computers and computational systems,” according to the University of Maryland Computer Science Department.

The field focuses on creating algorithms, or specific processes, to solve a problem. Without computer science, we would not have most of the technology, like iPhones, animated movies, or navigation systems, currently at our fingertips.

But the products of computer science are not what make the subject valuable to students.

Computer science, one of the largest growing job sectors, develops critical problem solving skills essential in all aspects of life.

Although a basic understanding of the subject is just as essential as knowledge of English or math, computer science is not required in most school systems.

Because of its growing importance, the key skills it develops, and the lack of diversity in the field, MCPS students should be required to take at least one year of computer science.

The central role of computer science in the future is undeniable.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a 12 percent increase in computer and information technology occupations from 2014 to 2024. Computer science jobs such

as software designers, web developers, and computer programmers, are in high demand, yet the country is not in the position to fill them.

As America’s demand for more computer scientists grows, schools must educate more students in computer science. By mandating a year of the subject, MCPS will capture the interest of students who may not have otherwise been exposed to the programming.

Junior Haron Adbaru is an example of such a student. He felt encouraged to continue taking computer science in high school because it was mandatory in middle school. “I did the Takoma Magnet Program, where we were required to take Computer Science, and after that…I developed a strong interest in it,” Adbaru says. He plans to continue taking programming courses at Blair and pursue computer science as a career.

Computer science is beneficial even for students who do not find it their life’s calling. The field places a heavy emphasis on computational thinking and problem solving; students must learn to develop logical algorithms to complete complex tasks.

As computer science teacher Lola Piper explains, “When you learn to program, you have to think logically.”

The numbers also support the idea that computer science is beneficial to problem solving skills. In 1991, Yeun-kuang Liao and George W. Bright of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a study that found that students with programming experience scored roughly 16 percentile points higher on

multiple cognitive ability tests than students who did not have programming experience.

Ultimately, problem solving is the most important skill students will take away from their formal education and into the real world. Algorithms are everywhere; just look at a map or a recipe.

Chances are that adults will not need to analyze difficult literary passages on a regular basis; however, people will always need to think critically and approach problems to find an efficient solution.

Everyone stands to benefit from learning computer science; however, certain groups do not receive the same opportunity to develop these crucial problemsolving skills. As with a majority of STEM fields, there is a significant lack of diversity in computer science careers. According to Girls Who Code, an organization dedicated to growing the number of females in the computing field, women are on track to fill only three percent of the 1.4 million computing jobs that will be available in 2020.

Only 19 percent of the 1825 students who took the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam last year in Maryland were female, and only 15.1 percent were underrepresented minorities, according to Code.org.

While this gap is a reflection of the pervasive nature of sex-

ism and racism in our culture, mandating computer science courses would certainly aid in increasing the number of minorities and women in the field.

Senior Willa Murphy, ARITRA ROY co-president of Blair’s Girls Who Code club, believes that making computer science mandatory will serve to increase diversity in classes and as a result encourage more minorities to enter the field. “If you make it mandatory I think it’s going to destigmatize the idea of more diversity in the classroom,” she says.

There is no doubt that the expansion of computer science courses is a daunting task. But the difficulty of the task does not mean that the county should shy away from this goal.

MCPS would have to work diligently to recruit and train passionate teachers from the emerging pool of computer science education majors. The county will need to funnel money to grow computer science departments in all schools, and work with organizations such as Code.org to create a strong curriculum.

Computer science is part of the path to the future, and the county must ensure that all students have the tools to navigate this road.

Opinion B2

silverchips

November 15, 2016

Do safe spaces and trigger warnings benefit students?

YES:

Students feel more comfortable sharing ideas.

Contrary to popular belief, safe spaces are not quiet little areas where sheltered students may go to escape controversy. They are not places where every single idea is agreed upon and praised.

BEN DOGGETT Instead, Dwight Wiebe they are areas in which ideas and opinions are openly shared and debated in a respectful, thoughtful manner. Discussions are focused around issues, rather than rhetoric that can be perceived as offensive. Trigger warnings are when teachers alert students to any content in their curriculum that may be triggering, so that students may take any preemptive measures to ensure that they are mentally prepared for the content. In a similar way to safe spaces, trigger warnings are not designed to give students an excuse to avoid confronting difficult issues, but are designed to help students to avoid topics that would cause them to feel unsafe.

More and more universities across the country are realizing the positive results of safe spaces and trigger warnings, from UC Berkeley and James Madison University to American University and Davidson College, and hundreds more. The University of Maryland, for example, has a safe space program, where students meet each week to freely discuss issues without the fear of being attacked or insulted.

Many schools are making significant efforts to create safe spaces, and their students are responding positively. A 2016 Gallup poll found that only seven percent of surveyed students thought that their colleges had gone too far in their implementation of safe spaces and trigger warnings.

Meanwhile, an overwhelming 71 percent of students thought that colleges were doing a good job in creating and maintaining these policies.

These schools want to actively help their students to freely express themselves without judgment, so that those students can more effectively participate in the learning community. So far, most students are happy with their schools’ actions.

For students who have experienced trauma, safe spaces and trigger warnings also provide a crucial source of relief. A rape victim should never have to take part in a discussion or watch a video in which a violent rape is described or depicted. Likewise, a victim of abuse should never be forced to study a text that includes explicit abuse, and a student of color should never have to feel endangered by being exposed to racial slurs.

Trigger warnings do not impose a burden on the other students in the classroom, but

they can prevent an immense amount of pain for a certain group of students. In an article for the Ithaca Journal, psychotherapist Glenna Dunaway explains the significant harm triggers can cause. “[Trigger warnings] are intended to help trauma survivors avoid being unexpectedly thrust into re-experiencing horrified, helpless, angry or other various dissociated states of consciousness,” she writes. “Such mental states resist suppression, and they seriously compromise one’s ability to respond to current reality and surroundings.”

Students should never have to learn in an environment where they feel unsafe or unthreatened. Being triggered in a classroom setting tangibly disrupts learning in students, as they evoke distressing memories of trauma, according to Katy Waldman in an article for Slate Magazine. “[Trigger warnings] are a response to something real: Scientists agree that triggers can awaken dormant memories and hijack the rational control board of the cortex, drowning awareness of the present moment in eddies of panic,” she writes. These triggers distract students from any further learning and discourage them from joining in the conversation.

Northwestern University has been on the forefront of creating safe spaces on college campuses to encourage respectful dialogue for students. In an article for The Washington Post in January, the university’s president, Morton Shapiro, emphasizes the importance of creating environments that are conducive to learning. “Students don’t fully embrace uncomfortable learning unless they are themselves comfortable. Safe spaces provide that comfort,” he writes. “The irony, it seems, is that the best hope we have of creating an inclusive community is to first create spaces where members of each group feel safe.”

Not having safe spaces can be extremely detrimental for classroom discussions.

Without safe spaces, students refrain from contributing their opinions, which prevents a constructive resolution from being reached.

Although the learning environment can never be completely free of triggers, safe spaces and trigger warnings help students to feel safer and to be more productive in the classroom.

NO:

Students are not exposed to new opinions.

BEN DOGGETT

BEN DOGGETT

Laura Espinoza

What if a trigger warning on a lesson about the Holocaust caused a student to leave class and miss content?

What if a student could not express an opinion about race relations because the classroom is

considered a safe space?

Bullying, racism, and sexual assault are among the intense themes discussed in high school and college classes. Although these

topics can be difficult to approach, students should not be shielded from these conversations. When told to expect discomfort or when an environment excludes contradictory narratives, young CARLY TAGEN-DYE people are robbed of the opportunity to develop their own informed ideas.

Recently, the use of “trigger warnings” in college classrooms has begun a public debate. Many professors do not want to implement trigger warnings, statements that preface content that may contain distressing material, in their lessons and classes. These warnings allow students to avoid uncomfortable material and close their minds to the reality of the not-so-pretty world we live in.

Gina Barreca, an English professor at the University of Connecticut, refuses to use trigger warnings in her classroom because she worries students will lose valuable experiences and information. “If you spend your life putting your fingers across your eyes and looking between them because you worry about something disturbing, you’re going to miss most of what’s going on,”

Barreca wrote in an opinion piece for The Seattle Times. Experiencing hardship and discomfort is the only way students will learn about the world.

Unfortunately, trigger warnings are not the only shield against intellectual discussion at colleges and universities.

Safe spaces, originally created as protective places for an institution’s LGBT students to seek refuge, have morphed into locations where students can escape opinions contrary to their own. They are no longer areas where discussion and discourse about race relations or sexual orientation can occur without fear of harassment. Instead, safe spaces have become a physical manifestation of trigger warnings because they shield students from others’ views.

In 2015, Brown University hosted a controversial debate about whether society has an influence on college sexual assaults.

When this was announced, the university’s Sexual Assault Task Force created a safe space for any student to retreat to if they felt uncomfortable during the debate.

This safe space was a room “equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma,” described Judith Shulevitz in an opinion piece for The New York Times.

The most concerning part was not the Play-Doh or the cookies, but the fact that students who felt like their views were being challenged could take shelter in the room. Brown junior Emma Hall worked in the room during the debate and made a quick visit to watch it. She told Shulevitz she left the debate because “[she] was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against [her] dearly and closely held beliefs.”

Hall may have missed the memo about Brown being an institution of higher learning, not an elementary school.

As these structures are implemented in college, their extension into high school is inevitable. What teachers, administrators, and students must realize is that education and discovery must not be overshadowed by fear of discomfort.

One very real impact of trigger warnings has been in school libraries. The School Library Journal’s Controversial Books Survey found an increase from six percent to 11 percent from 2008 to 2016 in librarians who self-censor their collections by using content labels on books. These labels warn readers about any potentially unsettling material.

Media Specialist Andrea Lamphier does not label the books in the Media Center because she does not believe in using trigger warnings. Literature is a place for writers to truly express their lives and emotions. These experiences are genuine, and the censorship that comes with warnings only serves to limit access to knowledge. When books are labeled and cast aside in this way, the softening classroom discussions and intellectual debates soon follow.

It is imperative that schools remain places where argument and thought-provoking conversation are encouraged.

voicebox Sylvie Weissman Senior

Imran Kanyuni Freshman

Grace Sperber-Whyte Senior

Justin Gross Sophomore

Jace Eaton Junior

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

“No, being uncomfortable is really important when it comes to learning new things.”

“Yes, it warns people on how they should act on certain issues.”

“No, you are not getting anywhere in life if you don’t learn how to deal with discomfort.”

“No, If we are going to hide from certain opposing viewpoints or scary ideas, then we are not really going to learn anything.”

“Yes, [Students] might be so distraught that they can’t learn or they have to leave the classroom.”

B3 Opinion

silverchips

November 15, 2016

The hidden process of diversifying English class books

A look at some of the obstacles to expanding diversity in literature

By Isabella Tilley An opinion As English teachers pass out “classics” like The Scarlet Letter and Romeo and Juliet to their classes, many students experience a feeling of dread. Their reluctance to read these books may make them seem lazy, but their complaints are valid.

Every year, students are required to read old books authored by white males that do not necessarily reflect the experiences of the majority of Blair’s population.

Assigned books should represent more than a white male perspective because the benefits of reading literature by a diverse group of authors go beyond engaging students. Exposure to different voices increases tolerance and empathy, and obstacles to expanding this exposure must be overcome.

One of the major challenges is the slow approval process for new

books. According to MCPS regulation, all suggested books must be reviewed by the Evaluation and Selection Committee, a small team of MCPS teachers and content specialists, headed by MCPS Supervisor for Secondary English James Fliakas. Fliakas says that anyone, including students and parents, can suggest a book by submitting two forms to the committee. After a book has been suggested, two teachers, a content specialist, and Fliakas read the book, take notes, and discuss it at quarterly committee meetings. Once Fliakas finally approves a book, it has to sit on a literal shelf in an MCPS building for 30 days. During this time, parents and community members can review the book and offer commentary to the committee. If a book makes it through all of these arduous steps, it is added to the list of approved reading books.

According to Vickie Adamson, the Blair English resource teacher

soapbox What books or authors do you wish you could teach?

“Reading Lolita in Tehran” — Kelly O’Connor, English teacher “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” — Vickie Adamson, English teacher “A Confederacy of Dunces” — Christopher Klein, English teacher

and an ex-committee member, this approval process is “not hard, just not instantaneous.” Adamson and other teachers have repeatedly suggested that the committee approve books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but the committee has been slow to react. Adamson is willing to give the committee the benefit of the doubt, however, and says that “our curriculum specialists do have their eyes open.”

Anne Mathews, a Blair English teacher and committee member, agrees and says that the committee members do make an effort to represent different cultures and perspectives, but the problem may be its simple lack of diversity. According to Mathews, most of the committee members are white women. “Everybody on the committee is very committed to having diverse texts, but … I’m uncomfortable with everybody on the committee looking the same and making these decisions,” says Mathews.

The size of the committee varies each year, but is usually small, with five content specialists and 10-12 teachers. Fliakas acknowledges that they do have problems with recruitment. “It’s hard to get … enough teachers to want to participate in this,” he says. One possible reason so few teachers participate in the committee is that its meetings, which occur roughly once a quarter, take place right after school, from about 3:30-5:00.

For many teachers, especially those who coach sports, sponsor clubs, or teach ninth periods, this timing may be difficult to work

HANNAH SCHWARTZ

STACKS ON STACKS Senior Isaac Bonilla shelves books in the English Department’s book room. Many of the books taught in English classes do not reflect the experiences of the students reading them. around.

But not all of the obstacles to expanding book diversity are related to the committee.

Adamson also points to a lack of planning and reflection time, as well as a lack of funding. Last year, teachers had the week during final exams to reflect on the past semester and plan for the next one. “Teachers used to collaborate and think about what they were going to teach and talk about new titles, and now we’re going to have one day in between semesters,” Adamson says. “[We are] taking away time that teachers have to do

that reflection.”

A tight budget also limits book selection, and schools often need to purchase over a hundred copies of a text. “It seems that the money to buy books is decreasing … [and] the average book costs about $15 now,” Adamson says.

With a more diverse committee, more planning time for teachers, and more funding, students could reap huge benefits from reading books by a more diverse group of authors. “Most of us remember something we read in high school, something [that] stuck with us,” Mathews says.

Opinion B4

silverchips

November 15, 2016

My Blair: Personal Column American Sign Language

THEN: 1976

COURTESY OF SHAY TAYLOR

By Shay Taylor Guest writer Students take sign language class for many reasons, and the experience of learning sign language impacts them just as uniquely.

Many have some previous experience through a friend or family member.

Others like that it is different from the spoken languages they’ve always learned

in school.

Some find it helps them be more expressive, some understand other languages better because of it, and some find success where there was previously struggle in learning a second language.

Sophomores Avery Brooks and Catrina Calingaert are two of my students in ASL 2 who have had different experiences in learning sign language and its impact on their lives.

COURTESY OF SILVER CHIPS ARCHIVES

EXPLORING MUSEUM ART Senior Valerie poses with a new ue friend at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington,

statD.C.

& NOW: 2016

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

By Avery Brooks Guest writer ASL has impacted my life in many ways. At first I didn’t know anything about Deaf culture and the many impacts it has had on American society as a whole. Coming into class I knew I was going to enjoy it, but I had no idea that it was going to change my opinion about so many things. I realize now that being Deaf is not something people should try to fix. It’s a unique culture and a distinctive community.

I have learned that ASL is the most beautiful language, and as it becomes more known, hearing people are starting to see it the same way Deaf people have always seen it. I took the class because I wanted to take a language that I was

actually interested in.

ASL at Blair is different because we learn the actual language, not the textbook version of it. I don’t need to be in a conversation feeling clueless because my textbook taught me something different than the language I’m hearing in the real world. I can effectively communicate with actual Deaf people after only one year because I was taught the language as they use it.

Probably one of the most impactful experiences I’ve had so far was the field trip to Gallaudet, the only university for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in the world.

I got to see hundreds of Deaf people simply living their lives– in the middle of that beautiful campus I stood in awe. I am so grateful to be learning ASL, and I know other students feel the same.

By Catrina Calingaert Guest writer

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

Taking ASL has exposed me to an incredibly inclusive culture, shown me architectural and engineering designs that define “Deaf Space,” and most importantly, given me three different ways to sign “pizza.” After my first year in ASL I started to look at people differently. You can’t judge based on what you see. People who seem very plain can actually be extraordinary.

I have very severe ADHD and normally can’t focus on someone talking for more than 5 minutes. When I’m watching people sign, my eyes are engaged and I pay attention for much longer. Since I started taking ASL, my attention span has improved overall, which is a really big deal.

In our area it’s easy to connect to Deaf people, especially at Gallaudet, but also in our own neighborhoods. It’s an open,

CALEB BAUMAN

DEEP IN THOUGHT Sophomore Willis Moran shares a moment with the subject of an untitled piece at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Corrections The art on E3 for “La Copa Mundial” should have been credited to Meghna Sambathkumar.

The story “High level athletes need more than big muscles” on F1 was written

by Noah Chopra-Khan, not Cole Greenberg.

loving community that we’ve gotten to know through meeting several Deaf people. I took ASL because I thought the idea of a language you can see was pretty cool, but I didn’t expect that at the end of it I would also feel like I was a part of something awesome.

What do you think?

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Scan the code above with a QR reader app, or use the URL http://www.chipssurvey.com/

C1 Features

silverchips

November 15, 2016

Some students do not just skip a day, they skip a whole year

Why some Blazers choose to graduate in three years instead of four

By Noah Chopra-Khan Raphael Mu walks into Blair’s main office slightly on edge. For many high schoolers, it is a lazy afternoon in the middle of summer. For Mu, it is a day of liberation.

His visit to the main office does not last longer than half an hour, but it is the conclusion of three long and laborious years. Mu talks to a few administrators, picks up the piece of paper he is looking for, and then he leaves, for good. After six semesters of high school and one summer school class, he is free. And now, he finally has his high school diploma to show for all of his hard work.

Mu graduated as a junior last year, joining a growing number of students who are choosing to graduate high school early.

According to counselor Kirk Simms, students usually choose to graduate early for convenience, because their family is moving, to get a head start in the workforce, or because they do not particularly care for high school and want to accelerate faster.

Simms notes, however, that graduating early is not for everyone. “I think students should do four years in high school to get that high school experience,” Simms says. “They’re 16 and 17 and they’re not mature enough for college.” However, he will support the decision to graduate prematurely under special circumstances.

For comfort, peace of mind, and a career Since the beginning of this school year, junior Zoe Denton has been faced with a dilemma. She wants to graduate from Blair, but she only has a year to do it before her family moves to Florida. Her only option is to graduate early, and fortunately she has

completed most of her credits. “I was in Magnet so I have all my science and math credits. I talked to my principal and counselor, and they are cool with it, I just have to take two English classes this year: AP Lit and AP Lang.”

Denton is happy to be graduating from Blair; her only wish is that it was with the class of 2018.

“Next year when they are going to prom and all of their senior stuff, I won’t be there to do that with them.”

Unlike Denton, Mu was more than happy to graduate a year early.

“I was suffering as a Magnet student with five APs. So, I was getting like three hours of sleep every night

… I couldn’t stand it any longer,” Mu says. In addition to schoolwork, Mu was also trying to find time to focus on his own interests, such as computer science. “[I do] mainly open source [coding], software development, and studying computers,” Mu says. “In my case, I really wanted to do programming, so I would do it until I passed out — which I don’t think was necessarily a good thing.”

Junior Alliyah Byrd is also graduating early to make more time for her interests and her career: modeling.

Right now, she has a contract with the Georgetown clothing store Rent the Runway, and she does plenty of photo shoots.

Some weeks, she is booked every day. Byrd says that her social media accounts help with networking. “People see me working, people see my pictures, photographers see my pictures like ‘Oh wow this is cool, I want to work with her.’ They DM me; I charge; they’re down; we come up with a concept; I do that,” Byrd says. “And I am not even signed to anything. This is me being on my own, doing my own stuff.”

Another motivating factor for Byrd to graduate early is her dislike of school. She questions the true value of what she is

taught and believes that the MEGHNA SAMBATHKUMAR system puts so much emphasis on college that it leaves out the most valu-

able knowledge. “Everything we learn in high school is just like making us want to go to college, and telling us we need to go to college to do something,” says Byrd.

“You can do things without college.”

To cameras, college, and San Francisco

While Byrd intends to dedicate most of her time next year to launching her career, Denton plans on attending college in the fall. “I am applying to colleges now,” Denton says, adding that she does not intend to take a gap year.

Mu had the same post-graduation plan. He was set to attend the University of Maryland, but in April, right before the AP testing began, professors at the Bradfield School of Computer Science invited him to their campus. “They sent me an email saying they had noticed my portfolio online and they said ‘Yeah, we’ve noticed that you are very interested in computer science and you have a very deep understanding for someone your age,’” Mu says.

The school representatives told him that rather than getting a conventional four-year undergraduate degree in computer science, he would benefit from their more intense technical program.

Mu now lives on his own in San Francisco, and his classes are focused solely on computer science.

For students at Blair with a passion that drives them, or a strong disinterest in high school, graduating early might be a viable option.

Byrd encourages others who feel the way she does to consider graduating prematurely. “The only reason I think I am doing it is I need to get out so that I am more available,” she says. “What I know now, is that me doing this is building on to make my platform, my foundation, for what I want to do,” she explains. “I am doing it because it fits my lifestyle. If it fits your lifestyle, go for it.”

The long path to African-American rights honored in new museum National Museum of African-American History and Culture opens to high demand

By Hermela Mengesha “Oh, deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome someday,” Jacquelyn Shropshire sings with so much passion, you can see the veins in her neck. Just a few feet away stands Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King. Together, they march toward the Washington monument.

She thinks back to the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a 14 year-old African-American boy who was lynched in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. That day lit a spark not only in Shropshire, but also in hearts across the country. On that day, she knew she was going to join the civil rights movement.

© LEONARD FREED/MAGNUM PHOTOS

WE SHALL OVERCOME Civil Rights Activist and Blair Substitute Jacquelyn Shropshire (left) participates in the March on Washington in 1963.

On that day, she knew she was going to help forge a new nation.

Now, Shropshire stands over Till’s casket in the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) on the

same floor that houses her photo from the historic 1963 March on Washington. As she explores this new addition to the National Mall that commemorates the struggles and triumphs of African-Americans throughout history, she cannot help but think about how far the country has come and how much work is still left.

Activists like Shropshire fought for one hundred years to make the museum come to life. They dreamt of a place dedicated to the recognition of the role African-Americans played in American history. It was not until Sept. 14 that the NMAAHC opened and fulfilled that long held dream.

Unfortunately, the museum comes too late for many who worked toward its creation. “I am very humbled and grateful for being alive to realize this day,” Shropshire says. “It’s just heartwarming to me because so many gave their lives for civil rights, and they did not live to see this day.”

Although the museum is free to the public, tickets are in high demand and are already reserved until March of 2017. “If the crowds continue at this rate, we will be the most visited museum on earth,” says Nancy Bercaw, co-curator of the museum’s Slavery & Freedom gallery.

The museum displays 3,600 of the 37,000 artifacts in the Smithsonian’s possession. Ten years ago, there were no artifacts, no museum, and only two people on staff. Until families offered up their long held heirlooms, it was widely believed that the artifacts necessary to create the museum simply did not exist. “Families have come forward with some of their personal treasures,” Bercaw says.

“People have been waiting for us.”

For Bercaw and others who helped create the museum, detail was crucial, and every decision was made with the goal of paying greater tribute to the African-American experience. The design of the museum is a sign of the times, as interactive screens and videos replace artifacts in many areas.

The History Galleries, which are 60 percent of the museum, are underground. These

SAMI MALLON

ENGRAVED IN HISTORY Vistors use an interactive display in the museum’s Culture Galleries to play music representing time periods in African-American history. galleries move from “Slavery & Freedom” to the “Era of Segregation” and culminate in the present day with “A Changing America.”

Visitors enter the galleries through a dimly lit, cramped area meant to mimic the hull of a slave ship. The area features a sacred space, where recordings of slaves’ first person accounts of crossing the Atlantic play overhead.

As visitors travel through the history of slavery, the lights get brighter, and the space gets bigger, signaling the approach of freedom for slaves and the civil rights movement.

The slow and steady gain of AfricanAmerican rights is portrayed with each passing exhibit, until finally the present day is reached, and a photo of Barack Obama stands on display.

The upper levels of the museum reflect the same themes presented in the History Galleries by highlighting specific people in sports, art, and music. The museum hopes to showcase the everyday lives of African Americans by focusing on key figures.

A visit to the museum entails a journey

from the trials and tribulations of bondage in slavery, through the Civil Rights movement, and to a time of heightened ingenuity and creativity in the African-American community. “It personally opens my eyes to where I come from ... and I thought that was very interesting,” sophomore Brianna Frost says.

The goal of the museum is to create a better future by examining the past. Bercaw believes that in a time where heated conversations surrounding race are common and there is not much good on the news, the NMAAHC provides an opportunity for everyone to educate themselves on a central part of America’s history.

Bercaw and other curators see history in the making in the Black Lives Matter movement and have already begun collecting artifacts, such as posters and T-shirts.

They hope that in a time of political turmoil, the museum can shine a light of truth.

“There’s a really nice balance in the museum about being very honest about the world that we live in,” Bercaw says. “But also a feeling of strength and of hope and of possibility.”

November 15, 2016

Features C2

silverchips

Blair’s musicians form a cymbolic symphony

The marching band continues to grow and improve despite numerous challenges from MARCHING BAND page A1

Montgomery County, Blair does not require students in music classes to participate in the marching band, a policy devised to save students in special programs from bi-weekly transportation problems after leaving rehearsal at 5:30 p.m. without an activity bus.

Regardless of the band’s size in comparison to the rest of the school, the club has

According to Oldham, high school marching bands in Mississippi receive greater funds from the county than those in Maryland. “Here, it is a little bit different,” Oldham says. “We can ask for grants and write grant proposals and things like that. You just have to work a little more diligently for the money here, which is understandable.”

Working around the cost of competing, the band implemented a $35 band fee to

it upon themselves to improve their playing on their own time. “The band members practice almost every single day, whenever they can, and every single day they are just getting better and we kinda just grow as a whole,” Esibe says.

Music is always on the minds of the marching band members, whether they are humming the band’s tunes, or polishing their skills. Almost every student in the band is involved in some other type of musical activity. Members participate in the pit orchestra, school music classes, local bands; some, like Esibe, also produce their own music.

At bi-weekly practices, Oldham has cultivated a disciplined working environment that helps the band members focus on what they have to do. “When we are there, we are there to get things done,” Oldham says.

“My favorite quote that I like to give the kids is from Dr. Seuss and that is ‘It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how.’”

You have got a friend in me

COURTESY OF RAIFE OLDHAM

MARCHING TO A STEADY BEAT Blair’s Blazer Pride Marching Band competes in the Maryland State Marching Band Championships at Towson University, placing eighth in a competition of nine bands on Oct. 29. seen tremendous growth in the past three years.

Senior Alex Coy, a versatile brass player, remembers the band’s size in his freshman year. “It has been constantly growing.

When Oldham stepped into the room literally two days after he was hired, there were 12 people in the room, myself being one of them,” Coy says. “So we have grown from 12 strong to, I think, 50.”

Oldham first entered Blair’s spacious band room in 2014, making this year his third as the sole director of the band. The way Oldham sees it, his first two years with a baton helped him get his foot in the door and prepared him to manage a bigger band.

“I gave myself some room to kind of figure out how to be the person in charge of everything before we started getting serious with that stuff,” Oldham says.

that sparked the band’s interest in dramatized performances, leading Oldham and the group to let their imaginations soar.

“Part of the judging in competitions is something called general effect, and that is your ability to convey what your show is to the general audience,” Oldham says. “If you can make somebody’s grandma say, ‘Oh, that is what their show is,’ then you are doing really well with general effect.”

According to Oldham, theater-based performances have grown in popularity and are used by marching bands across the country, including fellow MCPS bands. The only downside to fantastical large-scale shows and competitions is the cost.

As Oldham learned in 2014, when he departed from the “Friday Night Lights” culture of Mississippi and moved to Maryland, football is not as revered further north.

raise money for transportation costs and acting props.

Music to their ears

Bigger and better performances signify not only more work playing on the field, but more work off of it as well. The band holds two-hour practices twice a week, but according to Esibe, members also take

While the band is disciplined in their work, the atmosphere is far from strict and imperious. Instead, the band fosters a friendly environment, inviting all students, regardless of musical capability or talent, to participate. According to Coy, the marching band can teach anyone to play an instrument, which opens the club up to all students. “Marching band is one of the wide ensembles where we say we can teach you how to play an instrument, so we have people [who] just picked up an instrument a few weeks ago to people who have been playing for years,” Coy says.

The student director of the band, senior Aiden Murphy, interacts with members on a friendly level, presenting himself as a peer rather than a bossy, authoritative figure. In his mind, this eases stress among new band members and makes them feel at home. “I think that students feel like that if they had problems, they can speak them,” he says.

Students can learn more about joining next year’s marching band by attending a preliminary meeting in the springtime.

Tryouts for color guard and drumline positions are held before the end of the year, but all other instruments are readily accepted without competition. Students looking to direct should keep their eyes peeled for a separate set of auditions toward the end of the second semester.

“Overall, marching band is a really fun activity and it is something that everybody is qualified for,” Esibe says. “It is just a really fun thing to do and I really think that everyone should consider joining it.”

Ending the season on a high note

With increasing numbers and a hopeful director, the band put its skills to the test recently, signing up for a statewide competition for the first time in years.

On Oct. 29, Blair’s marching band packed up its instruments, crammed onto a charter bus, and sped off toward Towson University to compete in the Maryland State Marching Band Championships. The band placed eighth in a competition among nine bands, an outcome that the group received well, according to junior Maggie McCarthy.

“It is actually really good, especially since it was our first year,” McCarthy says. “We obviously can improve on some stuff, but we got really great feedback and we did pretty well.”

Although Blair’s “Star Wars”-themed show is a unique mash-up of lightsabers, costumes, and blaring tunes, it is not the first band to use showmanship on the field.

The theatrical component is not simply a decorative embellishment to the group’s Friday night football game routine, but rather a key part of how band competitions are scored.

It was the introduction of competition

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

MAY THE FORTE BE WITH YOU The Blair Marching Band performs their dramatized act featuring Star Wars characters, Rey and Kylo Ren, battling it out during halftime at the Damascus football game of Friday, Nov. 4.

SP1 Politics

silverchips

November 15, 2016

Van Hollen and Raskin win Congressional seats Congressmen to prioritize jobs, education and infrastructure

By Noah Chopra-Khan

the country,” he said. When pushing legislation, Van Hollen will On Nov. 8, Chris Van Hollen face a Republican majority in the won a Senate seat for Maryland, Senate, but he says his top priority and Jamie Raskin was elected to is shared with Republican senators the House of Representatives to and the new president’s adminisspeak for Maryland’s Eighth Con- tration: generating good paying gressional District, which is home jobs.

Van Hollen plans on supportto Blair.

Van Hollen said that after a ing the economy, in part, by worklong election and a divisive cam- ing with senators across the aisle paign from President-elect Trump, to reform the tax code. “It means he is ready to get to work in the closing a lot of the tax breaks that Senate. “Now is the time to roll up encourage business to move jobs our sleeves and get things done for overseas and instead reward comfamilies in Maryland and across panies that invest in jobs in Maryland and the United States,” he said.

Van Hollen also plans to boost the economy by supporting legislation to increase funding for education. “Right now, only a small share of children who are eligible for early Headstart and Headstart actually get access to those programs, so we need to dramatically increase our focus on early education,” he said. Van Hollen includes lowering the cost of college tuition in his plan to support education reform. He also wants to reduce the burden of college debt.

“For students who have already graduated with large debt, [we need to] allow them to refinance it at much lower rates, COURTESY OF VAN HOLLEN CAMPAIGN and to provide for what TO THE SENATE Congressman Chris Van are called income based Hollen won a seat in the Senate on Nov. 8. repayment plans, so the

amount they are going to repay in any year is based in the amount they earn,” he said.

Van Hollen plans to support legislation to raise the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in order to keep pace with the cost of living. “My view is that if somebody works hard all day long, 40 hours a week all year long, they should not be below the poverty line,” he said.

Van Hollen beat Maryland State Representative Kathy Szeliga with relative ease, benefiting from the 2:1 voter registration ratio of Democrats to Republicans. Szeliga ran on a platform emphasizing reforming the Department of Veteran Affairs and helping veterans.

Jamie Raskin was elected to represent Blair and the rest of Maryland’s Eighth District in the House of Representatives. Raskin foresees some challenges because he will enter the House with a Republican majority and a Republican presidential administration.

“I think I will probably be spending a good portion of my time on defense, defending the civil rights and civil liberties of the people against attack,” he said.

However, Raskin hopes to find common ground for cross-party collaboration on certain issues, like infrastructure. “My idea is a green deal for America: a public infrastructural plan that advances our environmental priorities at the same time as putting people to work,” he said. It would involve investments in infrastructure like America’s transportation systems, roads, water systems, port facilities, and cybersecurity.

Raskin was happy to hear Trump’s promise to rebuild infrastructure in his acceptance speech.

“I would hope that he kicks off his administration with a proposal for an infrastructural investment,” he said.

Looking forward, Raskin thinks there are a lot of areas in which Democrats can work together with the new administration. He thinks that getting fairer international trade deals is a priority across party lines and that the new administration COURTESY OF RASKIN CAMPAIGN will support campaign finance re- TO THE HOUSE State Senator Jamie Raskin form. “[Trump] has often talked about won Maryland’s Eighth Congressional District. the corruption in our campaign finance system sentences in drug cases and reform which suggests to me he would be of the criminal forfeiture profit to open to ideas for removing the tyr- make it much fairer,” he said. anny of big money in our politics,” For his constituents, Raskin is he said. also determined to make dramatic In the Maryland State Sen- improvements to the D.C. area ate, Raskin introduced legislation Metro system that many people, in Maryland requiring outside including himself, rely on. “I am spenders to disclose their spend- hoping to be a part of a major ing in Maryland races, and he is structural revival of our Metro syshoping to pass similar campaign tem to enhance safety, efficiency, finance reform in the House. and punctuality,” he said.

Raskin also wants to enact the Jamie Raskin beat Dan Cox in same kind of reform in the criminal the race for Maryland’s Eighth justice system that he worked on at Congressional District seat. Cox the state level. “[This includes] the ran on a platform emphasizing naabolition of mandatory minimum tional security and budget cuts.

At-Large and District members elected to Board of Education

By Erin Namovicz Jeanette Dixon was elected to the Montgomery County Board of Education Tuesday, Nov. 8 to fill the open at-large seat, bringing with her a new vision for MCPS. Board members representing District 4 and District 2 were also elected on Tuesday. Blair is located in District 4, which covers the southeastern part of the county.

Shebra Evans won the election for District 4, and Rebecca Smondrowski was re-elected to represent District 2. The District 4 seat was vacated by previous Board member Christopher Barclay. District 2 covers much of Rockville and the central part of the county.

The Board has made some consequential decisions during its past term, including changing school start times and eliminating final exams.

At-Large Dixon, a former MCPS educator, won the at-large Board seat on the platform of extending support to students impacted by economic inequality, limited English proficiency, and special needs.

According to Dixon, the county needs to limit class sizes and testing to give all students individualized attention. She said in an interview before the election that all students must have the opportunity to participate in school activities and the classes that they want to take. “We need to look at all the programs and see which ones need to be tweaked, which ones are no longer necessary. Because as you know, the school system has changed,” she said.

Dixon said that she will use her experience as former Paint Branch principal and MCPS teacher, edu-

cator, and parent to bring new, progressive energy to the Board.

“I think I’m a person who gets things done. You know, when you’re the principal, there’s no one reminding you that you have to do this or you have to do that, so you really have to be a selfstarter,” she said in an interview before the election.

Dixon defeated incumbent Philip Kauffman with 56 percent of the vote to Kauffman’s 43 percent. Kauffman focused his campaign on the opportunity gap, facility changes, and maintaining the stability that he said he brought to the Board for eight years. “I think the Board relies on me when we are developing, reviewing the superintendent’s budget, [and] developing changes for the budget,” he said in an interview before the election.

Dixon said that she is proud of winning the election despite running against an incumbent with many endorsements. “Somebody told me today, this is pretty historic because generally challengers don’t have like the apple ballot endorsements, don’t have the Washington Post endorsements … and I didn’t ask any elected leaders to endorse me either, so I really stuck to it being the nonpartisan election it’s supposed to be. And I think that resonated with voters,” she said.

District 4 Evans won the District 4 seat after championing the issues of equity and community input in the Board during her campaign. “I want to look into policies to make sure they create opportunities for our students as opposed to unintended consequences,” she said in an interview before the election.

To Evans, equity means examining programs to make sure they do not adversely affect any group of students. She favors later school start times, but fears negative repercussions. “A lot of the issues for the families in my community [are] just being able to get to work at 10:00...you know, making decisions about leaving our kids at home by themselves to get on the school bus,” she said in an interview before the election.

Her policy goals center around closing the achievement gap and expanding career education opportunities, but she also emphasized the importance of listening to everybody’s voice. “What’s really important is that when we’re changing policy, that we really cast a wider net in ensuring that all the stakeholders’ voices have input,” she said in an interview before the election.

Evans is a parent in the county who has been involved in the Parent Teacher Association on the local and county level. She has also served on the Superintendent’s Budgetary Committee.

Anjali Reed Phukan, whom Evans defeated with 68 percent of the vote to Phukan’s 31 percent, ran on a platform of fostering a school environment that allows students to be happy and healthy.

“My priorities ... are expanding the different magnet programs and the language programs. Like, more immersion programs, dual language, school learning, and then I also want to have more addiction recovery support programs,” she said in an interview before the election.

Phukan is a Maryland Auditor and an MCPS alumna who planned to utilize that experience on the Board.

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

IN ACTION Current Board members convene in a session on Oct. 24.

District 2 Incumbent Rebecca Smondrowski was reelected to the District 2 seat after serving one fouryear term.

As a board member, Smondrowski focused on special education, and focused her campaign platform on helping students. “I would like to see reduced class sizes, more resources to address the social, emotional and mental health of our children,” she said in an interview with the League of Women Voters before the election.

Smondrowski defeated chal-

lenger Brandon Rippeon with 67 percent of the vote, while Rippeon received 33 percent.

Rippeon ran on a platform of higher academic standards and budget transparency, and said that he wanted to bring change to the board. “[Smondrowski]’s had four years to correct all of these issues … and that hasn’t been done. We have a decrease in high school graduation rates still, we have increasing illiteracy rates still, and this is all while we’re spending record levels of money,” Rippeon said in an interview before the election.

November 15, 2016

Politics SP2

silverchips

The visions of Trump’s America

By Elias Monastersky

An opinion The recent election of Donald Trump has left me with a feeling of despair. The President-elect’s stances on key issues like climate change, gun control, and immigration in the United States are absurd and pose an imminent threat to citizens.

Trump’s lack of experience in government will directly affect us as high schoolers. Although we may not have been able to vote, we will feel the effects of his policies.

Climate change The idea of climate change by global warming is backed by an endless amount of research.

According to NASA, 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans.

Trump’s fantasy-based belief that climate change is a “hoax” invented by China is downright laughable.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that, as of 2010, 39 percent of the nation’s population lived in counties directly on the shoreline. This could pose a problem as increasing global temperatures will cause sea levels to rise, in turn displacing millions of Americans. Trump has no plan to prevent this increasingly inevitable threat. The global temperature is already gradually rising.

Increasing the nation’s use of renewable resources and cutting down on the reliance of fossil fuels is vital to protecting our planet.

However, on his website, Trump has promised to obtain more fossil fuels and other nonrenewable resources in the U.S. He wants to “unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural

gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves.”

These “untapped” federal reserves are most likely so because they are on protected land that is home to countless national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Younger generations deserve to experience all of the national parks and natural beauty this country has to offer, but Trumps ideals puts it at risk.

This negligence toward slowing global warming will affect us locally. Maryland has already experienced hotter winter days, more intense heat in the summer, and more storm damage in the past couple of years.

Trump must address the urgent situation before it is too late.

Gun control Gun-involved crime rates in Maryland have improved as of recently, but Donald Trump aims to ease the process of buying a gun.

The current background check system in place for purchasing a gun is broken; it allows for fast sales and profit, and forgoes public safety. It needs to be fixed.

The “default proceed loophole” allows gun sales to advance if a background check takes more than three business days to complete. Trump has not laid out any specific plans for closing these types of loopholes in the background check system, but vows to fix it. He wants to protect Second Amendment rights at all costs and will do whatever he can to prevent the limiting of gun owner rights. Trump himself has a permit to carry. He explained in a presidential debate last October, “I carry on occasion, sometimes a lot. I like to be unpredictable.”

The unreasonable accessibility of firearms and the recurrence of

mass shootings in the U.S. are huge problems. There have been 22 recorded mass shootings in the past three years, a number that must go down.

While fixing the background check system may help, the process to procure a gun needs to be made more difficult if we want to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Stopping the distribution of guns through pawn shops, gun shows, friends and family, and online sales are examples of ways to stop easy acquisition of guns.

There is a difference between unreasonable accessibility to firearms and the protection of constitutional rights. Trump correctly understands that the background check system is broken and needs to be fixed. But without implementing thorough safeguards on the gun purchasing process, gun violence will continue to afflict Americans under the Trump administration.

Immigration Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border has become a mantra for his campaign.

He states on his campaign site that to get Mexico to pay for the

LINDSAY HARRIS

wall, he will impose trade tariffs, cancel visas, and impose visa fees.

While this may pressure them to pay for the “impenetrable” wall, it will not stop people from climbing over. The problem of a tall wall can be fixed by a tall ladder.

Trump wants to vet applicants to make sure they do not endanger the country and will suspend immigration from places that “export terrorism,” effectively blocking immigration from many parts of the Middle East. He has no plan to clear the current backlog of immigrants seeking asylum and refugee status.

Fleeing drug and gang violence, immigrants from Central and South America often seek refugee status or asylum in the United States. They will have to wait for years to enter the United

States, time which they may not have.

Additionally, Trump plans to terminate Obama’s DAPA and DACA programs, which aim to prevent undocumented immigrants from being deported. He wants to deport every undocumented immigrant, which would affect a large part of America’s working-class population.

The Baltimore Sun approximates that there are 233,000 undocumented immigrants in Maryland as of 2014. Trump’s insistence on the deportation of every undocumented immigrant could potentially destroy many local Maryland communities and families as well as others across the country.

I have no way of knowing what the next four years will hold, yet I cannot help but feel dread for the many possible outcomes that could result from Donald Trump’s dangerous stance on these issues.

A guide to changing the world in three easy steps

Do not let an inability to vote stop you from getting involved in politics

By Gilda Geist

An opinion Regardless of which presidential candidate you were rooting for in this election, chances are, you may see some room for improvement. Even though most Blair students could not vote in this election, that does not mean you are powerless when it comes to issues you care about.

If you are looking for ways to get involved, here are a few tips for

ways to find out what is going on in the world. Pick the one that works best for you.

If you want to keep it lighthearted, try watching political satire shows. They provide both entertainment and different perspectives on mainstream political issues. For a more factual angle without an overwhelming amount of information, try looking at credible news sources on social media.

Other options for learning about

SAMI MALLON

ACTIVE PARTICIPATION Students call registered voters to encourage them to vote in the election. getting started.

Step 1: Make yourself politically aware. Not everyone has the time or motivation to sit down and scrutinize a copy of The New York Times, but there are other

the world around you can include watching political commentary shows, reading a newspaper, or simply discussing politics with your friends and family.

Step 2: Find something to be

passionate about. You will be much more motivated to be civically engaged if you are advocating for something important to you. There are issues in all levels of government that you can get involved in.

For young people, politics can sometimes be confusing and overwhelming, but a good place to start is in your own community.

Politics in Montgomery County directly affects you, whether it is school policies, charter amendments, or at-large Board of Education member elections.

If you want to focus on mainstream politics, issues at the national level might be of interest to you. The national level of politics is host to a wide range of issues, but you can narrow them down by either finding what is important to you, or by finding issues that directly affect you and your community.

Looking at international issues can help young people gain a wider perspective. A good way to become more informed about the world is by taking a social studies elective, like International Human Rights or Peace Studies, or joining a club, like the Girl Up Club.

Step 3: This step, undoubtedly the most important step of all, is all about taking action. Now that you have done some research, found something to be passionate about, and know what you want, advocate for it. Contact your representatives; volunteer at campaigns; attend events, such as rallies or protests; raise awareness or money for an issue you care about; join a club, such as Youth and Government, Young Democrats, or Girl Up; encourage others

to be politically active. These options are simple and effective, and everyone can participate.

If civic engagement is so easy, what is stopping you from getting involved? Chances are, it is the misconception that your actions will not make a difference. Fortunately, that is not the case. There are lots of people at Blair who are successfully advocating for you every day. Junior Isabel Present is a member of the Youth and Government Club, where she advocates for issues that are important to her. “In Youth and Government, we often write to or talk to different senators, and write about issues that we care about, and explain what they should do to fix them,” Present said.

Junior Suraya Mohamud, co-president of the Girl Up Club at Blair, is also doing her part to help her community and the world around her. At Girl Up Club, Mohamud and her fellow

club members raise awareness and advocate for girls’ education around the world by contacting representatives, lobbying congressman, and educating people about girls’ education. “I am living in this community and I should do anything that I can, as a citizen, to move across and make this a better environment, not only for myself but for others,” Mohamud said.

If you are still not motivated to advocate for your world and for yourself, think about what you want for the future. “It’s the young people who are going to inherit the world someday, and if we are not civically engaged and constantly advocating for a better world, then in a decade or two, what’s the world going to look like? Who’s going to be there to save it?” Present said. You cannot just wait for things to get better − if you want to see change, you are going to have to make it happen yourself.

soapbox What do you believe is the most pressing issue for the next President?

“The most pressing issue for the next president, in my opinion, is the regulation of big business and Wall Street.”

— Nicolas del Vecchio, junior “I think the most pressing issue for the next president is the national debt because it’s a growing issue”.

— Quinn Kirk, junior

SP3 Editorials

silverchips

November 15, 2016

Amid fear and uncertainty, “Triunfo” hacia un futuro we must remain faithful incierto, debemos tener fe On Nov. 8, the United States finally went to the polls, ending an election season the New York Times Editorial Board called “an exhausting parade of ugliness.” The close result, as unexpected as it was polarizing, was a Donald Trump victory. His party, the Republicans, maintained their hold on the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.

As teenagers during this tumultuous election season, most of Blair’s student population could not vote. But as young adults, nearly all of us have feelings about the election and the results.

It is easy to feel discomforted or even angered by the destructive and divisive rhetoric employed this election season.

Many are some degree of shocked, disappointed, or appalled at the results. It might feel like the easy way out to to curse the United States, to threaten to move abroad, or to direct irrational anger at the country and our form of government. It is natural, when an election as decisive and disturbing as this one does not go your way, to feel really, really angry.

But losing faith in this country, giving up hope, and succumbing to disillusion are not the answer.

We, as young adults, stand at an important juncture in our lives. As we transition from childhood to adulthood, we must remember that the future of the United States is something that we are allowed to shape. It is something that we should shape.

So if you feel angry, or confused, or scared, do not back away from politics. Do not back away from the country you live in because it has disappointed you. As teenagers, we have the passion, the potential, and the youth to take a stand for what we believe in.

It is important to remember at times like these that America is truly a great country.

As the future of this nation, we are not justified to give up on it in its time of need.

By 2018, some of us will be able to vote, and by 2020, nearly all of us will. So if you are feeling lost or angry, do not forget this feeling. Vote when you can. Always speak up. And turn your negative feelings into the kind of action you want to see in the world.

We cannot afford anything less.

Do you have any feedback or see any mistakes? Let us know.

E-mail the editors at silver.chips.print@gmail.com

Aunque la mayoría de las encuestas predecían que Hillary Clinton ganaría la presidencia de la nación fácilmente en las elecciones del 8 de noviembre, la realidad fue que el resultado fue lo opuesto. Sí, es cierto que Clinton ganó el voto popular de la nación, pero con una ventaja de más de 50 votos del colegio electoral, Trump celebró su victoria la mañana del nueve de noviembre.

Un sentimiento de decepción general reina en nuestra comunidad latina ya que muchas personas tienen la tristeza adherida a sus rostros y les es casi imposible esconderlo. Esta tristeza se deriva mayormente del temor que existe de que la presidencia de Trump reviva la violencia que se experimentó al principio de su campaña electoral y los abusos verbales dirigidos hacia distintos grupos en nuestra sociedad.

Por un lado, sus comentarios sexistas y racistas han dejado a muchos perplejos, mientras que le ganó la admiración de otros que lo calificaron como tenaz e imparable.

En otras palabras el hecho de que Trump siempre dice lo que piensa le guste o no a la gente es una de las características por la cual es bastante reconocido. Los ataques xenófobos que implican hostilidad hacia los

extranjeros que fue evidente en su campaña electoral. Se espera que ahora ya siendo oficialmente en el Presidente Electo que los que se sintieron acosados se rebelen contra la falta de respeto, y tratamiento digno y humano.

El día después del anuncio oficial de su elección, ya se ha observado un incremento de abuso verbal contra las minorías en las redes sociales y otros ambientes como por ejemplo, en algunas escuelas del país.

Como jóvenes adultos que somos debemos de asumir la responsabilidad de promover un ambiente donde cada grupo se sienta respetado y tratado de manera digna. Este país nos da la oportunidad de unificarnos para expresar nuestros ideales y luchar pacíficamente por nuestros derechos y creencias. ¡En la unidad hay fuerza! La violencia no llevará a la nación a ningún lado. Lo que se necesita es un diálogo sensato entre los diversos grupos que componen esta nación. Ahora que la nación se enfrenta a tiempos de incertidumbre, es importante mantenerse unidos. ¿Tienes alguna sugerencia o vez algún error? Mándanos un correo electronico a silver.chips.print@gmail.com.

Why President-elect Trump is not our front page news

By Cole Sebastian You may have been surprised to pick up this new issue of Silver Chips and see no signs of wispy combovers or sad pantsuits on the front page. It may seem strange that Trump’s victory, the biggest news of the year, is scarcely mentioned in most of our newspaper. However, this is no accident.

We understand the gravity of this news and its importance to the country and every single Blair student. But chances are, you knew that Trump won before you picked up Silver Chips, so we decided to tell you about what you may not have already known.

It seems impossible to avoid the headlines about Trump’s path to the presidency and Hillary’s missteps to failure, but it takes proactive research to find any information about the outcome and implications of local elections such as the Board of Education, our congressional district, and the senate race. Those are the kinds of elections that get ignored by social media but are just as important to Blair students as Clinton vs.

Trump.

Our decision to shift focus away from the presidential election was not made easily.

Every member of the Silver Chips staff had an opinion on the role of the paper in covering the national election and, in companion, an opinion on the role of high school newspapers in covering national issues. I

strongly advocated that there should be no mention of Trump or Clinton in the entire paper, but many others believed that this election was too important to ignore.

We compromised by creating the special issue you see in this paper. The special issue is comprised of news stories that only cover local elections and features and opinions that focus on the student angle on national issues. I feel like this special issue reflects the mission of Silver Chips as a whole. We strive to provide news that is directly relevant to Blair and give every national issue a Blazer perspective. We are not here to tell you what you already know or what you can read in other newspapers across the country.

This strategy allows us to play into the inherent advantages and disadvantages of a high school newspaper. We do not have the resources or technology to beat the Washington Post to a national story, but we do have our finger on the pulse of Blair. That is something that no other news source can take advantage of. Trump did not make the front page for the same reason we rarely review Hollywood movies: we have nothing new to add. That is why we are dedicated to covering the stories that are specifically relevant to you, the Blair student.

Comments or concerns?

Email the Ombudsman at ombudsmansilverchips@gmail.com

SHIVANI MATTIKALLI

Thoughts?

Comments?

Questions?

Suggestions?

Feel free to access a feedback survey to tell us what you think about Silver Chips!

Scan the code above with a QR reader app, or use the URL http://www.chipssurvey.com/ to access the feedback survey!

Ombudsman Cole Sebastian

silverchips

November 15, 2016

Under eighteen and still electioneering

Politics SP4

Chips writers do their part by volunteering on election day

By Laura Espinoza In first person As I crack open my eyes, I hear a soft quacking noise coming from underneath my pillow. I turn off the alarm and check the time— 5:30 a.m. After getting ready, my dad and I run outside to the car, and five minutes later, we arrive at the election precinct where I will be volunteering for six hours.

Many high school students, including myself, often feel isolated from the political process when they are too young to vote.

However, through Future Vote, a program run by the county Board

saying “Vote Here!” at the edge of a major road.

Back inside, the line of 60 people runs all the way down the hallway. People are slouched over on chairs, browsing through sample ballots, and anxiously checking their watches.

After stuffing the last ballots in their folders, the chief judges start a ten-second countdown.

7:00 am The poll officially opens, and voters start to stream in, eager to fill in their ballots. Everything is running smoothly as voters flow

the voting tables and many more judges. I spot a girl around my age sitting by the exit, handing out stickers to voters as they leave.

This volunteer, Walter Johnson sophomore Keren Peter, has volunteered with Future Vote since sixth grade, a streak she credits to her mother’s political activism. Although her parents are currently out canvassing for Hillary Clinton, Peter enjoys helping out at precincts.

As we talk, an older lady walks by and takes a sticker from Peter.

She tells us proudly that it is important for everyone to know you have voted. She also lets us in on a secret: a local bakery gives out free baguettes to people who come in with an “I Voted” sticker.

1:00 pm I leave Walter Johnson, ready to go home, but I stop when I see a boy shivering by the curb. As I walk around to face him, I see that he is at the polls to support his preferred candidate, Donald Trump.

Srikar Sundaram has been at the precinct since 6:00 a.m., handing out pamphlets and posters to anyone who will stop and listen.

He is a Walter Johnson freshman and active in the school’s community of Republicans.

Sundaram wants to share his views about conservative policies with voters, so he decided to campaign for Trump. He says he plans on staying until 8:00 p.m., when the polls close, at his designated location 25 feet from the entrance of the precinct.

I realize his goal is the same as mine: to be an active participant in the political process, even as a minor. Students like Sundaram, who work endless hours for no pay, should be admired, not rebuked, for their work, regardless of their political affiliations.

6:00 pm

By Olivia Gonzalez In first person “Vote for Hillary Clinton,” a man screams. “Vote for Hillary!”

Around the block, others sitting on their front stoops echo his political cry. The air is thick with the smell of marijuana in this Northern Philadelphia neighborhood, but the drug’s prevalence does not stop residents from being politically active.

One of the men recognizes the Hillary Clinton emblem on my dad and I’s clipboards and approaches us. He tells us a heartwarming story about the daunting voter registration process he endured to get registered for this election -- the first he has ever voted in. His reasons for voting, however, were not from anger or resentment toward Donald Trump, but rather because he was genuinely excited about Clinton’s presidential prospects.

This is a recurring theme throughout the day as my dad and I canvass in predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhoods. When we knock on doors to ask people whether or not they have already voted, many excitedly take off their jackets to point to their stickers that read “Yo voté hoy,” or “I voted today.” It is inspiring to see Latino voters so passionate about this election, especially because it is something that the media tends to ignore.

We start our day off at eight a.m. at the Clinton campaign’s North Philadelphia field office.

The walls are adorned with Clinton memorabilia and volunteers are hustling about, taking coffee orders and handing out canvassing packets. The high-stress aura feels like we are in the middle of a beehive.

At headquarters, we are briefed on what to say to voters and how to respond to people’s reactions in certain situations. We are also

informed about candidates in local races, so that if voters have questions, we are prepared. All volunteers also leave the office equipped with contact information for people willing to drive voters to the polls.

Throughout the 12 hours we work, we knock on almost 400 doors. The majority of the houses we visit have multiple registered voters inside, so we probably end up talking to more than 700 people. There is not a single voter who denies to talk to us or says they are supporting Trump, which is an entirely different experience than the campaigning I had done the day before in an affluent Pennsylvania suburb.

We do come across a few houses whose residents on our lists have moved, but even then, those who greet us at the door are extremely courteous and polite. At one house, a little boy even brings out his dog out for me to pet while my dad speaks to the kid’s mom.

Overall, everyone is overwhelmingly supportive and enthusiastic, which makes our job easy.

Although I still have blisters on my feet three days later, I would not trade this experience for the world. It is eye-opening to see people from completely different upbringings and cultures than my own could come together and support the same cause.

Even though Clinton did not win the presidential election, there were still hundreds of people in our location who registered to vote for the first time and this is an incredibly important development for our nation’s democracy.

Even though most students cannot vote, canvassing can give us the opportunity to go out, make a difference, and fight for our future.

With my evening shift about to start, I rush back to my precinct at Tilden Middle School and quickly get back to work putting together empty ballots. The room is quiet, as voters trickle in slowly. There is little to do, so a chief judge asks me to recount the number of voter receipts from one of the scanners – all 525 of them.

BEN DOGGETT

“MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” Walter Johnson freshman Srikar Sundaram hands out signs for Republican cadidate Donald Trump outside Walter Johnson High School on election day. of Elections, students can serve as Student Election Aides inside polling places.

To participate in the election and help meet the high demand for volunteers, I spent my Election Day working the polls as a Student Election Aide, starting my day bright and early before the polls opened.

6:00 am An hour is left before the polls open, but a line of voters is already waiting outside of the voting room at Tilden Middle School in Rockville. Election judges and student aides are rushing to put the final touches on the room. Setting up poll books and scanners takes the longest amount of time since only judges can operate those machines. That leaves the signs to be put up by student volunteers.

Sprinting out of the school, with the blistering wind rushing around me, I run across the school parking lot to place a metal sign

in and out, but the line does not get any shorter. In the first 30 minutes, more than 100 people come through the doors to vote.

We quickly run out of ballots and spend the morning ripping more off of their pads. Though it is a monotonous task, even the chief judges take part, and as we get more comfortable around each other, the judges start asking me about my own life. I start to sense some camaraderie building as we experience this historic day together.

Before I know it, my three-hour shift is up, and I am ready to step out. I confirm with a chief judge that I will be returning later for closing, and walk home for a break before my next stop.

12:00 pm After resting for a few hours, I stop by Walter Johnson, a larger precinct, to catch a glimpse of the action there.

This polling place has double

8:00 pm It is finally closing time, and the judges rush to shut the doors.

While this is only my sixth hour working, the judges have been here for 14 hours.

The student aides rip the signs off the wall, while judges start turning off the machines.

Everyone is tired, and whispers circulate the room about the election results. Since the polls have closed, we are allowed to take out our phones and check the news.

One of the chief judges plans to go to North Carolina for a knitting retreat, so he is not worried about the results. He says that when he comes home on Saturday, he will be ready to know who the next President is.

9:00 pm As we finish packing up the voting equipment, I am relieved to be going home soon. Results for the East coast have been in for the past hour, and we will probably all go home to watch the rest roll in.

I step outside and start walking home in the dark, with the future of our country on my mind.

OLIVIA GONZALEZ

CANVASSING FOR CLINTON Gonzalez and her father (pictured above) get briefed before they begin their third day of working as volunteers for the Clinton-Kaine campaign.

silverch

November 15, 2016

The view from the other side of the political spectrum Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

Charles, a junior, stands alone in the corner of his AP U.S. Government classroom. The teacher has told the class to move toward the corner of the room that represents each student’s stance on a certain issue and no one has followed Charles. He feels alienated and is afraid to speak his mind for fear of a harsh response. This is the reality conservative-leaning students at Blair often face.

These students are often unable to have their voices heard and may find their stances discounted by the overwhelming liberal-leaning majority. Conservative students have been struck down by classmates for sharing their views, which are different from the assumed status quo. Many have received a stream of verbal attacks and hate just for stating their ideas. Often, the ideas they are exposed to at school are the exact opposite of those at home.

Multiple influences Conservative-leaning Blazers cite numerous reasons for their beliefs, but most commonly, they are influenced by family history, family values, and religious beliefs.

According to a 2005 Gallup survey, 71 percent of teenagers in the United States have similar political views to their parents.

Charles says that his parents were turned off by extreme liberal leanings when they grew up under Soviet rule, which helped determine their political views. “I was raised in a family where both of my parents were born and raised in Soviet Ukraine,” he says. “Coming from there, their experience with communism, or reformed communism, was very negative. So their views, especially economically, politically not so much, are very conservative.”

A similar familial scenario shaped the conservative leanings of Chris, a sophomore. He says his influences come from his parents’ vehement objection to totalitarian Soviet rule, and subsequent objection to any government control.

Josh, a freshman who also identifies as conservative, says he is mostly influenced by his religion and news ar-

ticles. “I’m Christian, so I believe kind of more conservatively Christian,” Josh says. “A lot of [my views] just come from online. I read a lot of stuff online. I care a lot about the political campaign, and that’s spurred some of my interest in politics.”

A 2014 Pew Research Center analysis found that of all Christians surveyed, around 43.5 percent lean conservative, far more than any other major religious group. As a whole, religious Americans lean 41 percent conservative, the most of major political leanings.

Students’ conservative views do not always stem from personal beliefs. Classroom discussions and biases can also shape a student’s opinions, as in the case of Dexter Mueller, a sophomore and founder of the new Young Republicans Club.

Mueller says his views shifted after being placed on the conservative side of in-class political debates. “I like to be in class and have discussion, and the teachers were always like, you know, we need someone to represent the alternative point of view, because I used to be extremely liberal,” Mueller says. “So I was always representing the conservative side, and eventually after speaking these ideas enough times, they legitimately started to make sense to me. And so I’m like, you know, they’re not necessarily wrong. These actually make a lot of sense.”

Lack of political diversity Generally, Blair’s student population skews far to the left of the political spectrum, as the Washington, D.C. metro area is one of the most liberal in the country. Takoma Park, a city where a significant number of Blair students reside, was recently ranked by an independent, non-partisan organization called CrowdPAC as the ninth-most liberal city in the country. The same survey ranked Silver Spring as the one hundred-second-most liberal city in the country.

Charles says that while Blair is racially diverse, the school is far from being politically and socially diverse.

“The minorities of Blair aren’t even racial, because there are no racial minorities,” he says. “It’s more political, or in other aspects, maybe LGBT, stuff like that. If I had to name the two biggest minorities, it would probably be LGBT students and Republicans.”

Anna, a junior, believes that overwhelming partisanship, not only in the student body, but also in the school administration, is also a problem. “I think the school administration is partisan. Ms. Johnson obviously embraces Black Lives Matter and all these progressive things, and so that sends a signal to conservatives like me or just moderates or just people who don’t agree with all those things that she supports,” she says. “We might see it as, ‘You’re not really welcome.’”

Social studies teacher Kevin Shindel worries that the lack of diversity and open discussion presents a significant issue for the current generation of Blazers. “I believe in open dialogue … but I can definitely say conservatives think this is a hostile environment,” he says.

Afraid to talk Given the liberal majority at Blair, some conservative students recall being called out for giving their political opinions, and are reluctant to share their views in the future, for fear of being shamed in similar scenarios.

Josh and Charles both say that an everyone-against-them mentality deters them from sharing their opinions in class. “Sometimes, I do feel like everyone will gang up on me, so sometimes I do try to stay quiet,” Josh says.

Charles remembers a particular activity in AP U.S. Government last year where students were asked a question and then walked to a corner of the room that corresponded with their opinion on the political issue.

“I tend to stay away from saying things like that,” he says. “I was generally on the side where it was one or two people. And then we were supposed to discuss it, and that’s when you start to feel really uncomfortable …

If you’re on the side with one or two people, it’s all eyes on you, and you have to tell everyone about what your reasoning is.”

Anna says that she is afraid to share her conservative opinions for fear of intense backlash from friends and classmates. “I’m afraid to share these values. I’m just scared to talk about this because I’m scared people will call me homophobic, or anti-woman, or just a bunch of other names that I’m not,” she says. “It can really lead to broken friendships and stuff like that.”

Politics SP5/SP6

hips

Josh recalls an experience in an eighth grade history class when he was directly insulted for sharing his views on being required to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

“People insulted me. When [my classmates] said ‘playing devil’s advocate,’ they said playing ‘Lintaro’s advocate,’ equating me to the devil,” he remembers. “It was joking, of course, but I did feel kind of marginalized for my views.”

Contrary to Anna and Josh, Mueller and Jacob, a freshman, both feel very comfortable talking about their conservative views in class. Mueller says that he has occasionally received support in class for explaining his opinions, even if those students do not agree with him.

While Jacob is “pretty comfortable” sharing his opinions in class, he is more concerned about explaining them outside of class. He says that outside of class, “people will spin [the opinions]—make it sound hateful or racist or whatever else they perceive it.”

As a way to avoid the type of reaction Jacob received, Charles approaches in-class discussions by only speaking if he is educated on a topic, if he is comfortable with the people around him, and by framing his response in order to invoke the mildest reaction possible from classmates. “It depends a lot on the people who are there, because if it’s people who I’m comfortable with, I’m going to feel confident in the fact that they’re not going to get aggressive,” he says. “So, if a discussion comes up, I’ll generally voice my views, but if I do, I always start seeming more liberal than I actually am.”

When faced in a similar situation to Charles, Anna takes the opposite route: strict silence. “I just shut up. I don’t say anything,” she says. “Because I know if I say something, people might start questioning it, and if they start questioning it, then well, I’m in trouble.”

Charles summarizes his experiences as a conservative student at Blair by noting that people vary in their degrees of openness about political dialogue. “Sometimes, people are open to conversation and dialogue and discussions, but other times people get upset, offended, kind of aggressive about it,” he says. “Sometimes you just kind of feel like, alright, I’d rather not say anything and be put under the gun.”

All in all, Mueller could not care less about those who ridicule him for his opinions. “I don’t really care about

those people,” he says. “If you can’t accept someone having a different opinion, you don’t really deserve my respect.”

A new outlet For these conservative-leaning students, their voices are in the super-minority. But, these repressed voices now have a new avenue to foster political discussion.

Mueller recently received clearance from administration to start a Young Republicans Club which will be modeled after the pre-existing Young Democrats Club. Blair used to have a Young Republicans Club, sponsored by Shindel, but it was discontinued during the 2011-2012 school year.

Shindel says that the club first came about in 2003, much like the current version did, as a place for isolated conservative students to discuss their opinions. Shindel says he sponsored the club because he believes dialogue is the best way to resolve political differences, especially those among students. “I believe in giving people an opportunity to respectfully and honestly and open-mindedly voice their opinions and seek the good in each other,” he says.

Chris, much like Shindel, thinks the new club can foster open discussions among all Blazers, both right-andleft-leaning. “Especially in such an environment such as Blair where it’s mostly left-leaning, it would be interesting to have the other side,” Chris says. “So we could discuss, you know, maybe with other Democrats too, but have an open discussion, not just lean to one side.”

According to Shindel, the previous Young Republicans club ended due to low attendance, a general lack of events, and infrequent meetings. This does not deter Mueller, however. Mueller hopes the club will encourage conservatives to speak out, especially those who feel left out of or shut down in political conservations. “It’s an alternative … an outlet for more conservative ideas,” he says.

Mueller also hopes the club will refute common myths he hears about the Republican Party at Blair. “I really kind of wanted to dispel a lot of misconceptions about the Republican Party that people seem to have around Blair,” he says. “A lot of kids are always trash-

ing on Republicans and conservatives, and I feel that it’s good to go out and dispel a lot of notions people have.”

Although the idea of joining a Young Republicans club is popular amongst some of Blair’s conservatives, Charles is not interested. His hesitation stems from when a friend told him that joining a political club in high school was not a good idea.

Josh, on the other hand, is interested in joining the club and believes it will serve as a sanctuary of sorts for conservatives. “I believe [the club] would help other students who share unpopular opinions in the school find a place—a safe place where they can share them, where they won’t be marginalized or be subjected to a hostile environment,” he says.

Overall, Mueller hopes that the club will educate the Blair population and make the school aware of the importance of political diversity. “I’m just kind of looking to educate [people about] and support candidates with conservative ideals that are actually legitimate candidates that could win and would be good if they did win,” he says. “Hopefully, [we can] change people’s minds about issues and maybe garner support and make Blair a more politically diverse place.”

story by art by design by

Noah Chopra-Khan & Alexander Dacy Marissa He & Tiffany Mao Dawson Do

SP7 español

silverchips

15 de noviembre, 2016

Inmigrantes indocumentados se encuentran entre la espada y la pared No pudieron votar en las elecciones presidenciales para poder hacer una diferencia Michael Hernandez Donde aparecen sólo los primeros nombres, los nombres han sido cambiados para proteger la identidad de las fuentes de información.

La elección presidencial del año 2016 ha sido muy notable debido a las controversias que surgieron en referencia a los planteamientos de los candidatos. La inmigración fue uno de los temas más discutidos en los debates entre los candidatos presidenciales.

Una de las disputas más grandes fueron los comentarios que el Presidente Electo, Donald Trump, hizo en el pasado hacia los inmigrantes. En junio del 2015 en su discurso de pre-candidatura el magnate republicano, Donald Trump exclamó que los inmigrantes, “están trayendo drogas, están trayendo crimen, son violadores y algunos asumo que son buenas personas.” Después de esos comentarios, Trump prometió deportar a los 11 millones de indocumentados que residen en el país cuando alcanzara la presidencia.

En estas elecciones el voto latino fue muy esencial pero muchos inmigrantes no pudieron votar por su estatus migratorio lo cual dejó a millones de personas marginadas por el magnate, sin voz ni voto.

Desde el comienzo del proceso electoral, Trump prometió construir un muro en la frontera de México y de Estados Unidos. El enfatizó que los Estados Unidos es un país sin fronteras adecuadas y seguras. Trump también catalogó a los Estados Unidos como el basurero de todos los problemas de los demás países y aseguró que deportará a los 11 millones de inmi-

grantes indocumentados que radican en el país. Trump asegura que de su parte no habrá una amnistía y la única ruta para las personas indocumentadas será la deportación. También reforzó que usaría su experiencia de planificar la estructura de sus famosos hoteles para construir un muro seguro entre los Estados Unidos y México, que costaría alrededor de 5 a 10 millones de dólares. Además,

dio la esperanza de una reforma migratoria que implementaría en los primeros 100 días de su estancia en la Casa Blanca. Ella prometió darle estatus legal a millones de inmigrantes y un camino hacia la ciudadanía. Clinton solo apoyaría la detención y deportación de los inmigrantes que realmente fueran una amenaza para los ciudadanos americanos. De haber llegado a la presidencia, Clinton había pro-

grante que Montgomery Blair, teme por su futuro y su estancia en los Estados Unidos. Ella emigró a los Estados Unidos de su país natal El Salvador debido a la violencia perpetrada por las maras.

Ella llegó a los Estados Unidos en búsqueda de un mejor futuro, donde se reencontró con su familia. Gloria comenta sobre los comentarios de Trump en referencia a los inmigrantes y dice,” [Donald

LINDSAY HARRIS

prometió que México tendría que pagar por los costos de este muro en forma de disculpa por toda la violencia y crimen que supuestamente traen los inmigrantes a este país.

Por otro lado, la candidata demócrata Hillary Clinton prometió un enfoque diferente con el tema de la inmigración. Clinton

metido su apoyo a los programas de DACA y DAPA que permiten estatus temporal a cinco millones de “soñadores” y a padres que tienen hijos nacidos en los Estados Unidos. Clinton enfatizó la importancia de la unidad familiar, lo cual promueve los valores de la nación americana.

Gloria, una estudiante inmi-

Trump] No ofende solamente a los mejicanos porque los centroamericanos somos como una familia con los mejicanos.” Ella confiesa lo duro que es no tener documentos y no ser ciudadana americana porque esto le impidió votar, a pesar de tener dieciocho años y haber vivido aquí por cinco años.

Si Gloria hubiera tenido documen-

tos ella dice con seguridad, “Yo votaría por Clinton porque ella dice que va a dar una reforma. Esto nos ayudara ya que ni tenemos un permiso de trabajo.”

Sonia, otra estudiante que es una inmigrante salvadoreña se imagina un futuro muy inestable.

El país centroamericano es catalogado como el país más violento en el Hemisferio Occidental por la organización InSight Crime.

Ella vino a los Estados Unidos huyendo del abuso físico y sexual de parte de los pandilleros. Por no querer asociarse con ellos la amenazaron de muerte y tuvo que escapar de su cantón para permanecer viva. Los comentarios de Trump hacia los inmigrantes le parecieron muy ofensivos y dice, “me afectó mucho porque él no tiene el derecho de tratar a los inmigrantes mal porque todos somos igual.” Sonia enfatiza que los únicos que no son inmigrantes son los indios nativos y que todos los demás son inmigrantes. Ella opina lo opuesto a lo que opina el magnate republicano, ella dice que los inmigrantes vienen refugiándose de la violencia y también aportan a la economía.

El voto latino fue muy crucial en la elecciones presidenciales del 2016 pero fue sobrepasado por otros grupos que apoyaron a Donald Trump. Muchos inmigrantes encontraron consuelo en los hermanos latinos que sí pudieron votar para que no se deporte a los 11 millones de indocumentados.

Muchos latinos se convirtieron en ciudadanos naturalizados para poder votar pero esto no fue suficiente para detener mensaje del movimiento.

Victoria de Donald Trump deja al país en un estado de incertidumbre Muchas personas desconfían que el Presidente Electo pueda reunificar a un país dividido Por El personal de la Esquina Latina A pesar de toda la controversia que causó desde el inicio de su campaña electoral, Donald Trump finalmente recibió el título de Presidente Electo. A partir del 20 de enero, el futuro de la nación queda en las manos de alguien con ideales controversiales con lo que no todos están de acuerdo.

La propuesta migratoria de Trump es controversial. Su plan de deportar a todos los inmigrantes ilegales es algo que le ganó mucha atención en los medios de comunicación. Esto opaca el panorama para la comunidad latina del país, ya que muchos inmigrantes indocumentados se verían afectados por estas reformas. Sus propuestas pueden ser causa de ansiedad y sentimientos negativos. La manera de la que Trump propuso expulsar y evitar la entrada de inmigrantes musulmanes con el razonamiento de que la mayoría pertenecían a ISIS creó tensión entre países musulmanes y Estados Unidos.

Este tipo de rigidez por parte de Trump podría convertirse en posibles

conflictos con otras naciones y afectaría los planes humanitarios para ayudar a la gente afectada en las zonas del Medio Oriente.

Para aquellos que aún no residen en el país de manera legal y sentirían la necesidad de esconderse para evitar ser deportados, todavía no es hora para asustarse. De acuerdo con el Sr. West, profesor de gobierno y cívica en Blair, Trump tendrá que sobrepasar muchos obstáculos para implementar sus políticas de inmigración. El Sr. West explica que, “para deportar a más gente indocumentada; costará mucho dinero, requeriría más agentes de inmigración, al

LINDSAY HARRIS

igual que cortés y tendría que obtener el permiso del Congreso de los Estados Unidos para recibir fondos para implementar tales promesas.” El Sr. West quiere que todos los estudiantes indocumentados de Blair sepan que ellos están seguros en la escuela, agentes de inmigración los pueden venir a buscar en la escuela. Añadiendo a eso, el consensus es que Trump quiere poner como prioridad el deportar a los inmigrantes indocumentados con un récord criminal y luego evaluar los casos de los están aquí para completar su educación y quienes quieren contribuir a esta

sociedad.

Por otro lado, Trump tiene planes de mejorar las fracturadas relaciones diplomáticas con Rusia.

En una entrevista dijo que “Si nos pudiéramos llevar bien con Rusia sería una cosa tremenda. Me en-

cantaría intentarlo.” Para muchas personas esto es algo alarmante.

Es de importancia considerar que las relaciones internacionales de Estados Unidos también se verían afectadas por sus frecuentes comentarios xenofóbicos sobre otros grupos étnicos. Xenofobia es el odio u hostilidad hacia los extranjero, de acuerdo con lo descrito en el diccionario en línea ELMUNDO. COM. También, todas estas tensiones se incrementarían con su propuesta de facilitar la obtención de armas para “ciudadanos honestos.” Trump declaró en varias entrevistas que si las personas que son usualmente las víctimas de alguna catástrofe hubieran tenido armas, posiblemente hubieran sobrevivido. Dicha propuesta ha resultado muy controversial porque sería un arma de doble filo. Por un lado, es posible que algunas personas se beneficien en situaciones de emergencia, ya que tendrían una manera de defenderse a ellos mismos y a sus seres queridos. Por otro lado, con un incremento del número de personas que poseen armas de fuego, podría incrementar la violencia ya que básicamente está proponiendo resolver la violencia que ya existe con aún más violencia.

Otro de sus planes con con posibilidad de dejar una huella negativa en la historia de los Estados Unidos es el de incrementar los impuestos de importación hasta un 35%. Con un incremento tan alto, otros países no solo dudaría antes de comerciar con nosotros, sino que muchos buscarían entradas más fáciles y menos costosas en otras economías. Los cambios que el Presidente Electo Trump

propuso durante su campaña aún no han sido implementados, pero en caso de que se tome en serio sus promesas y decida cumplirlas, el resultado será una sorpresa, ya que no se sabe con seguridad cómo va a afectar a la nación.

Aunque hay muchos puntos controversiales en las políticas de Trump, hay que reconocer que también existen unas propuestas que tienen la posibilidad de tener consecuencias positivas en la economía del país. Por ejemplo, Trump es considerado una persona que opera fuera de las normas del sistema del presente de los políticos. El está en contra de lo que se conoce como el “status quo.” Esto implica una complacencia con lo establecido. El crítica el acto de recibir dinero de corporaciones grandes en cambio por favores políticos, una costumbre evidente en presidentes del pasado cual se considera algo que está incrementando la desigualdad en las clases económicas de la nación.

Trump también está en favor de dejar a los estados crear nueva legislación para subir el salario mínimo. Sí, mucho de lo que ha dicho Trump ha causado controversia pero uno debe tener en cuenta que él está haciendo lo que piensa podrá mejorar la economía de los Estados Unidos.

Para los que están en contra con los ideales del Presidente Electo Trump y quieren hacer algo, el Sr. West dice que no se queden quietos. Dice “todavía estamos en los Estados Unidos, si uno no está contento con cómo está actuando el gobierno, puede salir a protestar y ser activista en su gobierno local para hacer que su voz sea escuchada.”

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November 15, 2016

For some Blazers, purchasing is no longer preferred Various reasons lead some to risk it all to get free merchandise, despite the consequences

By Christian Mussenden Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources.

steal for the fun of it,” Louise says.

“But now it’s like if I need or want something, then yeah, I’m going to steal it.”

with teenagers stealing clothes and stuff like that,” Lowerey says.

He believes that kids shoplift not because they need to, but just

year, and it was small things from Target, and stupid stuff, and then my friends got in on it, and there was like a group of us who would

Consequences

“Don’t look back,” Isabel, a junior, thinks to herself. “Don’t look back and it will be ok.” She leaves the women’s apparel section and walks to the front of the store, trying to act casually and not draw any attention to herself. But with every step Isabel takes, a store employee follows.

After a few seconds, she looks back, unable to resist; the employee is not there anymore. She starts to breathe a little easier, her racing heart settling down.

“I need to be more careful next time,” Isabel thinks to herself. “A lot more careful.”

After what feels like forever, she finally makes it out of the store. She turns around to give one last glance to the store she had just stolen from and sees the store employee she had feared so much.

“Ma’am,” the employee says, “you’re going to have to come with me.”

According to a recent study conducted by the National Crime Prevention Council, around 25 percent of apprehended shoplifters are between the ages of 13 and 17, making Isabel, along with other Blazers who steal, just a few of the 6.75 million young shoplifters nationwide.

“For the fun of it” Louise, a sophomore, was influenced to steal by her peers. “I saw them doing it, and then I went and I tried it. I started off with small stuff and then I started stealing bigger things,” she says.

Once Louise started stealing, it quickly escalated. “I used to just

creased in quantity and value. “It got a little out of hand,” she says. “[[The amount I stole] got into the thousands of dollars. It was bad.”

SABRINA TAN

Frank Lowery, the head of loss prevention at Marshall’s retail store in City Place Mall in Downtown Silver Spring, deals with teenage shoplifting on a regular basis. “In my store at least, it’s been down recently but we do have a problem

for the fun of it. “Maybe they get a thrill out of it,” Lowerey says. “But I don’t think they do it for bad reasons.”

Isabel started shoplifting mostly because it was easy to do, as well as to justify. “I started stealing last

go to bigger stores, and never get caught, and it was kind of easy,” Isabel says. “We justified it by being like ‘it was easy, the stuff was overpriced anyway,’ and we didn’t want to pay for it.” Just like Louise, Isabel’s stealing gradually in-

Unlike Louise, Isabel has stopped shoplifting, after she was caught stealing over $100 worth of merchandise from JC Penney.

“When I got caught, I didn’t really register it was happening at first until I was, like, waiting for the police,” Isabel says. “Then I was like, ‘Wait, I got caught. This isn’t good.’” Isabel had to face a litany of consequences for her crime. She was banned from entering the mall in which that JC Penney was located for a year, and she paid around $2,500 in fines.

But the part that affected Isabel most was dealing with her parents after she was caught by the store employee. “When my parents came is when I started getting more scared about it,” she says.

“I’ve never got in trouble with my parents before about anything. I’m not like a goody two-shoes, but like they’ve never found out I’ve done anything wrong.”

Lowery tells the shoplifters whom he catches that stealing is not worth the consequences.

“Nothing good can come from you shoplifting or anybody you know shoplifting. If you want it that bad, you could even try to apply for a job here or something like that.”

Lowery says. “You don’t have to steal it though.”

After being apprehended, Isabel eventually came to the realization that shoplifting is not worth the risk. “If you would have asked me before I got caught, I would have said, ‘In some cases, I feel like it can be justified with some things,’” she says, “but now definitely not.”

Reflecting on our history: An interview with Eric Holder The first black United States Attorney General sits down with Silver Chips

By Leila Jackson Eric Holder was the first black Attorney General and held the position for six years under President Obama. He attended Columbia University. Holder worked as a trial lawyer in the criminal division of the Justice Department, then as a judge, was the U.S. attorney in D.C. and then was the Deputy Attorney general.

Before becoming Attorney General he worked at Covington and Burling, the law firm where he currently works.

Can you describe what an Attorney General does?

The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement in the country and has a responsibility for national security matters. You sit on the National Security Council and you have responsibilities for the more traditional justice department areas, the environment, criminal law, antitrust, tax and there is also a civil division.

Did you know that you wanted to become involved in law when you were younger?

I did not have any sense when I was younger that I wanted to be a lawyer.

I thought about being an engineer but, if I could have been anything I wanted to be, I would have been a starting guard for the New York Knicks. Right now I would be a retired NBA ball player! But that

did not work out, so I went to law school.

Can you talk about what you did under President Clinton?

I served under President Bill Clinton first as the United States Attorney in D.C. and then as Deputy Attorney General. As U.S. Attorney, I tried to connect the office that I led to the community that it was supposed to serve. At that time, D.C. had the highest per capita murder rate of any city in the country.

So we tried to deal with that problem, like trying to keep people safe but at the same time coming up with ways in which we could prevent young people from becoming involved in criminal activities. I also started a Children Exposed to Violence initiative to deal with kids who had been exposed to violence.

What are the biggest challenges of the job?

Trying to strike the right balance between the national security responsibilities and making sure that you do not lose sight of the fact that you have a whole range of other things on your plate such as civil rights issues, environmental issues and criminal issues. Every day you are faced with tough decisions like whether to charge somebody in a criminal case, or to sue somebody in a civil case or how to settle a certain matter or giving advice to the President.

LEILA JACKSON

CABINET POSITION Eric Holder served as the Attorney General of the United States from 2009- 2015.

Can you talk about any challenges you have faced as the first black Attorney General?

I think, being the first black Attorney General, pressure comes at you in two directions. You want to prove to the world that an AfricanAmerican can do the job and on the other side you feel like you have a responsibility to those who made it possible for you to be the first African-American Attorney General. You feel like you have to prove to them that their sacrifices and the struggles that they went

through to make it possible were not in vain.

What do you not miss about being Attorney General?

What are some of the perks of being Attorney General?

I like getting my privacy back.

People still recognize me but I enjoy being able to walk the streets without a bunch of FBI agents around me.

I like to drive, I am driving to work again, so be afraid, Eric is driving again. I just like doing the normal things and I missed being a regular guy.

I miss my plane. I think there are five cabinet officers who cannot fly commercial for national security reasons and the Attorney General is one of them.

I got to hang out with the President a lot and spend a lot of time at the White House. He is a friend of mine and Michelle is a good friend of my wife’s.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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November 15, 2016

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From kale to quinoa: An inside look at the vegan lifestyle A chronic carnivore tries eating no meat and dairy for a week

By Henry Wiebe In first person

When I was around 12 years old, I ate a dozen scrambled eggs because my older brother dared me to do it. On another occasion, I downed nine hot dogs in one sitting.

Normally, my diet consists almost completely of meat and dairy dishes. By that, I literally mean that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I eat some type of animal product.

I am not particularly conscious of my dietary choices—nor am I necessarily proud of them—but meat and dairy products have simply always been staple foods in my diet.

I love steak, burgers, eggs, and cheese, and I will most likely continue eating these foods for the rest of my life. But for the sake of journalism and trying something new, I decided to venture out of my comfort zone.

For one week, I stopped eating all food products that come from animals and became a vegan.

Day 1: Breakfast reinvented On Monday morning, I woke up excited to start my new diet. This optimism was abruptly cut short when I walked into the kitchen to eat breakfast. My typical morning meal consists of eggs, toast, and occasionally cereal.

I had never tried cereal with anything but regular milk, so as a part of my vegan diet, I tried eating Cheerios with soy milk.

I normally love Cheerios, but I absolutely hated this combination. I grew to enjoy some foods in my vegan diet, but I doubt that I will ever consume soy milk again in any context.

I must have been so used to eating cereal with cow’s milk that when I switched over, the taste just seemed extremely off. Regular milk has a relatively neutral taste, but soy milk almost tastes sweet with a flavor that is clearly distinct from cow’s milk. In fact, it tasted so different from what I am used to that I could not even finish my bowl.

Running out of time to prepare something else, I was forced to go to school hungry. Throughout the rest of my week, I opted for breakfast foods that I was more familiar with, but were still vegan, like oatmeal and toast.

Day 2: Protein power!

Despite my rough start to the week, my vegan experience started to improve on Tuesday as I started to find foods that I enjoyed. For lunch, I packed dried pineapples and cranberries, as well as a bag of almonds.

Dried fruits and nuts were extremely easy to eat throughout the week because they serve as a quick snack and are less messy to eat than fresh fruit. I live an extremely busy and active life, so these sorts of snacks were very convenient. It was easy to grab a handful of dried fruit or nuts before a baseball practice or play rehearsal.

A major criticism of ve g a n i s m is that it does not allow people to get enough protein in their daily diets. I found that this was a fairly irrelevant concern, as I was easily able to consume an adequate amount of protein by eating different types of nuts. Almonds, cashews, and peanuts all provided a great source of protein, and helped me obtain enough energy to fuel my active life.

Dried fruits were also a healthier alternative to quick bites like fruit snacks and candy. These foods violate the vegan diet because they often contain gelatin, a substance derived from cow bones. I discovered that gelatin is found in many more foods than I had expected. For example, I originally thought that Poptarts, one of my favorite foods, would be acceptable to eat. Even

AVERY LIOU

if you briefly skim the nutrition label, it is not marked as a food made with dairy or eggs. However, upon closer inspection, the section marked as “Less than 2% of the following” read that Poptarts contain gelatin.

I considered cheating and making an exception for my beloved Poptarts because, come on, only two percent of the product was non-vegan; I was already sacrificing so much for the diet. But I had a change of heart, and I made the right choice to abstain from eating them, just for this week.

Day 3: Chickenless chipotle My third day as a vegan took a turn for the worst when I went to Chipotle and had to order a vegan meal. It was deeply saddening to eat Chipotle without any meat, cheese, or sour cream. Instead of my usual carnitas burrito, I ordered a bowl with some mushy fajita vegetables.

Chipotle is norU mally one of my favorLIO Y ite fast food restaurants, ER AV but without any meat or dairy, it was absolutely atrocious. Even worse, I had to eat my unappetizing bowl right next to someone who was eating their delicious meat and cheese burrito. It was almost as if the person was taunting me. In that moment, I realized that completing this week might be tougher than I had previously thought.

Day 4: The vital nutrients At this point in the week, I really started to miss the variety of food I was used to.

I had eaten a lot of peanut butter and jelly

sandwiches, and had gotten pretty sick of them.

Instead of more of these sandwiches, I tried packing a salad for lunch instead. I made a spinach salad with carrots and a balsamic vinaigrette. This made lunch a little bit more interesting, but the meal still was not the same without any meat.

I also had to be careful to eat a variety of food to make sure that I was obtaining all my essential nutrients. Low levels of vitamin B12, calcium, and vitamin D have all been found in higher concentrations among vegans, and although this can be remedied through nutritional supplements, it suggests that vegans must pay closer attention to their diets.

Day 5: More beans please!

On the fifth night, I decided to make a special vegan dinner for myself because I wanted to shake things up and make my meals more interesting. I cooked a rice and bean dish with vegetables. Since I rarely cook anything more complex than top ramen, this was a fairly new experience for me. Having to prepare my own food required me to always eat a separate meal while my family ate food that usually contained animal products, which fueled my jealousy that accumulated all week.

In my rice dish, I accounted for the lack of meat by adding much more beans than would have normally been necessary. This proved to be a problem the next day in school because when you eat a lot of beans…

Well, everyone knows what happens when you eat a lot of beans.

Day 6: Sad salads One problem that vegans often encounter is the lack of options for dining out. Unless one goes to a restaurant with specific vegan accommodations, there are usually very few vegan-friendly foods.

During my week of veganism, this proved to be a big hurdle. On my sixth day, I went to a burger restaurant with my family, and after searching through the menu, the only

vegan item that I could order was a chicken Caesar salad without chicken and cheese.

Salads at places that mainly serve burgers are generally not the best to begin with, but once the meat and the cheese are taken out, they are basically just wilted lettuce with a soggy crouton strewn here and there.

When my food arrived, I realized that the dressing probably contained some sort of dairy product. After the waiter confirmed my suspicions, I waited while they prepared another salad—this time with the right type of dressing. All told, my salad took almost 45 minutes to make, which was not worth it for a few pieces of unsatisfying vegetables.

At this point in the week, I started to get hungry again very shortly after meals. After eating lunch, I would need to eat again by the time that I got to ninth period. I had to start packing extra snacks for after lunch so that I could concentrate in my afternoon classes without my stomach growling.

Day 7: Mama, I made it

On my last day, I realized that there were still several upsides to my vegan experience, despite how annoying it was at times to keep to the diet. I never really ate bananas before, but after eating them fairly consistently this week, I discovered that I actually really like them and will be sure to eat more of them in the future. I also grew to enjoy bell peppers, which I had never really liked before either.

There is a flipside to this, however. I tried plenty of foods that I will never eat again in my life, like vegan Chipotle and salads at burger restaurants.

Although I will not continue to be vegan, I am grateful for the new perspective I gained after a week on the diet. I now know how it feels to only eat Chipotle with vegetables or tofu while everyone around me is eating meat, and how it feels to miss out on eating Poptarts even though they contain trace amounts of gelatin. I now understand the struggles that vegans must go through every day, and through my experience, I gained a great amount of respect for vegans because I understand their plight from both ends of the diet spectrum.

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November 15, 2016

How Blair theatre plays with production ideas A backstage look at what inspires show choices like Hamlet and Kismet

By Gilda Geist Hand in hand, girls in puffy white blouses and brightly colored skirts dance across the stage toward the wooden doors of a yellow building adorned with blue and white tiles. This intricate setting and vibrant clothing, meant to convey traditional Mexican culture, has found its way into Blair theater’s production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Last year, after over a year of scrutiny and planning, director of Blair theater, Kelly O’Connor, announced that the 2015 fall play would be “Much Ado About Nothing”, set in Mexico. A lot goes into selecting Blair’s plays and musicals. O’Connor usually picks shows a year in advance so that she has enough time to prepare the best production possible. “I really love them all,” O’Connor says of the many plays and musicals she has directed at Blair over the years. Her more recent shows include “Kismet”, “Much Ado About Nothing”, “Fiddler on the Roof”, and “Treasure Island”.

This year’s play is “Hamlet”, but with a twist. The part of Hamlet will be played by seniors Abigail Rowland and Ronee Goldman and will include other non-gender conforming roles as well. “It’s not genderspecific, it’s not racially specific,” senior Blair theater member Theresa Guirand says.

“It gives actors an opportunity to grow.”

In addition to “Hamlet”, O’Connor announced on Oct. 28 that she will be directing “The Wiz” in the spring, per Guirand’s suggestion. “I know a lot of people’s conflict with it is that it’s supposed to be an all-black cast,” Guirand says. “As long as the cast is diverse and people have the understanding of where this musical came from and what it means to the black community … I think the production will be great,” she says.

For the fall production, O’Connor always does Shakespeare, except for every third

year, when she selects another classical play, such as “Treasure Island”, which was performed in the fall of 2014. O’Connor studied Shakespeare in college and grew up appreciating the playwright and his works. “I’ve loved it since I was a child,” O’Connor said.

I did my first Shakespeare show at Blair, I didn’t realize how much fun it is,” senior Luc Picone, who has been a member of Blair theater since his freshman year, says.

In addition to Shakespeare, many of O’Connor’s choices for both the plays and

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

HAMLET IN PLAY Seniors Ronee Goldman, as Hamlet, and Luc Picone, as Claudius, act out a dramatic scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

“It provides an unparalleled educational and theatrical opportunity for students.”

O’Connor’s emphasis on Shakespeare has changed some students’ perspectives on the classic Elizabethan playwright. “Before

the musicals tend to be popular among members of Blair theater. “I’ve never been disappointed by the shows that she’s announced were up and coming,” Picone says.

It is important to O’Connor that she

chooses a show that will challenge her actors, but still be a manageable learning experience for beginners. She also makes sure there are at least twenty sizeable characters and a large ensemble so she that can cast as many people as possible in each production.

O’Connor tries to look for shows with a range of settings in each four-year cycle and ones that she has not done recently in the past. Senior Blair theater member Karuna Nandkumar says that for “Hamlet”, “We’re doing a modern setting, which I really like.”

In addition to her own personal criteria, there are some other limiting factors to O’Connor’s pool of choices. The rights to more recent and popular shows are more expensive. For example, “Fiddler on the Roof”, an older but very popular musical, cost $6,000, and Kismet, written over 100 years ago and not particularly well-known, was $3,000. O’Connor is also restricted in her choices because she sometimes legally cannot put on shows which are on tour in the U.S. Once O’Connor finds a show that meets her standards, is in line with copyright laws, and is good for her cast, she watches her students take on her test of their abilities. For example, in 2009, Blair performed “Sweeney Todd”, which O’Connor used to challenge her actors. “It’s incredibly hard music,” O’Connor says. “What was so thrilling was watching the students rise to it, because it’s really tricky.”

At the end of months of work, O’Connor finally gets to see her show come together.

From the moment she selects a show, she is collecting props, making costumes, and formulating plans. After months of rehearsal and preparation, O’Connor says that seeing her students improve, learn, and put all of their effort into the show that she chooses is important to her. “They bring so much heart to it, which is a thrill,” she says. “This is the best part of my job.”

Blair’s bathrooms: The good, the bad and the very ugly

The number one bathroom for when you really need to take a number two

By Cole Greenberg and Leila Jackson Throughout Blair’s history, one secret has eluded student masses; this sensitive information required nothing less than the height of journalistic ability to uncover. Students would kill just to get their hands on knowledge this powerful and revolutionary.

The secret so continuously sought after? Where to poop.

Students deal with a trip to the bathroom like they deal with a flu shot — it is never a pleasant experience, but always an inevitable trip. Students’ traumatic restroom experiences do not come from a negligent maintenance staff, but are instead a product of students’ off-putting disregard for seat manners.

Boys and girls alike shoot paper towels at trash cans in the bathroom without taking a second glance to verify that their rubbish landed in the waste bin. Perhaps they are preparing for that unlikely future multi-million dollar NBA contract.

But, it does not stop here. Students using the restroom appear to wash their hands in a way similar to that of a curious monkey.

They splash water over every inch of the

checkered floor, and press the soap dispenser only to let globs of soap fall to the ground as if gravity is an unexpected outcome.

And, although Blair’s janitorial staff does its very best to keep the bathrooms stocked with toilet paper, there is no bathroom issue in the entirety of Blair’s existence that comes close to the nightmare of one-ply toilet paper. Blair’s exasperatingly thin toilet paper, which requires multiple sheets to get the job done, has been a bathroom grievance for years. While these are issues all students at Blair face, boys and girls also deal with separate conundrums and headaches in their average day.

Most people seem to think that guys at Blair enjoy the liberty of urinals and natural advantages in bathroom efficiency, the process goes slower than most would imagine. No student in his right mind would choose to stand awkwardly next to another while using the bathroom— going about his business inches away from a classmate.

Keeping all of this urinal business in mind, it is actually an achievement when a guy chooses to pee directly into the bowl rather than onto the floor. Step-

ping in a puddle of urine is hardly the first item on anyone’s wish-list, and no matter how hard guys try to get in and out of the bathrooms as quickly as possible, some-

soapbox Where are the best bathrooms at Blair?

“The ones in the 210’s hallway beacuse they are clean and almost never crowded.”

— Caroline Danielski, freshman “The best ones are in between the gym and the arts hallway.

They have barriers in between each urinal, making it more efficient.”

— Chris Fiala, junior “The best bathrooms are in the 350’s hallway. They are not in a very central position so they are fairly quiet.”

— Gabriel Winston-Bailey, freshman

CALEB BAUMAN

BATHROOMS AT BLAIR A student enjoys the most recent copy of Silver Chips in the bathroom. times the experience can be appalling.

The typical public bathroom problems, like trash on the floor and unflushed toilets, still hold true in the girls’ bathrooms at Blair. Occasionally you have to shuffle down the line of sinks to find a soap dis-

penser that actually contains soap or in some cases, you are forced to clean your hands as best you can with just water.

Often, a lot of girls crowd around the mirror to fix their hair and makeup and this can create a traffic jam that usually inhibits the smooth and quick exit that we all desire.

Breaking news: it does not take an eternity to fix your face. It can also be pretty uncomfortable when people decide that a bathroom is the best place for a private conversation when all you want to do is pee, instead listen to a bad soap opera. Leave the drama in the hallways.

These problems are especially prevalent in what appears to be everyone’s least favorite jungle-like bathroom located in the 160’s hallway, directly outside the SAC. The bathrooms outside of the auditorium also tend to get packed between classes and are especially full right at the beginning and end of lunch.

Girls all over Blair have experienced the tedious process of waiting in line for a women’s bathroom for what can seem like forever when their bladder is about to burst.

The lines of the 160’s bathrooms can stretch beyond the entrance and block the hallway which adds to the already hectic situation. There are six other bathrooms in the school, and yet, everyone chooses this one!

Generally, the higher the floor, the better the bathrooms are. Bathrooms on the second and third floors are less crowded than the bathrooms on the first floor and, as a result, are much cleaner. The bathrooms on the second and third floors are located in side hallways that are not as busy, like the bathrooms in the 210’s and 250’s hallways. They tend to be stocked with paper towels, so you can avoid leaving with slightly damp hands from using the tepid hand dryers on the first floor.

Overall, Silver Chips’ pick for Blair’s top bathrooms: the 210’s bathrooms. This restroom only requires one flight of stairs to reach and receives the least amount of traffic, which creates a peaceful and clean environment to do your business.

Whether it is a quick visit to the loo or a lengthy stay, visiting the 210’s will help you flush away any bathroom hardships.

November 15, 2016 Blazers of Note

Entertainment D3

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From the cradle to the cafeteria, bonds cannot be broken Blazers share new experiences with their siblings, this time at school

By Alexander Dacy He scopes the scene for any witnesses.

Noting the coast is clear, he proceeds towards his target. When he reaches her, he is caught. But not for attempting to kill someone. He has the wrong target.

“This guy was trying to kill me and he just would not believe that I wasn’t Sylvie!” senior Grace Weissman laughs as she recounts a game of “Assassin” during her freshman year when she was mistaken for her twin sister, Sylvie.

The Weissmans are just two of many siblings who attend Blair together. While most siblings are lucky enough to get along, for some students, sibling rivalries at home can spill over into the school setting.

CALEB BAUMAN

Emma Jin Senior

High expectations

for her because of her high-achieving older sister. “I know that a lot of the CAP teachers also knew her, and I can kind of tell that they have certain expectations for me because of how she was,” she says.

Senior John Lathrop says that while teachers never saw him as an extension of his brother, Paul, they often confused him in appearance for Paul. In one instance two years ago, a teacher continuously called him Paul for the first month of school without recognizing he was, in fact, John. “Even though I’m a senior and my brother graduated two years ago, [the teachers will] still be like, ‘Paul,’ and I’m like, ‘John,’ and they’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, John,’” Lathrop says.

Junior Hannah Kannan, however, says that she and her younger sister, freshman Leah, enjoy sharing their similar experiences with the same teachers. “Sometimes, [Leah] will come home and be like, ‘Oh, this teacher did some funny thing during class,’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I remember that,’” she says.

With two older sisters who attended Blair, senior Becca Aitken recalls feeling For senior Emma Jin, it all started with like some teachers had higher expectations 50,000 words in November of her freshman year. The story she wrote for National Novel Writing Month eventually became one-fourth of Jin’s self-published book, Fractures in a Dream.

Having already sold fifty copies, Jin is excited about sharing her science fiction fantasy novel with the world. She is also looking toward her next big project.

This past summer, Jin wrote Virtual, her second novel. “It’s set in...a future where everyone lives in virtual reality,” she says.

“It’s about how a girl has to stop her world from being vandalized by a hacker.”

Jin drew inspiration for this book from inside the very walls of Blair. “You know how in the bathrooms there are signs that say do not vandalize? There was one that under it, someone vandalized and wrote ‘Ok’ under it,” she says.

She also hopes to find a publishing comSAMI MALLON pany this time around. “I think I’ll definitely try to self-publish [Virtual] even if it doesn’t get accepted by an agent,” she says. TUG OF WAR Sisters Abby Aitken, a sophomore, and Becca Ait“But I’m sort of optimistic about finding ken, a senior, compete in a game of tug of war on the field. someone.”

All they do is win Human’s competitive nature is often magnified in siblings. Siblings may be competing to find their own interests and talents or simply to be better than the other, as is true for the Weissman twins. Especially when they were younger, the twins often compared themselves to each other in academics and theater.

These attitudes are similar among other siblings and lead to competition, especially for those who both participate in the same sport, like the Kannans. “We swim, and many times she’ll be comparing her times to my times at her age, and be like, ‘Oh, I was faster than you in this event,’” Kannan says of Leah.

On the flip side, siblings on the same athletic teams also have the opportunity to strengthen their relationship. Older siblings can often help their younger siblings acclimate to a new environment.

“I think for her, it’s definitely going to be a little easier for her to get into the sports and make friends in the sports knowing that I’m also there,” Kannan says.

Friendly rivalries Ongoing sibling rivalries, even when good-natured, can also create hurdles to clear and expectations to match. “Sometimes I feel like I need to reach those standards- like, do as good as her or better, to prove something to them,” she says. “Sometimes, if I feel like I’m not living up to those expectations, I feel like it kind of lowers my confidence a little bit.”

While Kannan acknowledges that having siblings around school can sometimes be frustrating, in the end, it only enhances their relationship.

“I think that having a sister at Blair makes it annoying at times, you know, while my sister sees me with all my friends,” she says.

“But at the same time, it’s nice just to be able to see how your sibling acts around other people, and not just with the family.”

Reading between the lines: the library’s hidden gems

A guide to some of the little-known features of the Blair media center

By Serena Debesai At first glance, the Blair media center appears to be a quiet sanctuary, brimming with books and students rushing to finish up last-minute homework assignments. But if you dig deep enough, there are a variety of online tools, learning resources, and technologies the library offers to all students.

Take a moment to look up from your math homework and take advantage of these media center hidden gems.

Destiny Quest BEN DOGGETT

Abby Rowland Senior Mango Passion and the Male Species might sound like an odd title, but for senior Abby Rowland, it is her pride and joy.

Rowland wrote Mango Passion, her first novel, two summers ago after finding inspiration on a trip to Santa Cruz with her family.

Her main character, Penny, travels to California to open a smoothie shop, and along the way, casually happens to find love across the country. Rowland, however, adds a twist. “It is also a lot about coming to terms with her father’s death,” she says.

To Rowland, Mango Passion and the Male Species does what other novels with female main characters do not. A lot of those novels “skip over some of the simple stuff like what girls think about on a normal basis,” Rowland says.

While the novel is not yet available for sale, Rowland is working to make Mango Passion and the Male Species a reality. “Hopefully when I go off to college I can have more time to work on it,” she says. “And then get it published.”

By Laura Espinoza

The media center catalog is already helpful if the library has a book, or for requesting that books be ordered, but the Destiny Quest feature adds another exciting dimension.

For those teens with an aversion to anything that is not electronic, Destiny Quest is a useful tool that blends social media and reading. On the website, students can create a virtual shelf and keep track of the books they have read, are currently reading, and plan to read. Users can add any Blair student or teacher as a friend – like on Facebook – and send them book recommendations.

Students can access Destiny Quest on the media center’s website and log into their premade account using their normal MCPS username and password. With its vibrant blue background and user-friendly interface, Destiny Quest is truly a diamond in the rough.

nately, reserving the station can be difficult because the library does not always have Chromebooks. According to Lamphier, more teachers have taken advantage of the Chromebook-TV station because they are aware of it. “Students haven’t necessarily asked me about it,” she says.

The library’s guide to a 5 Many students know how useful the quiet study corners of the library can be during the frenzy of AP testing season, but the library also offers valuable test preparation tools.

In the back left corner of the library there is a shelf that houses every up-to-date test prep book to pass any exam. From 5 Steps to a 5 to Barron’s, the media center offers a diverse collection of books that cover the SAT, ACT, and many AP exam subjects.

It can be costly to stack up on multiple prep books, but the media center provides a solution that is hassle-free and saves money.

These audiobooks are on fire Fire and books might seem like a bad combination, but not with the new audio-

book service the media center is starting.

The media center has recently received a Kindle Fire, which comes with an audiobook app called Audible.

“Students who need audiobooks can just use these machines,” Lamphier says. The media center has put in a PTSA mini-grant that will hopefully fund 10 more Kindles, which will be available for students to loan.

The process will be similar to that of borrowing a book, but students will also be expected to sign waivers in case of damage.

Making space for the future In the future, the media center plans to create a Maker Space in one of the backrooms of the media center. It would most likely include a 3D printer and a laser-cutter.

With these tools, students could create and print 3D models.

Lamphier says the space could also aid clubs that need tools and materials. “I could envision a situation down the road, once we got it up and running … we could use it to host clubs,” she says.

From Destiny Quest to new Kindle audiobooks, the media center provides numerous unappreciated resources that students can take advantage of. Go check them out!

From the small screen to the big screen Ever wondered what that giant TV propped up on the back shelf of the media center is for? Well, you are not the first.

The little-known truth is that students and teachers can easily hook up a Chromebook to the TV, transforming a one-person screen into a multi-viewer teaching space.

“We have been doing some lessons there, and some small presentations,” Media Specialist Andrea Lamphier says. “It just turns into a real sweet teaching station.” Unfortu-

MARISSA HE

D4 Entertainment

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November 15, 2016

Student’s styles stand out at homecoming

Unique fashion choices on display at the annual fall dance

By Emma Cross

Walking into homecoming is an experience in itself. The sweat in the air is prevalent and the mass of dancing bodies in the middle of the floor draws more guests to it every minute. Attendees in basic black bodycon dresses

and button-ups characterize most of the crowd, but a few students draw others’ attention with their bright patterns and pops of color.

While many students choose to stick

to traditional formal wear, others express their personality in a wide variety of fashion choices. From velvet fabric to unconventional patterns from Nigeria, Blair students’ sense of style was reflected at

this year’s homecoming dance in choices that went much further in fashion attitude than the little black bodycon dress that has been traditional homecoming attire for so many years.

Inspiration from overseas

Pop of pink

Senior Enoch Owumi found a creative take on the simple button-up shirt and dress pants that seem like the uniform for high school guys at homecoming.

With ordinary black shoes and pants, Owumi created a frame for his dramatic geometric button-up from Nigeria. The unique pattern of overlapping blue and red squares was striking against the solid colors worn by others.

Owumi says his favorite aspect of the outfit was the shirt, which inspired the rest of the ensemble.

Like Price (pictured below), Owumi picked his outfit with an intent to stand out from the crowd. “I chose to wear this outfit because it looked unique when I wore it,” he says. “I like to dress differently than other styles that are out there.”

Most of the male students would not be daring enough to appear out of the ordinary male homecoming attire, but Owumi took a chance. The predominant color was tan or blue, and Owumi’s bolder choice successfully stood out from the crowd.

Senior Steven Dunne made a bold homecoming entrance with predominantly pink attire. Dunne wore a light pink button-up with a hot pink tie, which created a simple outline for the focal point of the outfit: the bright pink Hawaiian vest. The look was a cool twist on the traditional button-up and dress pants. With traditionally structured pieces, Dunne’s choice of colors and prints put a spotlight on his outfit.

Like Owumi, Dunne chose his outfit because he likes to stand out.

“Sometimes I just like to wear wild colors like I did at homecoming.

It’s just kind of funny and something out of the ordinary,” he says.

Dunne says the striking vest was the inspiration for the outfit, and he designed the rest of the look to center around that piece. Despite inclinations to go with simple black or white to compliment the bold vest, Dunne decided that he would be adventurous for his last homecoming. “I wasn’t sure if I should just wear a plain black or white shirt under it, but it being my last homecoming, I figured I should go all out with the pink,” he says. Dunne finished off the look with simple gray dress pants and pink Vans that tied the whole ensemble together.

Shirt and shoes: Nigeria, $120 Pants: H&M, $20

Vest: J Ferrar (JCPenney), price unknown Pants: J Ferrar (JCPenney), about $30 Button-up: Stafford (JCPenney), about $20 Shoes: Vans, $50

Ditching the dress

Trendy two-piece

Senior Brittany Price made a fashion statement with a bold, black jumpsuit that combined a flattering fit with parallel lines that slashed across her body. Her high-heeled sandals continued the theme of bright, clear design, with slender silver straps that echoed the jumpsuit’s clean lines. She added to the look with a simple black clutch and metallic accessories. Price brought the whole look together with her silver eyeshadow and nail polish. Each element worked with the others to create a look that was sleek and sophisticated.

Price’s outfit demonstrated that you do not need a skirt or a dress to look elegant and dressed-up — an outfit’s unique design is what counts. Price explains that she chose the outfit because she wanted to stand out in something not usually considered traditional homecoming wear. “I decided to wear a jumpsuit because everyone wears dresses … so this time I wanted to switch it up and do something different from the other girls,” she says.

Senior Michelle Johnson wore a new twist on the typical dance dress and went for an original look in both style and texture. Her dress featured two pieces: a skirt with a long slit that showed off her high-heeled black strappy sandals and a bodice top. The top featured an open-zip neckline and created a flattering framework for her simple black choker. While midriff shirts have been popular for years, this style echoed the fashion with a modest twist and a hint of skin showing between the top and bottom of the dress. This gave the outfit an alluring, but sophisticated, edge.

The burgundy two-piece is made of velvet, which Johnson explains is not only trendy, but also creates a flattering reflection in the lights of the dance.

“Velvet is in fall fashion right now,” she says. The simple accessories and modest gap between the two pieces create a sophisticated, classic look.

Johnson says that, like Owumi and Price, her goal was to craft a unique homecoming look. “I chose this dress because it was different than what people normally wear,” she says.

Jumpsuit: Missguided, $40 Shoes: Public Desire, $55

Two-piece: Fashion Nova, $30 Shoes: Fashion Nova, $30

BEN DOGGETT

November 15, 2016

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ADs D5

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THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE

by Neal Sarkar

Across 1. Not far 5. Soft cheese 9. Pulverize 14. Variety 15. Kind of model 16. Baby bug 17. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley 20. It has 29 states 21. Oregon City 22. Gold, myrrh 26. Borrower 27. Dined 28. Pro 31. Hitting the right notes 32. It’s a long story 34. Pub order 35. Lion’s sound 36. Not moving 37. Harvey ____ College 38. Tire filler 39. Teacher’s helper 40. Dug for gold 41. Time past 42. “Life of Pablo” trackwith The Weeknd 43. Result of a bad pitch?

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51. Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers

November 15, 2016 56. Force out 57. Air port?

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2. Size up 3. Tax mnth.

4. Like string on a finger 5. Ultimate Frisbee star Smith 6. Masterless samurai 7. Intestinal 8. Brain meas.

9. This is an independent one.

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25. A bit better than a birdie

28. See 22 down 29. Yale nickname 30. Blush 32. Metro checkpoint 33. Help 36. South Pacific Islander 37. Lapses in judgement 40. _____ Carlo 42. Teases 43. Spoiled one’s dinner, perhaps 44. Lee of “Enter the Dragon” 45. Roald Dahl’s “Fantastic” title character 46. Tubby 47. Shot up 48. Big name in denim 49. Pianist Spann 52. United 53. AARP concern 54. 0

Scan for solutions

http://www.chipssurvey.com/p/ crossword-answers.html

Sudoku (medium)

Mini Across 1. Sprints 6. Quitter’s cry 7. Golden State Chef 8. Program problem 9. Refuse Down 1. Basmati and Jasmine, eg.

2. Honda’s luxury brand 3. Haul 4. Bankrupt energy company 5. Start to foam?

COURTESY OF WEBSUDOKU

It’s All Relative

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SABRINA TAN

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15 de noviembre 2016

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La Esquina Latina

Silver Chips 15 de noviembre del 2016

La Chiquita, una historia de lucha y tenacidad en la commundiad

Una inmigrante salvadoreña logra cumplir sus sueños en los Estados Unidos Por Michael Hernandez y Angie Mejia Dora Escobar, mejor conocida como “La Chiquita” es una inmigrante salvadoreña que ha sobresalido y alcanzado la superación en su faceta como empresaria. La Chiquita es originaria de Chalatenango, un departamento que está situado al norte de El Salvador y que significa Valle de Aguas y Arenas en Náhuatl.

Ella expresa que su niñez fue muy bonita y dice “fue una niñez donde nosotros estábamos conformes con lo que teníamos... no teníamos mucho que comer, pero sí teníamos frijoles, teníamos tortillas y también teníamos mangos.” En su niñez ella aprendió a lavar ropa y a traer leña de las montañas para cocinar. Escobar empezó a trabajar durante su niñez, desde que tenía uso de razón y lo hacía vendiendo diferentes productos alimenticios. Ella inició vendiendo melcochas, yuca y alborotos. Escobar dice que las cosas que aprendió en su cantón humilde le sirvieron y le ayudaron para convertirse en la exitosa empresaria que es hoy en día.

Escobar se casó a los dieciocho años pero sin embargo siguió trabajando y aportando para su familia. Ella sabía cómo trabajar y cosechar las tierras donde sembraba maíz y frijoles. Escobar relata que en esos tiempos nunca se sintió satisfecha porque había trabajado toda su niñez y su juventud. Desafortunadamente el abono para trabajar sus tierras y las herbicidas que usaban eran muy caras. La gente no producía lo suficiente debido a que no llovía y no tenían para pagar las cosas que habían fiado. Luego su esposo decidió emigrar para los Estados Unidos por la situación económica de El Salvador. Al año y medio ella emigró para los Estados Unidos y lamentablemente tuvo que dejar a su hijo de dos años atrás.

La Chiquita tuvo que emigrar a los Estados Unidos a pie y con la ayuda de un coyote, quien es una persona al que los inmigrantes le pagan para que los guíe en la larga travesía. Escobar cuenta que el viaje a los Estados Unidos fue muy indignante por retrasos que ocurrieron y dice, “se vuelve desesperante porque no conoces el camino y uno no sabe en cuánto tiempo vas a llegar y luego vienes con personas que te engaña, que dicen ‘en cinco días tu vas estar en tal parte’ y tal vez en cinco días ni siquiera te han movido del lugar.” Ella le agradece a Dios por haberla traído con bien al país de los sueños porque para ella fue una travesía muy larga e incierta.

Escobar logró conseguir un trabajo en sus primeros 8 días de llegada en una fábrica en California. Su trabajo era quitar los hilos de los pantalones y sólo ganaba un centavo por cada pantalón. A causa de su falta de experiencia, ella no ganaba mucho y era algo que no se veía haciendo en este país. No hacía suficiente dinero, lo cual la llevó a conseguir otro trabajo donde la mantuvieron encerrada por 15 días. Ella se vio forzada a dormir en el suelo y comer solamente arroz blanco con agua, una vez al día. Ella cuenta, “Cuando alguien llegaba a Estados Unidos a mi cantón, llegaban bien bonitas y bien bonitos y regalaban cosas y yo pensaba que la vida en los Estados Unidos era más fácil que lo que yo estaba experimentando en ese momento.”

Al llegar a Washington DC, ella no podía encontrar trabajo. Esto la llevó a vender pupusas en las calles con el fin de ganarse la vida. No sabía exactamente lo que le gustaba hacer, pero le gustaba socializar con las personas y quería dar el cien por ciento en cualquier trabajo. En Langley Park, Escobar salía a vender pupusas en las avenidas 14 y 15 y en las canchas. Ella también vendía

HANNAH SCHWARTZ

HYATTSVILLE La empresaria Dora Escobar posa con orgullo al lado del logo de su cadena de restuarantes donde hacen las mejores pupusas de la area metropolitana. naranjas, pepinos con limón y mangos. Pero para ella era difícil llevar todos los productos a las canchas porque no tenía licencia ni un carro para transportarse. Con mucho esfuerzo ella logró poner una troca de comida y fueron sus mismos clientes quien la inspiraron a ponerle “La Chiquita”. Ella relata, “Siempre me decían ‘Ey, Chiquita’. De una esquina a otra esquina me gritaban y yo sabía que era la única más pequeña que había. Entonces a si fue, cuando puse el primer camión, yo dije, si ya mis clientes me conocen como chiquita, le voy a poner ‘La Chiquita’”. Por suerte, la dueña de un local le ofreció hacer un contrato ya que vieron que era una persona muy responsable. Esto fue el comienzo de su exitoso negocio.

Hasta el momento, Escobar cuenta con 5 restaurantes en Maryland. Los platos favoritos de los clientes son las famosas pupusas y la fajita mixta que consiste de pollo, camarones y carne. La Chiquita atrae a clientes de todos los países, no solamente salvadoreños, ya que su comida es de gusto Latinoamericano. Aparte de la exquisita comida, los clientes se sienten satisfechos por el bien servicio y la atención que les hacen sentir en un ambiente familiar. Los diseños de cada restaurante tienen que ser aprobados por ella, pero la última decisión la deja a cargo de sus dos hijos, Germán y Alex Escobar. Ella dice, “Me siento bien segura de la comida que vendo, de la atención al cliente, de mis compañeros de trabajos y nunca pienso en otro restaurantes,

siempre pienso como hacer las cosas mejor cada día”.

Aparte de su negocio de comida, Escobar también es propietaria de otros negocios incluyendo “La Chiquita Express”, donde se puede enviar remesas de dinero, cambiar cheques, comprar tarjetas de teléfono y hacer pagos a instituciones. También tiene dos salones de belleza donde renta las sillas a las personas interesadas en cortar cabello. Además le gusta comprar complejos de apartamentos y remodelarlos para rentarlos.

Escobar confiesa que ella no piensa que tiene un compromiso con la comunidad sino que ella siente felicidad porque cuando no hace algo que es bueno para la comunidad su alma se pone triste. Ella dice, “para yo estar satisfecha tengo que de una u otra manera ayudar a las personas que lo necesitan.” Hay muchas cosas que ella hace como persona que no hace público.

Escobar confiesa que uno de sus clientes llegó un día desesperado porque le habían diagnosticado tres meses de vida. Él le dijo que se tenía que ir para sus país y no tenía para comer, ni para pagar renta, ni mucho menos para irse de los Estados Unidos.

La Chiquita (,) con el gran corazón que la caracteriza(,) le compro el vuelo aéreo y luego lamentablemente le informaron que él había muerto en su país pero que él había cumplido su último deseo. También hubo otra persona a quien ella le ayudo quien

HANNAH SCHWARTZ

El RESTAURANTE LA CHIQUITA Esta ubicado en Langley Park donde es uno de los restaurantes favoritos de la comunidad latinoamericana para cenar con la familia.

tenía veinte años de no ver su familia. Ella le regaló el vuelo aéreo para que ella pudiera ir a ver a su familia y también le dio dinero para que se divirtieran. Cuando la muchacha regresó, casualmente a los quince días su mamá murió. Ella dice que son cosas que la vida le va dando que ella tiene que hacer para ayudar a gente que de verdad lo necesitan.

En el mes de septiembre, La Chiquita ofreció comida gratuita a personas de la tercera edad. Esta idea fue basada como un reconocimiento para los abuelos que tienen que quedarse cuidando a las mascotas y nietos mientras los otros miembros de la familia salen a divertirse en los festivales que se dan a cabo por la independencia de los países en el mes de septiembre. “Si tú te das cuenta, las personas de la tercera edad son las que más nos han enseñado como seres humanos porque dan un buen ejemplo. Me satisface mucho tener vida y poder hacer cosas bonitas como esas.” Este año en particular, llegaron 65 personas pero para los años siguientes desean invitar a más personas enviando invitaciones a asilos de ancianos.

La Chiquita asegura que mientras ella viva cada año en el mes de septiembre ella hará un almuerzo para las personas de la tercera edad.

Otro evento que tomará lugar próximamente en La Chiquita es la competencia de comer pupusas donde varios grupos se inscriben y compiten para saber quién puede comer la mayor cantidad de pupusas. El segundo torneo de comelones de pupusas será el 18 de noviembre. Los ganadores recibirán premios en forma monetaria y el primer lugar recibirá $500. Los eventos que La Chiquita hace son originales con el fin de unir a la comunidad y poder pasar un buen momento.

Dora Escobar ha cruzado fronteras ya que por su trayectoria y su arduo trabajo fue reconocida en el Museo Nacional de Historia Americana en Washington, D.C. Su historia de lucha y éxito sirve de ejemplo para muchas personas que desean sobresalir en este país. Escobar dice, “Me siento muy orgullosa, no por mi sino que me siento orgullosa por todo los latinos que estamos acá en Estados Unidos y estamos viendo que Estados Unidos está dando muchas oportunidades para los latinos y eso es lo que me da a mi mucha alegría porque a veces nosotros no aprovechamos las oportunidades que hay en este país y acá cuando tu pones el empeño al trabajo y hacer las cosas bien, Estados Unidos es un país en donde tú puedes tener mucha tranquilidad, paz, y además de eso, mucha seguridad.” Escobar ha sido invitada a muchos programas como Despierta América, un programa mañanero de Univisión que es reconocido mundialmente.

Ella compartió su receta de pupusas con todos los televidentes para el día nacional de las pupusas. También La Chiquita fue destacada en el programa de televisión “Bizarre Foods America” que es conducido por el chef Andrew Zimmern. El visitó el restaurante de Escobar y lo nombró el lugar con las mejores pupusas en el área metropolitana de Washington.

La Chiquita dice que nunca sabe lo que viene, pero aprovecha las oportunidades que se le presentan todos los días. El consejo más grande que tiene es que uno debe de ser humilde, estar agradecido con Dios y hacer las cosas bien. Ella comenta, “debemos concientizarnos de que tenemos que hacer personas honestas para poder vivir.

Saber que si Dios nos ha dado la vida, ser útil en esta vida para las demás personas no solo para uno porque si alguien es bueno es bueno para muchas personas.”

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15 de noviembre 2016

Femicidios en Latinoamérica causa protestas mundiales

Niveles de violencia sexual contra mujeres influencia al grupo Ni Una Menos Por Sofía Muñoz De acuerdo al dicconario de la lengua española escrita por la Real Academia Española, un feminicidio es un, “Asesinato de una mujer por razón de su sexo.” De los 25 países que contribuyen un 50 por ciento de la violencia contra mujeres en el mundo, 14 de esos países están en Latinoamérica.

15 mujeres mueren cada día en Brasil, 90 por ciento de mujeres en Bolivia son víctimas de violencia en algún momento de sus vidas y una en cada siete mujeres en Ecuador son víctimas de abuso sexual. Debido a esas estadísticas sorprendentes, el movimiento feminista Ni Una Menos surgió en Latinoamérica. Originado en Argentina, este movimiento exige a la sociedad y el gobierno que proteja, respete, y garantice que las víctimas puedan tener acceso a la justicia de una manera justa y segura. En su sitio web, la organización se caracteriza como, “un grito colectivo contra la violencia machista.”

El miércoles 19 de octubre, en el transcurso del día de trabajo miles de personas en Argentina salieron a las calles de Buenos Aires para protestar la muerte y asalto de Lucía Pérez, una joven de 16 años que fue víctima de abuso y violencia sexual. El incidente ocurrió el 8 de octubre de este año, cuando Pérez fue hospitalizada debido al sobredosis de drogas. Lo que inicialmente se creyó que fue una sobredosis voluntaria rápidamente se convirtió en un crimen machista y de odio contra una menor de edad. Lucía Pérez murió en el hospital el próximo día a raíz de las heridas interiores y superficiales que sufrió.

Uniéndose a la causa, protestas en Chile, Uruguay, México, Paraguay, Guatemala, Bolivia, España y otros países a través del mundo tuvieron lugar. Para las personas que no pudieron ser parte de

las protestas, hubo diferentes mensajes en las redes sociales con #NiUnaMenos y también #NotOneLess para compartir imágenes e información sobre formas diferentes para ayudar a la causa. El movimiento no solo conectó a mujeres en Latinoamérica, pero también ha afectado a la comunidad en Washington D.C. Este verano, grupos de mujeres manifestaron al frente del Capitolio de los Estados Unidos, continuando con una marcha por la

sociales en Latinoamérica.

Mucha de la violencia contra la mujer es debido a falta de respeto o sentimientos machistas. El machismo se caracteriza como la ideología que un sexo es superior que el otro y en este caso, los hombres son los que benefician. Uniéndose a la causa contra el machismo, Luis Aluearez del décimo grado explica que, “el machismo no es bueno tampoco y es cosa del pasado, también porque las mujeres hacen trabajos

CALEB BAUMAN

ESTUDIANTES PROTESTAN Nelson Navarro (11), Sara Medina (10) y Joseph Javier Guevara Del Cid (10) se unen a la lucha contra los feminicidios. ciudad, pidiendo atención al maltrato y discriminación contra las mujeres en Perú.

Mujeres locales organizaron el evento con la ayuda del cónsul general de Perú, la Embajada de Perú en Estados Unidos y organizaciones civiles como Vital Voices y el Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional.

La organización Ni Una Menos demanda un cambio en la agenda pública y política pero uno de los obstáculos al frente del cambio son los diferentes valores

que hacían los hombres y todos tienen que ser igual.” El efecto del machismo ha creado una sociedad donde muchas mujeres se sienten menos que los hombres y piensan que no pueden hacer lo mismo simplemente por ser mujeres. Tatiana Flores del décimo grado dice que el machismo, “Me hace sentir mal porque yo siento que entre el hombre y la mujer no tiene que haber pelea, siempre hay que tener respeto uno a los otros y cosas así.” El sentimiento machista en Latinoamérica ha crecido una

epidemia de violencia contra la mujer que parece que no tiene fin.

Los diferentes gobiernos latinoamericanos han intentado erradicar los feminicidios con diferentes reformas. Presidentas en Latinoamérica como Cristina Fernández de Kirchner en Argentina, Michelle Bachelet en Chile, Dilma Rousseff en el Brasil y Laura Chinchilla en Costa Rica trataron de cambiar la cultura machista latinoamericana como mujeres en un trabajo de alta influencia en sus países. A pesar de sus esfuerzos, las estadísticas de la violencia contra la mujer no están cambiando drásticamente y en muchos países se ha reportado que hay aún más violencia de acuerdo a los estudios de la organización global de salud. Se ha visto que muchas mujeres preocupan por su seguridad cuando salen a la calle o están en el bus. Esas preocupaciones también puede ser aplicado aquí en Blair, Joseph Guevara dice que, “Muchos bromean con las mujeres, pegándose o diciéndoles cosas.”

Guevara añade que personas alrededor de esas situaciones no hacen nada al respecto porque no quieren meterse en problemas en el colegio si empiezan a pelearse con los chicos que maltratan a las mujeres.

Muchos dicen que la solución efectiva para combatir el machismo y los feminicidios es un cambio social desde cómo los padres crían a sus hijos. Luis Aluearez dice que, “para mi tienen que aprender desde la casa porque ahí tienen que enseñarles a los varones de que todos somos iguales y no enseñar ni que él vale más que la mujer ni menos que la mujer.” Lo que Ni Una Menos y mujeres por todo el mundo dicen es que cambio no va a poder llegar sin que haya un cambio en la actitud de la sociedad machista, y eso comienza al nivel de cada uno de nosotros y nuestra abilidad de combatir los problemas que nos afectan.

Aprendiendo nuestro idioma, desde el nivel español 1 a AP

Dedicados estudiantes de Blair se fuerzan en aprender español como segundo idioma Por Carlos Fuentes Al entrar a la escuela intermedia, los estudiantes son presentados con la opción de tomar una clase para aprender un segundo idioma si no tienen que tomar lectura. En el condado de Montgomery los dos idiomas más enseñados son el español y el francés. Para la mayoría de estos estudiantes, poder aprender y comunicarse en una lengua desconocida suena como una idea muy retadora. La jornada de aprender español como segundo idioma comienza con la clase de nivel 1 donde se aprende lo básico de la lengua; los verbos, los sustantivos, los adjetivos, y cómo decir “Hola me llamo ____ y me gusta ____.”

Después de continuar aprendiendo este idioma dos o tres años, alcanzando los créditos para poder solicitar a las universidades, muchos estudiantes deciden terminar su estudio de la lengua española. Desafortunadamente, hay muchos que usan la excusa de que la clase y las asignaciones son muy difíciles y complicadas. Al haber cumplido con créditos requeridos de graduación de lenguaje, a muchos estudiantes no les importa continuar tomando clases de español.

En cambio hay un grupo de estudiantes que tienen la determinación de seguir estudiando este idioma y continúan tomando clases de español que incrementan gradualmente la complejidad de los currículos hasta llegar al nivel de clases de AP. Estas clases son consideradas como créditos universitarios por muchas universidades.

La progresión lógica es estudiar desde el nivel 1 al nivel 5 para estudiantes cuyo interés es aprender español como segundo idioma. Seguido de estos cursos el estudiante puede matricularse en los cursos AP lenguaje y cultura o AP literatura y cultura donde se integran con estudiantes nativos o de herencia que hablan español.

Los dos años de cursos AP en español son muy rigurosos. El comprometerse a tomar estos dos cursos indica un estudio a nivel universitario que mucho más avanzado. Para alguien quien apenas empezó

tienen mucha más experiencia.

Al contrario de Camille, Ruby Drizzinkahn, una estudiante del doceavo grado, había tomado clases de inmersión de español desde que tenía cinco años. Ruby

CHAMINDA HANGILIPOLA

CLASE DE ESPAÑOL La estudiante Camille Torfs-Liebman (12) se muestra concentrada en la lección del día en la clase de AP lenguaje y cultura español. a estudiar el idioma hace 5 años esta clase de clases puede ser intimidante pero también muy útil. La estudiante del doceavo grado, Camille Torfs-Leibman, está en la clase de lenguaje AP y dice “yo nunca he estado tan nerviosa en una clase de español como lo estuve en la clase de español AP lenguaje.” Pero también se puede aprender mucho de los hispanohablantes, Camille piensa que al ella pasar más tiempo con estudiantes más avanzados ayuda a mejorar sus habilidades de expresarse e analizar en español. Camille explica “oír lo que tienen que decir los hispanos ayuda mucho con mi pronunciación de nuevas palabras.” Es evidente que los estudiantes aprendiendo español como segunda idioma aprenden más en un ambiente donde ellos están rodeados por hispanos quienes

ya está en la clase de AP Literatura y considera una de las clases más importantes que ha tomado. Ruby expresa, “con una población hispana que no deja de crecer, es una necesidad saber un poco de español porque es la segunda lengua más hablada en los Estados Unidos.” Es difícil discutir contra esa declaración cuando en nuestra comunidad estamos en una comunidad rodeada mayoritariamente de una población hispana y negocios donde es muy útil poder comunicarse en español. Rohan Dalvi, un compañero de Ruby de la clase de AP literatura, apoya lo que dice Ruby y comenta que la vida sería más fácil si todos supieran por los menos un poco del idioma. Rohan expresa que, “el español es una lengua muy práctica y las clases nunca se sintieron imposibles.” El añade que

el español le a ayudado mucho a comunicarse con aquellos estudiantes quienes no podían hablar inglés. Rohan cuenta “saber un poco de español me ayudó mucho cuando estuve enseñando a los estudiantes de ESOL programación y ciencias computacionales.”

Otro punto positivo que trae las clases de AP es la cooperación y la unidad que se forma entre los estudiantes hispanohablantes y los estudiantes no hispanohablantes. Los tres están de acuerdo que al principio del año la relación entre ellos y los hispanos era complicado y difícil porque la mayoría de ellos eran desconocidos, pero Rohan dice que, “rápidamente pudieron crear amistades entre ellos porque todos en la clase tiene el deseo de mejorar su español y nos ayudamos mucho, en cualquier momento donde no sabia como hacer algo, siempre podía voltearme a un lado y preguntarle a uno de los hispanohablantes y ellos nunca tenían problema con ayudarme.” Además de que aprender otra lengua es una buena experiencia para estos estudiantes poder aprender al lado de hispanos con diferentes culturas y estar en un ambiente diverso.

Tomar dos años de una idioma para completar los créditos requeridos es algo admirable, pero continuar dedicando tiempo y aprender un idioma en un nivel avanzado toma más que dedicación pero devoción y empeño. Camille comenta que cuando termine de aprender español, quiere empezar a aprender otros idiomas empezando con francés, al igual que Camille, Ruby expresa saber el idioma le da algo para sentirse orgullosa y le ayuda cuando visita países hispanos. Todos ellos dicen que quieren continuar de estudiar el idioma. Se puede decir que dedicar muchos años a perfeccionar el español y aprender la cultura hispana ha cambiado las vidas educativas de estos estudiantes.

November 15, 2016

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November 15, 2016

The struggles of playing sports on uneven fields

Students feel the effects of money and race in high school athletics

By Erin Namovicz Senior Joelle Nwulu started playing soccer as a child in the Takoma Park Rec Soccer league. There, she played amongst a diverse group of children who paid a small fee to participate. As she continued her soccer career and joined a club team, the costs to participate got more and more expensive,

The cost for a child to register for Takoma Park soccer is $50, but can be covered by scholarships. Nwulu began playing there, but joined club teams as she got older and more invested in the sport.

In club leagues, the price to play skyrockets. “I paid $2,000 for one season. And that’s not including fees for travel, so when we have tournaments in North Carolina, when

GRIFFIN REILLY

DRIBBLING THE BALL Senior Joelle Nwulu moves the ball in a varsity soccer game. and the teams became predominantly white.

Though Blair’s soccer team is diverse, it is not uncommon for Nwulu to look downfield at a game and see all white players warming up on the opposing team.

Not all high school sports suffer from a distinct racial divide, but the cost of club teams and even the age at which a student came to the U.S. can determine who plays a school sport, and who succeeds.

Pay to play For a student to excel in a school sport, prior experience in the sport usually gives an advantage. Freshman Olivia Freer plays on Blair’s varsity volleyball team and began playing on a club team in eighth grade. She says that her experience playing for a club team introduced her to the concept of playing team sports. “You need to have that team experience because playing with Blair is very similar to club in that you travel to different places and play different teams,” she says.

Although the MCPS participation fee for varsity and junior varsity sports is $32.50 and can be waived for students who qualify, players often need to pay more than that to excel in school sports. Freer agrees that students with the resources to play on a good club team have an advantage over others when starting to play for Blair. “If you never did club it would be very new for you,” Freer says.

Many Blair student-athletes began playing their sport before they came to Blair.

However, some of these students notice that in certain sports, Blazers have less experience than players on other school’s teams. For example, on Blair’s field hockey team, only a few girls played before joining the team.

Maya Hammond is a junior on the varsity field hockey team, and feels that other school’s teams have advantages over Blair due to their experience. “Whenever we play the really white, rich schools, they’ve been playing since third grade,” Hammond says. She explains that fields cost money to maintain, sticks cost money to buy, and field hockey camps can total hundreds of dollars.

In comparison, athletes can play another sport, such as recreational soccer, for “like nothing,” she says.

we have tournaments in New Jersey, you’re not paying for that in that $2,000,” Nwulu says. “So you pay $2,000 plus $300-$500 for your uniform.”

Nwulu believes that money is the chief factor behind the visible lack of racial diversity in girls’ soccer. She says that higher levels of club soccer are increasingly whitewashed “because it gets increasingly more expensive.”

This racial divide is recognizable in MCPS girls’ soccer, as students who play for expensive club teams often play for their school teams as well. “We’ve had to play teams like Whitman, Churchill, Walter Johnson, and those schools more up county, and you can very clearly see the racial divide there.

In soccer in general the higher you get levelwise there is more of a divide,” she says.

ship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has been swimming for Rockville Montgomery Swim Club since she was 12, and would not have had the same opportunities to earn a scholarship if she had only swum for Blair. ¨It’s pretty necessary to have the experience and training of club swimming to be considered for a college team,” Waechter says. In Montgomery County, swim and dive is a winter sport, and according to Waechter, training options for high-level swimmers are ¨very limited¨ to those who don’t swim yearround, which is an expensive proposition.

Above all, drive and motivation are what make or break an athlete. If a student has natural talent and a desire to win, they can succeed in high school athletics. However, students with prior club league experience come onto the playing field with an advantage. Those who can afford private training and expensive gear have a head start in sports like field hockey, and have a better shot at college scholarships.

Aging out too early

though he notes that it depends on the circumstances, Zolkiewicz says that he understands the rules. “In a lot of sports, you know, the physicality when you get to a certain age, you’re more of a grown man and you could be going against kids much younger, so it could be a safety issue,” he says.

Once student athletes are too old to play for Blair, their opportunities to play narrow. Cuello says he now practices baseball in the neighborhood park, but misses out on the organization and team spirit attained by playing for his school.

This sense of community is especially beneficial to students who are new to the country, according to Zolkiewicz. “Getting in the sport just gives you a group of students you can hang out with, and get to meet and really help you grow and assimilate into the country and school setting,” he says.

It is not as if students are required to stop playing, Zolkiewicz explains. “There’s always outside teams, outside organizations … that kids can play at,” he says. “But most of those require money in some way, unfortunately.”

Students without prior experience may be at a disadvantage compared to their high school teammates, but some other players who do have experience are not able to play at all. Some student immigrants enroll at Blair as freshmen even if they are older than their peers because of limited English proficiency or credit transfer issues. Because of this, these students are set to graduate after they turn 18.

According to the MCPS student eligibility requirements for athletic participation, students who are 19 years old or older as of Aug. 31 of the current school year are ineligible to participate in a sport. Junior Chanell Cuello was on the varsity baseball team last year, but this year he is 19 and can no longer participate.

Cuello immigrated to Maryland from Puerto Rico two years ago, and enrolled in Blair as a freshman at 17. This year, as he is unable to play for Blair, he feels that he is missing out on certain opportunities, such as baseball scholarships. Without playing for the team, he falls out of shape. “I can’t practice my abilities,” he says in Spanish.

Eric Zolkiewicz, Blair’s baseball coach, says that the team will feel a loss from his absence too. “He’s a great kid, and I know our players love having him around,” he says.

However, both Cuello and Zolkiewicz agree that this age regulation is fair. Al-

In the long run

The barriers that exist in high school athletics extend far beyond the field. Students unable to afford youth club sports are often at a disadvantage when competing for a spot on a school team. As a result, these students miss out on the long-term advantages presented to high school student-athletes.

A 2014 study by assistant professor Kevin M. Kniffin of Cornell University examined the advantages former student athletes feel in the adult workplace. It concluded that they “display significantly more leadership, self-confidence, and self-respect than those who were active outside of sports.”

Former athletes also experience health benefits later in life, including lower rates of obesity, according to a 2010 study by Lindsay A. Taliaferro of the University of Central Florida. This study also concludes that young people involved in physical activity are more likely to become physically active adults.

Blair is a school of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, full of talent. If a student is motivated, they can excel, but the playing field is not level. Some athletes have to put in more work in high school just to get to where their counterparts were years ago.

“I mean, it’s still just ‘how good of a player are you?’” Nwulu concludes.

Outside sports give a step up Many Blair athletes feel that students who played for more expensive club teams as children do have an advantage over others who did not because of the rigor of the programs and the experience gained from them. Zenie Plain, a junior on varsity softball, started playing the sport when she was seven. She began on a team in the Takoma Park Silver Spring recreational softball league and now plays for the club team Red Raiders. “Rec is really laid back, and the coaches don’t really get on you, but like club, like those kids are in it to go pro,” Plain says.

However, Blair athletes can still gain valuable playing experience without paying for expensive league teams. Senior Eric Zokouri, a varsity football running back, played for Takoma Park football for free before coming to Blair. He notes that in football, those with experience feel an advantage. “As far as playing time, like you’re playing more … if you played before,” Zokouri says.

While recreational teams do provide many of the same opportunities as club teams for athletes to gain experience when they are younger, high school sports are not the end of the line for all. In some sports like swimming, colleges are looking for club experience.

Senior Madison Waechter has verbally committed to swim with a partial scholar-

GRIFFIN REILLY

SPRING TRAINING Junior Chanell Cuello throws the ball during a Blair baseball practice.

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Dirty clothes to defeat their foes: Traditions in sports Players and coaches use rituals for team bonding, relaxation, and confidence

By Hermela Mengesha “Mandatory Epsom salt baths tonight, boys,” junior Ryan Holland reads from the boys’ cross country team group chat.

He cannot help but feel a little nervous about tomorrow’s meet, but the runners on the team have a solution for the anxiety they all feel leading up to a race. Every night before a meet, these athletes enjoy taking Epsom salt baths to wind down and release tension in their muscles.

Sometimes, they even decide to take them at the same time.

While not all athletes take synchronized baths, rituals and superstitions are long held traditions in sports. Whether to help relax before the game or something more mysterious, rituals play a crucial role in the performance of some players.

And whether they want to or not, players find themselves driven towards the same pattern game after game.

Superstitious rituals in sports are any unusual, repetitive actions that are perceived to have an effect on a player’s success. Take Joshua Dominguez, a junior on the varsity boys’ baseball team. If Dominguez is playing well, he will keep wearing the same pair of socks and pants, unwashed.

Louis Hoelman, coach of the varsity softball team, sees the same practice in many of his players. “Some of the players

in softball won’t wash their uniform until we lose. And we’ve been on some pretty good win streaks in the past and their pants are almost black,” he says.

For Dominguez, repetition is key. He tells his parents to sit in the same spot. He sets his bag down in the same space in the dugout. When batting, he traces the initials of a coach who passed away on the ground. He taps the plate. Once all of the pieces have fallen into place, he should have a great hit.

If a game falls short of expectations, something in his carefully considered ritual has gone wrong. Dominguez often finds himself accrediting his clothing to his failures or successes. “It’s never my fault. It’s always something I’m wearing,” he says.

Teams often share rituals to motivate and build morale. On the swim team, encouragement comes in a different form than chants and mottos. “For relays, we have a relay card with all of our names, and what order we’re swimming in, so each of the four of us will tear of a corner with our teeth and then put it in our suit,” says junior Daisy Yu. Some members prefer to eat their piece, hoping they can reap some extra good luck.

The softball team is no stranger to unusual team bonding techniques. Seniors Allison Mackenzie and Lily Montgomery on the varsity softball team recall a game

soapbox

Do you have any pre-game habits that help you perform well in sports?

“A pre-game habit I have to motivate me...is to pray before the game. It gives me hope.”

—Raul Gonzalez, senior “For sports, it is all about forgetting everything else, and focusing on the game. No school, drama, or worries, just what’s in the game.”

— Grace Hildebrandt, junior

when a rabbit foot was found on the field.

“Two juniors found a rabbit foot on the ground on one of our away games and then nailed it up in the dugout,” Montgomery says.

“Rabbit foot, rabbit foot,” Mackenzie repeats, laughing. “In the locker room we would chant rabbit foot,” she says.

Student athletes are not the only ones who find comfort in their rituals. Damon Pigrom, coach of the varsity boys’ basketball team, considers himself very routineoriented in both basketball and his everyday life. “Well, some people call them superstitions, I like to consider myself more of a creature of habit,” he says.

Pigrom finds that his routines help him relax and focus, and if for some reason he veers off of his routine, he feels rattled.

Pigrom has a long standing tradition involving gum.

“The gum thing started roughly when I was in middle school. I had a piece of gum in my mouth before a game, and I forgot to take it out and then in that game I scored like 25 points,” he says. “So every game after that I always had gum in my mouth.”

While some see superstitions as com-

Being born in Northern Virginia and living around the DC area for my entire life, I have had the “privilege” of becoming a fan of every Washington sports team.

With any team, being a sports fan has its highs and lows. But, what makes being a Washington sports fan unique are the things that we have seen and experienced that any other city’s sports fan would not be able to understand.

My unwavering love for the sport of basketball makes it easier to be a fan of the Washington Wizards, even though I have had to witness my childhood hero, Gilbert Arenas, be suspended for bringing a gun into a locker room and fade into NBA obscurity. I’ve also had to stand idly by while my Wizards passed on future NBA superstars Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard, and Klay Thompson in the 2011 NBA draft and used their 6th overall pick for Jan Vesely, an unskilled 6’ 11” big man who isn’t even playing in the NBA anymore.

As a National’s fan, I have seen Bryce Harper win an MVP award at just 23 years old after one of the best seasons in baseball history, and then watched him struggle with injuries and post a below-average .240 batting average the next.

I have felt the incredible feeling of rooting for the team with the best regular season record in baseball. But, I have also experienced the devastation that is seeing them a game away from the National League Championship Series three sepa-

rate times, only to blow it each time.

For our city’s football team, I have seen them draft a prodigy at quarterback, only to have his career derailed by an ego of mythical proportions, mismanagement by coaches, and injuries. I’ve seen the team owner admit that the team’s nickname is a racial slur, but vow never to change it out of sheer stubbornness. But, worst of all, I have let them convince me that Kirk Cousins is an elite football player, even though deep down I know he is just painfully average.

As for the Capitals, our city’s hockey team, I have seen them lose in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs so many times that I’ve simply stopped rooting for them.

As a Washington sports fan, I have seen my city’s sports franchises do everything: perform fantastically in the regular season, blow playoff series leads, and ruthlessly toy with the emotions of their loyal fan base.

However, the one thing I have not seen is a championship. Hopefully, the struggles my fellow D.C. sports fans and I have endured will make winning a championship that much sweeter… if they ever do.

“Christian’s Corner” is a monthly column where staff writer Christian Mussenden expresses his opinion on current events in the world of sports.

pulsive habits players just cannot seem to shake off, Dominguez believes that his small idiosyncrasies help him perform at his best. “If you’re doing things and in your mind you think these things are going to help, then that gives you more confidence,” he says.

From the classroom to the playing field Teachers go the extra mile to help

By Emma Cross After a long day of managing teenagers and grading, teachers may be inclined to go straight home. However, some staff have such a drive to see success in their students, they make the extra effort to stay late nights and support sports teams at the school.

Outside the classroom, Blair teachers support hundreds of student athletes, helping to create opportunities on the field, in the gym, and beyond.

More than just teachers

By Christian Mussenden

CARLY TAGEN-DYE

As assistant athletic directors, social studies teacher James Mogge and English teacher Michael Horne are very involved in Blair’s sporting events, working with all of the school teams.

One night, they might supervise a volleyball game; another night, they might be on the sidelines at a soccer game.

“My primary duty is to help supervise and manage game events, so if there’s a volleyball game in the gym we do that, work with field hockey or soccer…”

Mogge says.

L o u i s Hoelman, a physical education teacher, works as an assistant game manager and makes sure that games run smoothly.

“The game managers set up the fields, make sure there’s someone there to sell tickets, makes sure the concession stands gets opened, welcomes the other team … all the little things you have to do to make sure a game can go off,” Hoelman says.

Incentives for the effort Although sometimes being assistant athletic director can entail long nights and a lot of work, Horne says he enjoys helping students succeed inside and outside the classroom. “It’s really kind of neat and cool to get to know some of the kids that you have in class in other ways and to see them be competitive and be successful,” he says.

Similarly, Mogge’s joy in helping with sports comes from his interactions

student athletes

with athletes and their fans. “I like being part of the bigger program at Blair. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to see students compete, have success, and I also get to interact with parents and members of the community,” Mogge says.

The drawbacks

Although there are many perks, helping out at so many events involves some hardships. Mogge’s complaints are mostly caused by factors he cannot control, such as weather. “I guess the things that I don’t enjoy are probably weather related, those outdoor events in which there’s lightning or downpour of rain,” he says.

Hoelman is mainly frustrated by interactions with fans regarding money.

“Sometimes fans are rude when you ask them for money and they try to get away without paying, and it really bothers me a whole lot,” he says.

Student appreciation Junior Marike Pinsonneault, a member of varsity field hockey and lacrosse, believes that many students are unaware of the long hours these teachers work. “I don’t think a lot of students know that the teachers [help out with sports], it’s not something that is very advertised around the school,” she says.

Pinsonneault appreciates how teachers have helped out at her own sporting events. “I think it’s always helpful because we do need people … and having them come support us is always a great thing,” she says.

“We always thank them, [because] it is something we need at our games.”

SHIVANI MATTIKALLI

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Blazers reach new heights: Fall sports recap

By Isabella Tilley

COURTESY OF MILESPLIT MD

GRIFFIN REILLY

COURTESY OF TUNG PHAM

COURTESY OF TUNG PHAM

FINISH STRONG Junior Josephine BranéWright sprints to seventh place.

ON THE BREAK Senior Katie Ozeroff dribbles the ball during a game.

GOING FOR GOOD Senior Naveh Berner-Kadish jumps to pass the ball.

HIGH JUMP Sophomore Catherine Rodriguez reaches above the net for a hit.

Co-ed varsity cross-country

Varsity girls’ soccer

Co-ed handball

Varsity girls’ volleyball

The girls’ cross country team placed fourth at the County Championship, the highest place finish for the Blair girls’ team in school history. Juniors Morgan Casey and Josephine Brané-Wright dipped under 20 minutes to place in the top ten. At the 4A West Regional Championship, Casey and Brané-Wright took two top five places and led the girls’ team to fourth place, which qualified them for the 4A State Championship for the first time since 2011.

Junior Ryan Holland individually qualified for the State Championship with a 24th place finish at the 4A West Regional Championship. Holland’s finish led the boys’ team to ninth place, but it was not enough to qualify them for the State Championship.

After a regular season record of 8-51, the Blair girls won their section final against Sherwood and played in the regional finals for the first time in Blair history. They lost to Perry Hall with a score of 1-0, marking the end of one of their most successful seasons ever. Coach Robert Gibb attributes this season’s success to the team’s offensive dominance. “This year we really went back to ... playing our style,” he says. “I think our problem last year is we just didn’t have the ball.”

Gibb also points out that this year’s team has incredible depth. “Of my 22 players, on average, 20 of them will play in a game, [and] it’s not like the level drops off,” he says. The young team has six freshmen on varsity. “Our future looks very bright,” Gibb says.

After winning the County Championship two years ago, the varsity co-ed handball team has reclaimed the title. Last year, the team lost to Wootton by one point in the semi-finals, but according to coach Louis Hoelman, the players are more experienced now.

According to Hoelman, the seniors on the team have been especially helpful this year. “They’ve been doing a really good job with leadership, and also helping the younger players learn the game,” he says.

“They actually kind of coach the team.”

The team finished the regular season with a record of 6-0, and won playoffs against Wootton and B-CC. “They’re just really working well, passing and including everyone in offense and defense,” Hoelman says.

According to coach Christopher Klein, this year’s girls’ volleyball team is one of the strongest since 2000. The team finished their regular season with a record of 13-6, and placed second at the Magruder Invitational game, their highest finish in school history. Their season ended with a playoff loss to Walter Johnson.

Klein says that, in the past, the team’s players have lacked height, but they now have a few tall freshmen. They are working to integrate them with the rest of the team, and have had to alter their defensive strategy. “We have two ninth graders … both just under 6 feet … which provided us with more height at the net,” he says. “[That] is something we haven’t had and so we’ve had to change a little bit of our game plan for how we set up our defense.”

Key players: Juniors Josephine Brané-Wright and Morgan Casey, seniors Dominic Massimino and Thierry Siewe Yanga, junior Ryan Holland

Key players: Seniors Eleanor Cook and Joelle Nwulu, freshman Noa Dorah, and sophomore Madeline Merrill

Key players: Seniors Jonathan Esubalew, Naveh Berner-Kadish, Max Barbieri, Gabriel Field, and Diondre Roane

Key players: Juniors Margaret Wang, Ariel Zhang, Tiffany Mao, and sophomore Catherine Rodriguez

COURTESY OF TUNG PHAM

SAMI MALLON

GRIFFIN REILLY

COURTESY OF TUNG PHAM

TOUGH SERVE Junior Priscah Rodenhuis swings her tennis racket intensely.

STICK WITH IT Senior captain Nika Seider dodges a Northwest defender.

SWIFT KICK Senior Jordi Long delivers a long ball down the field.

POCKET PRESSURE Senior Desmond Colby escapes a Damascus defender.

Varsity girls’ tennis

Varsity field hockey

Varsity boys’ soccer

Varsity football

The Blair girls’ tennis team kept their Division I status and finished the regular season with a record of 8-4, losing only to other Division I schools. Doubles Caitlin and Gillian Lee became County Champions, and Blair’s team finished sixth overall in the County Tournament.

Coach David Ngbea sent two doubles and one single player to the Regional Tournament, but all lost and did not advance to the semifinals. Ngbea thinks that the team’s inexperience contributed to their losses, but emphasizes that all of the players are enthusiastic about the sport.

“The desire to learn was there, but the teachability index was low,” he says.

The varsity field hockey team has steadily improved throughout the season, according to coach Megan Lusby. “Every week and every game the team keeps getting stronger and stronger,” she says.

The team ended their regular season with a record of 2-10, and made it one game into the playoffs.

“Unfortunately our record doesn’t reflect how much we’ve improved throughout this season,” Lusby says, adding that this year’s team is more flexible. “What’s nice about our team is that I can put pretty much anybody anywhere, and they’ll play, as I need them to.”

The boys’ soccer team lost every pre-season game, but they have since improved and finished their regular season with a record 8-4-2. They lost their first playoff game to Churchill. According to coach John Haigh, the team’s playoff section is one of the most difficult in the state, and he did not think that the team had great odds for playoffs.

In spite of the loss, Haigh is proud of his players’ work ethic and improvement.

“This group has learned and is willing to work really hard, and in many ways compared to their pre-season, have greatly overachieved,” Haigh says.

Key players: Seniors Nika Seider, Marianne Benyamin, Talia Stern, and Amy Nguyen

Key players: Seniors Rolf Ngana, Jordi Long, Daniel Zavarce, and Alexander Sarri-Tobar

The varsity football team has fallen only to Sherwood and Damascus, and ended their regular season with a record of 8-2.

Head coach Andrew Fields attributes the team’s improvement to experience.

“We’re not any more athletic than we’ve been in the past, we’re not any bigger or stronger,” he says. “The kids understand what the expectation is [now]... I think that’s the difference that you see on the football field.”

Despite the team’s encouraging regular season, Fields is unsure about their prospects for playoffs. “We are a good football team, but the problem is everyone’s a good football team when you get to the playoffs,” he says. “One game at a time, one practice at a time, and hopefully we win our first one and move to the second one.”

Examining racial and socioeconomic divides

Athletes discuss pregame rituals

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Key players: Juniors Caitlin and Gillian Lee, seniors Lauren Frost and Christine Cho

inside SPORTS

MARISSA HE

MARISSA HE

Key players: Seniors Desmond Colby, Eric Zokouri, Clifford Carter, and Ponce DeLeon

Silver Chips went to print before football’s first playoff game against Quince Orchard.