The High 61

THE HIGH EDITION 61 | NOVEMBER 18, 2016

TANZANIA WHY DO WE GO THERE? (Pages 3-5)

Photograph by Ludmilla von Oppenheim

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ruby Griffiths DEPUTY EDITOR

Edward Fraser

“HEALTHY” IN TRUMP FRIENDS LIVING WE TRUST? FOREVER Diets, exercise and instagrammers

The result that shook the world

Find them, keep them, never leave them

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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e are The High and we are proud. We are proud to represent the cacophony of student voices. Voices that do not match in pitch or volume yet are leveled to the same black on white. Not many student newspapers can boast this. Not many can say that they function only for the students. I have talked to writers at student newspapers in London who have told me that they cannot report truthfully on anything for fear of being removed from the newspaper team or even from closing the newspaper down. They cannot write about the school team losing a match, for fear of repercussions higher up. We do not live in such fear, the shadow of an omnipresent dictator. To an extent, we breathe uncensored air.

However, it does not mean our content goes unregulated. Our staff includes four sectional editors, a Deputy Editor in Chief, and I, who shine that flashlight into the dark crevices of our content. Whatever is printed has been thought about. Our decisions, within that bunker of a room, sometimes seem small as we squint against the harsh lights at eleven o’clock on our monthly Thursday print nights. Little do I truly comprehend how much of a storm our words hail on the battlefield the following morn. Spilled ink and groans. But we learn every single time how much each word counts. To raise our pen when it matters. To scribble down what happened. We record. And, in the end, as long as we have, as a community, had that conversation, we have done something that matters.

The High is not perfect. But we get our point across, and no one will be left indifferent. Thus, I signal to raise our symbolic chalice to the power of independent thought and its ability to challenge everything we have come to expect.

RUBY GRIFFITHS Editor-in-Chief

EDITORS Nikolay Zhurov Floris van Lieshout Amanda Bris

Anna Voigt Emily Coyne Suhasini Mehra

TABLE OF CONTENTS Tanzania 1 year later A long journey Materialism Worth of service Social media Instagram diet Snowflake generation President Trump

03 04 05 05 06 07 08 09

Prostitution Microfinance Power of words Our limits Friendship Pepe / CERN French play TEDx Lausanne

10 10 11 12 13 14 15 15

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THE GHOST OF TRIPS PAST

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hen I came back from Tanzania one year ago, I was optimistic and enthusiastic. The ten-day trip had been a success: I was so happy about my work there and I felt like I had helped the world by visiting the region of Arusha.

But one year later, I think: how worthwhile was our trip? In no way am I saying that I regret having gone there; rather I am questioning if we had any impact at all. In Tanzania, we taught two classes for two hours each day for five days, but did the students gain anything from our classes? Maybe our lessons just disrupted their learning. Our group also built the foundations for a kindergarten building, but was that just us, taking jobs from Tanzanian workers? We were probably very inefficient compared to trained workers: most of the time we were too slow or not strong enough, and the only advantage we had was being numerous.

One thing’s for sure: this trip definitely helped us, as visitors. We were able to witness a developing part of the world, and by gaining experience in a public school or hiking in a jungle guided by a local, we visited Tanzania from the inside, as if we weren’t tourists but old friends. In fact, when we crossed someone’s backyard, which was part of a rainforest, or smiles were naturally exchanged between Tanzanians and us in the street, we felt very much like we belonged there. The only “touristy” part of the trip was the last day when we went to tourist shops in the city to buy cheap gifts for our parents and “mzungu” (meaning “European”) shirts for ourselves.

From this trip, not only did we gain memories we will never forget, but we also learned about the world by discovering first-hand that not everyone has the same opportunities and privileges as us. We also learned that despite the lack of resources at the school —in some classes, a couple of pens would

be passed around for everyone to be able to take notes— the students we met were so enthusiastic and eager to learn, even more so than students here at ISL. In fact, this difference of culture was very present throughout the trip, inside and outside of the classroom. In the streets, we would meet throngs of people who yelled “power for the people”, waving two fingers in the air like our peace sign, all of them supporting a presidential candidate. Rarely in the Western world would you find such enthusiastic and undivided support for a political party.

What we gained from Tanzania is obvious, but it is hard to see what Tanzania gained from our visit. Of course, ‘solving world hunger’ or ‘providing free education for all’ are goals that are impossible to solve; they’re too broad and even people working professionally to solve these problems usually never see the physical impact of their work. And of course, as teenagers, we would never be expected to have an enormous impact or solve world issues. The goal of our trip to Tanzania wasn’t to ‘solve poverty’ but to make a small, local impact on the community we visited.

In fact, I can’t say that there weren’t any valuable things Tanzania gained from us. For example, although we only taught four classes each, we brought to the students a new way of learning, through mimes and games, different from the ones they’re used to. Also, for

Maëlle Jacqmarcq has been there and done that a couple of hours that week, the students heard completely fluent English.

Tanzanian teachers also speak English, but it is slightly different from ours: the language is one of the two official languages of Tanzania and almost all of the teachers had a very high level.

However, for most of us, English is one of our first languages, and we taught the students many words and phrases that are commonly used. For example, at the very beginning we taught them that to say their age, they had to say “I am 15 years old” instead of “My age is 15 years,” which is what they would say.

The trip opened our eyes to the world outside our privileged bubble, and, thanks to that, we can now spread what we learned. For one year now, we have been able to try and inform our community about how life is different in a developing country. From what I felt after coming back from the Tanzania trip, I can assure that volunteer work is beneficial for teengaers like us. You come back home a new person. Our work did not solve world issues, but we made a small impact on the local community, and the cultural differences we learned to appreciate might have turned us into better people. Although this trip has helped me understand how hard it is to have a significant impact on others’ lives through volunteerism, I think the values that we have learned and that we are now capable of sharing will help us make an impact in the long term.

Photograph: Anna Voigt

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AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 HOURS

Giovanna Rojas speaks to the survivors of an air tragedy

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s students from an international school, we are used to taking various amounts of planes to get back home for the summer or to simply visit new and exotic destinations. We are used to waiting in the long lines, checking in our bags, going through different security checks and even flying in up to three different planes on a single day. However, what happens when things go terribly wrong? No, I’m not talking about your flight getting delayed by just one hour, but four days. What would you do in this situation? The students that went to the Tanzania trip might have the answer. People might know different versions of this story, but what really happened to the students? I have interviewed students that went in the Tanzania trip over the last few weeks to understand how they survived the delay.

Can you give us a summary of what happened when you were trying to return home?

Anna Voigt: We sat in the airplane for five hours. Then we went to the parking lot where we stayed for an hour and a half. I fell asleep on top of my duffel bag and woke up to get on the last bus. Then we got to the hotel and by that point it was 4.30 in the morning and we all “crashed”. The next day we went to the airport again and sat and slept in the airport for another four to five hours. We arrived in Amsterdam after the eight hour flight and learned that we had missed our connection to Geneva. We were told that half of us would get a flight to Geneva and then take the train to Lausanne and then a bus to school. The other group would have a flight to Lyon, France and take a train from there to Lausanne and the bus to school. So we got to the terminal for the Lyon flight; they told us we did not have seats. At that point we were all crying. Me included. None of us had slept or eaten enough for a considerable amount of time. We then slept in a hotel in Amsterdam where we all took hot showers. Hallelujah. The next afternoon we were on a flight home to Geneva. The End. When did you start to realize something was wrong with the flight?

Amelia Lumme: Pretty much I’d say...I don’t know how long they are usually waiting on the plane before it starts moving...but I could tell it had been too long. There were also a few announcements so I was like, “this is not going to go well,” so it was probably right there.

Sophia Scokalo: Well, some friends and I had started a movie and finished it and we were about to start a second one and we had not moved. The crew was not giving us any information either.

I know that there was some sort of broken engine. What was your initial thought when this happened?

Benjamin Preisler: Well, they said they were going to fix it so I thought, “we are just going to wait a couple hours and then we will probably take off.” But then we just kept waiting and

they kept saying that they were testing the engine.”

Amelia Lumme: I was worried because I am scared of flying so I didn’t want to fly if there was something wrong with the engine. Probably that and “I don’t want to cry.”

Who was the first person you told when this happened?

Nick Jennings: My father. He asked me how my trip was going so I sent him a short message: “Engine broke down on the runway, don’t worry everything’s fine.”

Amelia Lumme: I called my mom when I was still sitting on the plane and I told her that something was wrong and that we might have to stay the night.

Do you think that the Tanzania trip got ruined because of the flight issue?

Benjamin Preisler: No, definitely not. At the start, it did but once we started to get going, you just had to stay optimistic and it was good.

Amelia Lumme: No, not at all. It was a bad ending to the trip but I think the stuff that we did there and, the memories that we made and, the ways we got to be involved with the community would never be put down by this issue.

Were people in the trip generally more frustrated or just simply tired?

Nick Jennings: We made a meme out of our hate. Everyone was tired and many reached their limits.

Amelia Lumme: I think they were tired but it made them frustrated, not everyone though...some people were like “yeah, I want to stay in Amsterdam” but others were really annoyed.

It was a combination of emotions really.

Anna Voigt: Both, KLM has its own dirty hashtag.

What would you say to future students going to Tanzania regarding this topic?

Amelia Lumme: I don’t think it would happen again but if it does, don’t let it get to you. Take everyday as it comes and make the most out of it.

Sophia Scokalo: It’s an amazing experience. You are not going there to have a 5-star hotel stay, you will be going there to do service work.

Benjamin Preisler: Well, I left my wallet and my check in my bag, I was then left at the airport without any money so just keep your wallet on you. Also, bring a toothbrush...just in case.

So there you have it. Sometimes things don’t work out the way we would want them to but you always have to be optimistic no matter what. The key is to stay calm and be positive because at the end, the sun will always shine. I hope that the Tanzania students are fully recovered now and I can’t wait to hear more of the amazing stories that this extraordinary trip offers.

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A MATERIAL WORLD

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or ISL students, travelling to new places is often part of how life goes. You’re going on vacations, you’re visiting family, you’re moving, or something along those lines. One thing I noticed is that when you’re somewhere else, it’s the often the smaller differences that can stand out the most. It can be the way people act, local food, or whether it’s considered cool to wear basketball shorts in mid-January.

In poorer countries though, you notice other things too. Sure, they make less money, there’s fewer university graduates, and the wifi tends to be slower, but there’s a certain freedom. Nobody complains about the Ikea sofa unit they regret not buying. People aren’t so quick to judge a person based on which logo happens to be on their clothes.

People aren’t defining themselves based on the stuff that they own.

So why do we do our best to make them more like us? Consider this, according to the Washington Post, Swit-

zerland’s rate of clinical depression is nearly twice as high as impoverished countries like Burkina Faso, Togo, hell, even Ethiopia. Is that part of what we want to bring to the developing world?

In the oversized communities that we live in, it can be so easy to feel lost, that we are just another number. This lack of identity, mixed with our easy access to material goods makes for an unhealthy combination for people everywhere. When we feel like we lack substance, many of us turn to possessions.

We let what we own become what defines us. People in these developing countries are happy because they are often just grateful for what they own.

We, on the other hand, are more likely to constantly seek to improve our station in life. For example, according to one study, happy people are more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs, but end up making less money than people who are less happy. When we feel that our importance is dwindling we feel

Nick Jennings jealous, this is because we were raised by media telling us that we become complete, great, successful, or whatever else after we fulfill some great accomplishment. Most of us have idols or role models, and most of us are often eager to be just as good or even better than them. We all grow up wanting to be the very best at whatever it may be, and when we realize that we can’t all be number one is when we begin to resent others for their achievements.

So what struck me in Tanzania was how much people seemed to be content in the moment they found themselves in.

People weren’t afraid to smile as they walked down the road, and didn’t treat themselves like they were carrying the whole world on their shoulders. So, instead of trying to develop other countries by making them more like us, why not take a page from their book for once? We can develop ourselves by becoming more like that which we seek to change.

THE VALUE OF SERVICE

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uilding a home. Teaching English to underprivileged children.

Building and painting a nursery. Micro-financing women’s entrepreneurial ventures. The list goes on.

These are just some of the many things that we have done on our service trips here at ISL. Yet, some students still question the value of the trips themselves. It seems to me that most of the arguments within this subject are caused by differing opinions of what constitutes the ‘value’ of a service trip.

I’m not necessarily saying we should establish a common ground in regards to the value of the service trips, but at least that you consider all viewpoints in terms of the trips themselves.

Many at ISL are skeptical when they see a 3,000 franc price tag for a 10-day trip over half-term break. The most common argument I hear is that the money would be better spent through simple donation instead. “I would rather just donate the money than pay to

fly myself and 26 others to Tanzania to do work with minimal effect.” said Alex Buchler, a Year 12 student. Quite a few students have this sort of mindset, it seems that not many actually donate any of money in the end. So the argument here is: should the student spend 3,000 francs on a service trip that might not be of the best monetary value, or essentially not donate anything at all.

It’s important to mention, ISL’s service trips like the long-running Tanzania trip or the new Cambodia trip, are not the only sources for experience and work alike. In fact, certain students have even taken up their own service opportunities; such as teaching in India.

I absolutely believe that, the service trips here at ISL are both valuable and ‘worth it.’ I have been fortunate enough to be part of both the Cambodia and Tanzania service trips over the past two years. Of course, the fee wasn’t out of my wallet and I’m sure I’d be much more sensitive to the subject if it were.

Edward Fraser

But ultimately, the sheer personal experience gained from the service trips I have taken part in were more than enough to constitute the significant value. Experience covers a broad subject in terms of value. For instance, in Tanzania, many of us gained experience as teachers, appreciating new values in life, and improving our personal cultural relationships and understanding.

Ultimately, the values of service trips here at ISL are highly debatable. It really comes down to you as a person.

Maybe you’re solely concerned with what constitutes as CAS? Maybe you could see your money being spent better? Each of us have our own individual desires when it comes to how we spend our time, money, and hard work. So the real question is, as an individual, what do you value?

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THE ANTISOCIAL RULE BOOK

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’m, like, going to die if I don’t get 100 likes on this photo!” “I literally have to delete this photo; it so doesn’t go with my theme.” “He hasn’t even viewed my story yet!” Ever heard something like this before? So why are there so many ‘unspoken rules of social media’?

DO NOT send that snap to me if it’s on your story!

Many get rather offended if someone sends them a Snapchat if it is then also posted on their story as they feel that they are not significant enough to have a true conversation with, and that they are talking to their “300 other Snapchat friends”.

Your story doesn’t exist until they’ve seen it!

I mean seriously, what’s the point of posting your oh-so-glam selfie on your story if your crush hasn’t seen it?

3 second snaps and you’re still screenshotting?!

People have suggested the fact that each social media platform has completely different uses. For example, Snapchat is the main platform where “solo selfies” are acceptable; this is the reason we wouldn’t see many selfies on Instagram or Facebook as many feel that they would receive more judgement for posting selfies on either of these platforms, especially since Snapchat deletes them after 24 hours maximum.

Teenagers generally tend to find it more challenging to post selfies since they are quite up close and, therefore, are more insecure about them. Hence the reason for them solely being posted on either Snapchat, where they would disappear, or private Instagrams with an extremely restricted audience.

Scared you’re going to be judged? Finstas are the answer.

‘Finstas’ are “fake instagrams”; essentially they are not a person’s main account but a private one which only close friends follow. Now that ‘finstas’ are the new big thing, I’ve found out why it’s becoming so important to have these private accounts. Those with private Instagram’s informed me that it’s a place where only people they trust and their close circle of friends can follow them. For them, this means that they don’t filter what they post; it can be bad quality, unattractive, the captions are the not the focal point and essentially, it is a platform to share updates with friends. Some even compare ‘finstas’ to a photo album – a place to store any memories, whether they’re bad quality or inappropriate to share with the public. ‘Finstas’ are virtually the main area of social media where people do not have to be concerned with “public image” or image at all.

Of course, each person is very different in the way they portray themselves online. However, there are two main types of people: those who like to be private and, therefore, typically only post photos of themselves, alone so that the world is unaware of the people they are with in their daily lives; and those who essentially only post when they are with people, in order to prove that they have a social life.

Amara Sarao #article #followback

Keep your pic qualities 1080p, please! I mean our mains have to be perfect!

Based on information I have gathered from teenagers themselves, most social media “rules” change based on the extent of privacy authorized on each account. For instance, people tend to post quite frequently on private Instagram accounts versus public or “main” ones. On private accounts, people will post almost every day, if not more often. They have no issue posting at “bad times”, when many would not be online or posting multiple photos of the same event. On public accounts, image quality seems to be a concern - most people will only posts photos that are of high quality; whereas on privates, you post whatever photos you want - blurry, distant or low quality.

Less than 100 likes on your main? DELETE! Most people have main accounts where they have hundreds of followers and, therefore, expect exceptionally more likes versus on their privates where they post for themselves rather than for public approval.

Your latest post doesn’t even match your theme? That’s disgusting.

People are very particular about their public accounts, whether it be Facebook or public Instagrams. On these platforms, they make sure to post at times where everyone goes online and do not post very often as they feel people would get “annoyed”. Most who have both a private and main Instagram account will post on their main only once every few months, whereas those with only one account will post once every couple of weeks. Moreover, many are concerned with the “theme” of their public instagram accounts - the way in which they edit it as they want their profile to look artistically satisfying.

No comments on your profile picture? Back to the avatar it is!

Many believe that comments are so essential to their change in profile picture. Since the profile picture is basically the first thing we see on your profile and the avatar that comes up next to everything you like, everything you comment on and everything you post - people tend to be more self-conscious about this. It’s for these reasons that most want more comments on this photo. Comments allows them to feel more self-confident since most would be positive and encouraging.

We tend to hide behind our social media accounts – afraid to show the world who we truly are. We are all protective over our online image and the way in which we portray ourselves, so much so that it loses its basis in reality. So the question is, why do we all mask ourselves behind social media? We have an obsessive need to please the public, to uphold our reputations and the truth is, we will soon be so hidden that it will become difficult to ever be comfortable with who we are. Therefore, we should try to create a community in which these measures taken to disguise ourselves, are unnecessary.

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THE DETOX PARADOX

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fter shopping in Lausanne with a friend, it was getting close to lunchtime. I suggested that we go to Holy Cow, a well-known burger place. However, her response shocked me. “I can’t eat any of that, it’ll make me feel too guilty.” We ended up eating a literal bowl of leaves with a mediocre selection of toppings, also called a salad.

This experience might be normal to some people, but it almost broke my heart. How could my friend think that she was not worthy of enjoying food?

Clearly, there is a problem. It is an issue that has become so deeply rooted in our culture that some of us have failed to realize that it is even there. In a world where physical appearance is everything, we have become obsessed with our bodies. In our society, it seems that the less you weigh, the more value you have as an individual. It seems to be that unfortunately, beauty has become synonymous with weight.

This leads to numerous problems for young impressionable people, who think that in order to be beautiful, they need to be skinny. It is a paradox, that young people today have an unhealthy obsession with a seemingly healthy way of life.

Most teenagers, and girls in particular, have role models that promote unattainable eating and exercise habits for most people. Some refer to it as ‘eating-clean’ or being ‘healthy’. If you scroll through Instagram, you will be presented with an endless selection of perfectly toned girls with washboard abs and legs longer than the Hundred Years War. Some of these girls even share their formulae with their audience, which includes a tightly controlled and restrictive diet accompanied by strenuous exercise. Every. Single. Day. I decided that I would take up the challenge. I wanted to find out if it was actually possible to live the lifestyle of an Instagram blogger, if it was actually as healthy as they claim, and if it was an ideal advisable for teenagers to stride towards.

I chose to follow the diet and exercise plan of Alexis Ren, a well-known Instagram model famous for her physique and beach babe look. I followed a webpage titled: Alexis Ren Fitness/Diet Guide, which became my Bible for a whole week.

According to Alexis herself: “…my diet consists of no bread, no fast food, no red meat, and I try to stay off sugar (besides from fruit) as much as I can. And no alcohol. I eat everything besides that! Mostly everything I eat is organic, raw good food”. Challenge accepted. I stocked my kitchen with almond milk, vegan protein powder, endless avocadoes, fruit, dried nuts, kale and spinach. My diet arsenal was pretty locked and loaded.

Monday morning started with a morning jog at 5:15 am, an ungodly hour where any self-respecting person should be fast asleep. The words ‘morning’ and ‘jog’ individually ignite fear from the deepest realms of my soul, so putting them together was a difficult task. I jogged for about 45 minutes and came home to have breakfast. But alas, I had to say goodbye to my usual bowl of creamy oatmeal and say hello to my new friend, the juicer. I blended kale, spinach, pineapple and kiwi

Amanda Bris eats shoots and leaves into a green mush, or ‘detox juice’. For an extra protein kick, I had two egg whites (sorry, no yolks). For lunch, a ‘grain bowl’, which is about as interesting as it sounds. The highlight of my lunch was an avocado, which gave me some much longed for fat. In the afternoon, I went to a high intensity Pilates class for an hour, which is one of Alexis’ favorites. Dinner was a salad with avocado and chickpeas, and a small bowl of tomato soup. Exhausted and longing for bread, I went to sleep at 9pm, dreading another morning jog.

This cycle continued until Friday. I would generally stick to the same routine: early morning jogs,the same breakfast, a carbohydrate based meal for lunch, an afternoon workout and a plant based meal for dinner, with fruit as snacks and only water or black coffee for beverages. I felt like a machine; every movement, every action was a highly calculated maneuver charged with transforming me into a taut, toned and ridiculously perfect looking individual.

The results however, were not pretty.

I felt tired, drained, and as if I had abused my body. My skin was blotchy and dry, my muscles ached and I had constant headaches during the mornings. I found it much harder to work out with the new diet, since I was clearly lacking carbs and protein, which are essential for human beings. This new lifestyle was physically exhausting, not to mention the emotional impact it had on me. I can’t speak for everyone out there, but I have found ‘healthy-living’ too much for me.

It is true that it is important to lead a healthy lifestyle. But the problem is that we are being told that in order to be healthy, we need to control every bite and thoroughly plan every workout with the goal of being skinny, no matter that it harms your body in the process. Everyone and every single body is different, and it is simply unwise to strive for the health regime of size 0 Instagram models. This unattainable ideal has created a generation who is excessively worried about body image and weight, to the point where it can be the cause of depression, self-harm, eating disorders and other self-destructive behaviors.

Still, there are seeds of hope, and our beauty ideals are slowly evolving every day. There are more and more role models in the media who have a healthy weight and exercise regime.

Ultimately, what really matters is confidence, and the way you present yourself to the rest of the world.

If I can leave you with a few words of advice, it will be this.

Treat your body with respect, and that means listening to hunger, paying attention to your energy levels and exercising at a healthy pace. Everyone is built differently, and most people are not cut out for the lifestyle that is being bombarded to us by the media. You do not need to be skinny in order to be beautiful or happy, you just need to do what is right for your body. And next time you’re in Lausanne, go to Holy Cow and order the Big Cheese with extra bacon, and enjoy every single bite of it.

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UNIQUE, LIKE EVERYONE ELSE

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eing “genuinely distressed by opinions that run contrary to their worldview”. That is how Wikipedia is defining our “generation snowflake”, aka the millennials.

Are we really this bubble wrapped, safe space, trigger warning shouting, spineless generation? Potentially. Let me take you back a couple of months ago, my fellow writer, Gregory Foster, had written an article about the “gender pay gap myth”, a rather intriguing piece offering an alternative perspective on an issue that is fairly prevalent in our society.

What followed? An absolute storm of rage and anguish by people who thought differently. Many were genuinely distressed by something that didn’t fit how they saw the world.

Is this strange? Not really. Take a look at our environment, also known as the ISL bubble; we aren’t surrounded by a whole lot of different opinions on subjects such as the one aforementioned. If and when a rare alternate opinion is expressed, the person becomes the target of a liberal witchhunt. Essentially, what this snowflake generation has created is a trump card, no pun intended, which allows any opinions in conflict with our worldview to be disposed of. Phrases such as “check your privilege” are used to dispel somebody’s opinion on a subject matter. What this is actually doing is suppressing their opinion and denouncing it as invalid due to the occupation they have in society or life in general.

Snowflake culture is especially prevalent in academic contexts: safe spaces and trigger warnings remove anything that potentially could make a student or supposed “intellectual” uncomfortable. Things that are trying to move people out of their comfort zone or expose a new perspective, which may make us slightly uncomfortable, are off the table. Things such as trigger warnings, which warn people about potentially “distressing material” . … What? Is this not what people are meant to be exposed to so that an opinion can be formed and a debate can follow? Putting trigger warnings on literature that deals with subjects, such as rape or war, that deal

Floris van Lieshout checks his privilege

with what happens in the real world is crazy because they inherently reflect our world and provide perspectives that can be learned?

One might aswell put a big warning label on every piece of literature and state: “WARNING POTENTIAL SENSITIVE TOPICS”.

Look kids, the world isn’t a great place, a lot of bad things happen. However, surrounding yourself in a place where none of this exists and everything is according to your own views is entirely and utterly ignorant.

The snowflake generation doesn’t only manifest itself in academics put also in other parts of our daily lives. You know what I always found completely ludicrous? Participation awards. Teaching kids from a young age that no matter what you do, as long as you participate, you are a winner. Problem is, this doesn’t at all reflect what will actually happen when one grows older. Exposing kids to exclusively positive stimuli is an extremely bad thing. Due to the fact that when the real world hits, there will be no participation awards. Small bumps will feel like great falls for people who have never been exposed to anything negative.

What this creates are people whom have no backbone, whom when exposed to something that they dislike, crumble and can’t produce any counter rhetoric. The only mechanism they have been taught when something negative comes along is to go into shutdown mode and wait for someone to come along with whom they can talk to about their compatible views.

Furthermore, the snowflake mentality has lead to the rise in victim culture and hypersensitivity to things that could potentially be offensive to someone. People who have an extreme case of special snowflake syndrome are always on the lookout in someway they can be offended or experience a possible micro-aggression. To them, I say: toughen-up. The world isn’t a place full of rainbows and sunshine, so grow some thicker skin. If someone expresses thoughts differently on a subject, don’t go into full shutdown mode and shout “I’m a victim”. Instead, put forward a reasoned argument in which you try and compel the other person of your view-point. The world is not like the ISL bubble, and you have to remember that other points of view are also valid and reasonable. You may not like them, but unless you want to remain ignorant, you simply have to consider other people’s opinions. Remember sticks and stones may break your bones, but words, words will never hurt you. Oh yeah, I forgot: Trigger Warning!

Kind of new to this stuff —does it come at the end ?

Illustration by Manon Libine

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THE WORLD IN HIS SMALL HANDS

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acist, bigot, sexist, xenophobic... the list to describe the new president of the United States of America could go on and on. The outcome of this monumental campaign reflects a reality for America that is sad and disappointing for most at ISL, but one that no one should be shocked about. The red lights have been flashing since the moment Trump announced he would run, back in 2014, yet we turned a blind eye. The truth is, it was funny until it became true. We laughed and mocked him last year: his extravagant speeches, sweeping generalisations and total disregard for political correctness. Now that he is president, in this supposedly shock outcome which even the polls didn’t predict, it is clear that somewhere along the line we should have stopped laughing and actually questioned the possibility of him winning.

The headlines plastered across the world were the same, pointing a finger towards Trump and criticising all the unjust things he said in his speeches.

This layer of political headlights drove home a clear message, “Trump won’t win.” John Kay, a British economist, stated it clearly; “It became too easy to read only confirmation of one’s own prejudice.” One thing that Americans seemingly failed to do as a nation was strip back the layers of headlines, dig a bit deeper, and educate themselves about the actual current state of American politics. The statistics were clear, but drowned in emotionally fuelled opinions of anger and fear. Take any article about Trump’s rallies, and it will surely be laden with disgust for the blatant racism and discrimination encouraged by his supporters. No one took a moment to recognize that voter turnout was up by 63% for the Republican party from 2008, while Democratic party turnout from 2008 was down by 18%.

In the primaries of 2016, there were 3.8 million more Republicans voting than Democrats. In the end, Trump won the electoral vote by a landslide, with 306 electoral colleges to Hilary’s 232. These

statistics pointed in clear view towards this outcome, yet it was still a “shock” for the world.

If anything, these headlines resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy. The media gave Trump the spotlight, and the sureness that he would not win motivated an already angry crowd to get out and vote for him. The spotlight was, after all, what Trump wanted. His campaign built on negative cohesion and fear has been repeated by politicians in the past, and is almost always effective in gaining support. Politics is never a fair game either, and a political advantage is based on the sum of the wrongs a politician has in his career, rather than a fair balance between what has been done rightly or wrongly. While Donald’s career as a businessman has an impressive collection of flaws, his lack of background as a politician meant that Hilary’s 30 years of experience came with baggage that he simply did not have.

Most of us also seemingly overlooked America’s economy. With the growing threat of terrorism, the need to advocate for female rights, and the demand to protect immigrants from discrimination, the mood generated was: ‘who seriously cares about the economy?’

The obsession with cultural and social issues pushed economic talk to the bottom of the list in terms of relevance for the media and campaigners, while it actually should have belonged at the top. A quick glance at the current state of America should have indicated that there was a growing internal issue that must be fixed before the country could focus on external demands. The gross domestic product of America (GDP) can act as an indicator of its economic performance, and the real nondefense GDP (without military expenditure) per adult was -2% at the end of Obama’s campaign. In simpler terms, income has decreased by 2%, leaving the average American at a disadvantage. For the American working class, of which

Emily Coyne is disappointed but far from surprised 75% don’t have college degrees, the policies that offer more support to them (paid sick leave, cheaper health care) is not what they want. They seek stability within the economy to ensure long term employment, rather than pity or aid. Hillary’s campaign continuously endorsed a democratic approach towards the economy, and her popular argument was to fight inequality by redistributing money from the rich to the poor. Essentially, this is like fighting for who has the best seat in a sinking ship. Rather than trying to give people better seats, an effort should be made to try save the whole ship. Poverty and economic growth should be addressed from the bottom upwards, creating a stable environment. In a gallup poll, where the question “are you satisfied” was asked, less than 30% of the population in the past 5 years responded that they were satisfied with the state of America. Trump’s win is evidence of a large unemployed, poor, and angry working class in America who feel “failed” by 8 years of democratic policies.

There was also bewilderment at the fact that Trump managed to secure 29% of the Hispanic vote. His campaign was largely built on a racist rhetoric directed towards illegal immigrants, and he infamously stated his desire to “build a wall” to keep out all the “rapists” and “drug dealers.” In 2014, there were 11.1 million illegal immigrants residing in America, of which 8 million participate in the workforce, notably in farming and construction occupations.

For legal Hispanic families struggling to find work, their anger towards illegal immigrants who have managed to seal employment is understandable, and reflected in their voting patterns.

While the future of America seems questionable, the outcome of the vote portrays an undeniable truth about the country’s state and can hopefully act as an indicator that the power of one individual can never be underestimated.

10

SEX SELLS. WHO BUYS?

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hey stand around 10 meters apart, faces painted, wearing clothes inappropriate to the weather but appropriate to their target market. It’s 10 o’clock and you’re out in Lausanne with your friends. It’s cold.

Damp. You attempt to preserve your warmth by bundling up, while 14,000 women are inconceivably stripped down in the chill of the night.

They are prostitutes selling their bodies for around $260 an hour. Perhaps the same price as a plane ticket. While it seems like a cold uncompassionate world to many it is more than sex. It could be companionship; one prostitute recounted that a client once took her on a weekend away and didn’t have sex with her; they slept in the same bed without any intimacy involved. Can we really say that it is sex that is selling?

Perhaps it’s the easy accessibility that makes it appealing, because “getting a prostitute is so easy: no strings attached”. Others say that individuals would “need to rape if they could not pay for sex on demand”, which suggests that prostitution satisfies an innate craving for sexual companionship.

Yet it is clear that prostitution reaches a wide client base because each customer is searching for something different. However, some costumes face the possibility of getting wrapped up in a world dangerous to the mind. Alex, a young man who uses prostitutes for the “girlfriend experience”, is searching for something that commercial sex will never provide. While commercial sex (sexual acts that are sold) may provide him with physical contact and intimacy, it has a price and isn’t genuine. It’s her job to give him what he’s asking.

It is no secret that men are more inclined to pay for sex: as a study by The University College London shows, 1 in 10 British Men have paid for sex. Clearly sex sells.

Prostitution is legal in 77 countries around the world. In these countries, the women are not usually part of the community; many have been trafficked.

The prostitutes that are trafficked are easy to identify with their “inability to speak the local language or how young or vulnerable they appear”. Not only is it an issue that these women can be identified, but despite having some ap-

parent knowledge of their vulnerability people still take advantage of them.

According to the Guardian, “fines, public ­exposure, employers being informed, or the risk of a criminal record would stop most of the men from continuing to pay for sex”. This raises the question as to whether or not this is a crime in the minds of the paying customer.

Statistics can be thrown at you to show the reality of sex work and the people who pay for it, but it is up to an individual to decide whether or not this should be acceptable. Although ethical issues arise when we put a price on another’s companionship for an evening it could be considered that we are simply instilling a value on another’s skills.

Sex worker advocacy groups have long claimed that the most effective way to combat trafficking, abuse, and other hazards of prostitution is by decriminalizing it and recognizing it as work.

Whatever your social, political or moral belief, it is clear that prostitution is not going anywhere soon. The phrase sex sells has never been more true.

NO LOAN TOO SMALL

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s some of you hopefully already know, our school has an active microfinance club. As you may remember, Stephanie Braunius, one of the two leaders, did a presentation towards the end of last year to recruit new members and to raise awareness about the club. Now, in the coming months, MIFI (Microfinance) will be organising fundraisers in order to raise investment capital. For this to be effective, it is important that the student body knows what the club does and where the money goes.

First let’s look at what a microloan is.

A microloan is a small, short term loan that has little or no interest rate. These are usually given to entrepreneurs in developing countries to help them speed up the growth of their business.

What makes microloans so different

from normal loans is that the person doesn’t have to pay any extra money back, an interest rate, on the money that they borrowed. While this means that the lender does not make a profit, it does make them perfect to help small business. To reach these people, MIFI goes through an organization called Kiva which connects lenders with borrowers. What makes microloans so different from other forms of charity is that once you give money you will get it back within a few months to a year.

This means that the same hundred francs can help a countless number of people improve their businesses and, therefore, their living conditions.

MIFI’s goal is to make it easy for students, parents and teachers to take part in this wonderful opportunity to help developing communities around

Natasha Read

Fredrik Falk

the world. People can either simply give a sum of money to MIFI, who will then look after it making sure it goes to deserving businesses, or, if you would rather not part with your hard earned money, you can also lend it to the club for a certain length of time. For example, let’s say you lend 100 francs and you want that money back in six months. MIFI will then take that money and find loans that match the agreed upon time frame. This way you can have your money change someone’s life and then get it back at the end of the process.

What makes microfinancing so special is that you never actually have to spend any money, this is what sets it apart from all other types of charity.

If you feel like lending money or getting involved please contact Stephanie Braunius or Norina Frey.

11

THE POWER OF WORDS

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e use words to describe people, things and situations.

Although we may not know it, our words have so much power, and what we say affects what we’re describing. It’s almost as if, as humans, we have this special ability to make situations happen the way we want them to happen through our words. Our words affect the way we think and that affects our lives. (This is not a TOK essay, don’t worry) For example, if we find something hard, say the IB, and we keep complaining about how hard it is, it’s never ever going to get any easier. Or if we have school work to do, and we complain about how much it is, and how we are not going to get it done, then we’ll never be able to get through it, because we keep saying that it’s just too much. Or if just before an exam, we say that we are going to fail it, then we are going to fail, because that will affect the way we’re going to see the exam no matter its level.

We are given the power to choose who we are

But what if, despite the difficulty of the IB, we say it’s easy, and no matter how much work we have, we say that we’re going to get through it. Or even though we haven’t studied enough, we say that we’re going to nail the exam?

We might not realise it, but this will just change the way we see life altogether.

A psychology research at the University of Carolina proved that people who use positive words generally “set higher goals, persist at them longer and achieve more of them.”

Now, our words have an even greater effect when we use them to describe people or describe ourselves for that matter. I’m going to refer to these words as labels. Everyone has labels at some point in their lives. These labels vary: “beautiful, handsome, ugly, geeky, lazy, smart, failure, popular, hard working, responsible, unorganized,” etc, and as you can see, they can either be positive or negative.

So many of us get these labels at school from friends or teachers, and at home: from parents or siblings. The thing is, we have no idea how much the labels affect us. They affect the way we see ourselves. When someone calls us ugly, even as a joke, we’ll go back home, look at ourselves in the mirror and ask ourselves if it is true just in case they were not joking. But what if someone calls you beautiful; you’ll go back home look at yourself in the mirror and have a totally different reaction. You will feel beautiful, and that will make you actually beautiful.

What about being smart? What if someone thinks they aren’t smart? They’ll keep saying,“oh well, I’m not smart enough for that.” And you know what, however you describe yourself in front of people is the way they will always think of you. And so, you won’t ever challenge yourself and then you will never be smart. But say, someone decides to think that they are smart. Even though the person isn’t that knowledgeable, they will answer questions in class and challenge themselves for the hard stuff, eventually they are going to be what they believe they are.

So who has the right to give us these labels? Is it our teachers, our parents, our most trusted friends? Brothers and sisters? No. We decide what our labels are going to be. We are given the power to choose who we are. No one is born hardworking or successful. No one is born lazy or ugly either.

We are all different. We can’t compare people against each other, because ev-

Veronica Wambura wants you to know how great you are eryone is smart and beautiful in their own way. One person can be good at Maths and weak at English and another person good at English but finds Maths difficult. That doesn’t mean that any of these people are either smart or dumb.

We’re just different and we are given these differences so that we can help one another.

Sometimes, we do need reminders. We feel as if we just need someone to be there to give us the good labels. But, no one can do it better than ourselves. So wake up in the morning everyday, and when you look at yourself in the mirror, say, “Hey there, hot stuff!” Call yourself smart, even if no one thinks that you are, no matter what the results on your exam paper say. You have a whole life ahead of you. You don’t want to spend it thinking that you’re not enough. Life is too short for negativity.

As a kid, Thomas Edison, who invented the bulb, came back from school with a letter for his mom. When his mom read the letter, she cried in front of him. Thomas asked why his mom was crying, and she answered that his school thought he was too smart to keep studying there. He had to move schools, so he did. After he discovered the bulb, his mother passed away. One day, as he was going through her stuff, he found the letter that he had gotten from his old school, a lot of years back. When he read it, it said that he had had to move schools because he wasn’t smart enough, he actually had mental problems. What if his mom had told him that as a kid? We would probably be studying with candles at home because Thomas Edison wouldn’t have made any bulbs. So, let’s make other people feel good about themselves too.

When someone does something well, congratulate them and when they’re having a bad day, encourage them. Life is just too short for negativity.

12

DON’T STOP BELIEVING

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ou’ve probably heard the phrases “follow your dreams”or “never give up” countless times in your life.

Perhaps you heard it when you were a kid, when your teacher asked you what you wanted to be for career day, or learning how to finally ride a bike without training wheels.

But when someone tells you to follow your dreams or to never give up, how much of that message do you actually believe you can accomplish?

Since we’re approaching adulthood at a pace that’s much too fast for my liking, this question appears frequently in our minds, especially when going into high school: what do you want to be when you grow up? Although this answer could have been very simple when we were younger, as we go through our teenage years our perception of what we can and cannot do becomes seemingly more concrete and therefore, our possibilities seem to diminish.

I asked some students what job they thought they could take on that maybe wasn’t necessarily in their primary field of interest, but where they could still probably succeed in. One person said that they could do well in chemistry, even though they didn’t take it in the DP. Something that really sparked my interest from what they answered was when they told me: “I know if I put time and effort into it I could do it”. Because that’s what our purpose is. It’s taking the time and putting in the effort to make something of ourselves. No matter what we do, if we work hard enough at it we will always find a way to improve, no matter how long it takes.

Finding your goals can be challenging - ask yourself “What do I want?”

I also asked those students to tell me how they thought their capabilities or skill set could contribute to what job they might choose in the future, and with little surprise they generally said they didn’t know because they weren’t sure of what they were capable of. Now of course you can’t know the exact parameters of your capabilities, but when it comes to seeing what you can amount to both as a student and as a human being in general, realizing what your potential is can open a lot of doors to help you reach your personal and professional goals, whatever they may be.

Actually finding what your goals are can be challenging, but you can make it much more simple by asking yourself one question: “What do I want?” It might seem intimidating at

Anne-Marie Rusu has not found her limits first, since we are taught to be modest and not tell people what we really want. But putting ego aside, knowing what we want could be beneficial, not only for our own success in life, but also for the success of others and even the world.

At the end of October I had the chance to attend a TedxLausanne Women talk which featured a woman called Stephanie Case who spoke about her life as an ultrarunner. Human rights lawyer by day and ultrarunner by night, Stephanie founded the charity ‘Free to Run’, which gives an opportunity to women and girls in conflicted countries and countries where discrimination against women is severe, a chance to participate in physical activity, specifically running in races, in a safe environment.

One story that really struck me was the story of Mahsa Torabi, an Iranian woman who went against all odds and even broke significant rules to achieve her goal. “I run Iran” was held in April of this year, open to anyone. Except for women. Although Free to Run, and even Stephanie Case, tried to gain admittance for everyone to be allowed run in the race, the coordinator concluded that “anyone running in Iran was better than no one running in Iran.”

At this point, you might think that there was no way that Mahsa could have run since there were so many obstacles blocking her way. But she had a set goal and that wasn’t going to change. So, although she couldn’t run the race with the men, she chose to run the entire stretch a couple of hours before the race actually started but not too early so people would be there to witness her.

As she was tuning to the last stretch towards the finish line, the race started and Mahsa Torabi was officially running the race with the rest of her competitors. When she finished the race she was awarded a medal and “I run Iran” changed their participant range to include anyone who wants to run, even children, all because one woman refused to give in and pushed herself to the finish line.

Questioning your capabilities and pushing yourself and your abilities doesn’t have to have the sole purpose of changing the world, but it is important to develop yourself as a person.

Many people - like your friends, family and teachers - can motivate you to do things that you wouldn’t think possible, but in the end it’s up to you to go and make that change, even if it’s just about changing yourself and changing your perception of what you think you can amount to.

In the captivating words of Martha Grimes: “We don’t know who we are until we see what we can do.” People are capable of incredible things, but it’s only up to us to explore what we can really achieve.

13

YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND “Did you make any friends?’’

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e’ve all heard this phrase at some point, many times if you’ve been to as many schools as I have - you walk through the door after that first day, set your bag down, and before you can even get your shoes off, there it is: ‘‘Well? Did you make any friends?’’

My typical answer to this on the first day, as on the second, the third, and often well past the tenth, is a simple, ‘‘No.’’ And once I’ve got a friend, a brief honeymoon period of a about week passes before the questions begin again: ‘‘Have you made any more friends?’’ ‘‘No, Mum.’’ ‘‘But what about those boys in your science class? You like talking to them, don’t you?’’

Well, yes - but is that friendship? I’ve never thought so. A few days ago, exasperated, my mother asked me, ‘‘Then, what exactly would be?’’

I’ve been thinking about the answer quite a lot recently, and I’ve realized that I don’t know.

Friendship is a relationship between two people who enjoy each other’s company - according to Google, the definition is ‘a bond of mutual affection between two individuals’. But at what point does enjoying each other’s company become friendship? When you joke together in class? When you talk at lunch? When you meet up outside of school? And what is a bond? People say that you when you’re friends with someone, you don’t expect anything from them - and yet mutual is in the definition. So then, what is friendship?

I drew a blank on this question - so I asked you. And, based on what you told me, I’ve put together my own definition.

A friend is someone who talks with you, laughs with you, grouses with you.

They are someone you can trust, someone you know you can rely on when times get tough. A friend is also someone who will spend hours on Google Translate, just so they can insult you

across four different languages - yet somehow they can make it sound affectionate. They’re someone to scream at when your favorite fictional couple finally gets together, and someone to cry on when your favorite band breaks up. A friend has your back, along with some tape and a ‘Kick Me’ sign. They also quite possibly have your favorite sweater, your annotated Harry Potter collection, your homework, and your wallet. But that’s okay, because a friendship is a mutual thing - which means that you probably have their favorite shirt, their missing pair of jeans, their headphones, and the love of their pets.

When friendship begins varies from person to person. For some, it’s simply once they’ve talked a few times, while others withhold the label until they’ve been to town together or visited each other’s houses. Some people consider it a matter of emotional connection and trust, some a matter of personal happiness, and some the result of a shared secret. Perhaps you might consider someone your friend when they stop asking you where your mum keeps the plates, or perhaps you’re ready for the label after exchanging a single high five. But everyone can agree that once your parents start automatically setting an extra place at the table and your dog’s tail wags more in their presence than in yours, you’ve got a friend.

Friendship, then, is a convenient word to label that weird mess of insults, secrets, inside jokes, and mushy moments that make up this unique type of relationship. Friendship forms when you hear someone mention the TV show you’re obsessed with, when you join a new after-school activity, when you sit next to a classmate on the bus.

And from then on, it’s a commitment.

Friendship means that they’ll keep your secrets, and you’ll do the same. They’ll help you with your homework, and you’ll laugh in their face and charge five francs when they need help with theirs.

It means that you’ll support each other, through good times (when they’ve got

Suhasini Mehra analyses emotions and relationships tickets to the new Star Wars movie) and bad (when they’re smashing furniture and screaming something incomprehensible about the personal project).

You’ll be each other’s light in the darkness, because each of you knows exactly what to say to make the other smile.

Friendship means that you make each other happy.

More than that, a friendship is a living creature, fed by shared smiles, texts, conversations, high fives, and jokes.

Every laugh and fond insult makes it grow; every harsh word and angry mutter makes a gash that may leave a scar. Each party involved has a shift for feeding the creature, turn by turn. Miss one shift, and there’s no problem - the creature will be fine. Miss two, three, four, and it’ll still bounce right back when you return, if slightly, almost unnoticeably slower each time. But miss too many shifts, and the creature begins to falter, begins to fade, until one day you walk in with the feeding bucket and find an empty room. A destroyed friendship is a time of drama and action, of arguments and all-caps wars on the group chat, of a creature wrought with wounds, unable to stand.

A lost friendship, on the other hand, is not all flashing lights and loud voices.

It’s quiet, subtle, characterized not so much by what is happening than what isn’t. Either way, the loss of a friendship is, in its own way, the loss of a life. No matter how it happens, it leaves something empty in the space it once held; the larger the friendship, the larger the space. It isn’t a good feeling.

But that’s alright - because loss is part of life, and friendships live and die like any organism. Those empty slots will turn up, from time to time, but it’s okay, because they’ll shrink away, too, as new people pass through and make places of their own.

And it can all start with a stranger on the bus.

14

FROG IN OUR THROAT

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eme, a term coined funnily enough by the one and only Richard Dawkins, has been a prominent reason as to why our generation browse the internet. Although the term ‘meme’ was initially a concept pertaining to the spread of cultural information, we now associate ‘memes’ with something humorous that trends on the interwebs. Memes tend to emerge out of nowhere and die when we lose interest, like Harambe or Bad Luck Brian.

The survivability of a meme basically depends on how much the content can be modified while keeping the jist of it.

An example is “Pepe the Frog”. Pepe (in its original form) is a character from “Boy’s Club”, a comic written by Matt Furie. Originally, Pepe was intended to look like stoner frog in his early 20’s making regretful decisions like many in that age group. However, through his

breakout on 4chan, people have recomposed this meme into the Pepe we are familiar with today including: ‘feels good/bad man’ memes, the smug frog, and not to mention the ‘rare’ Pepes.

Through variation, Pepe has consistently stood strong since 2005.

However, in recent days, Pepe has been receiving some flack as a result of Hillary Clinton’s presidency campaign denouncing the innocent meme as a symbol for white supremacy. This was Clinton’s effort to condemn Pepe variants in relevance to Donald Trump to hold back his memeful campaign which quickly lead to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL for short) to add the meme to its ‘Hate Symbols Database’.

Their reasoning for the frog’s condemnation was that “racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing us-

ers”. Although many may say that this statement is fully justified, numerous people on social media were outraged as a great deal of our meme culture revolves around dark, satirical humor, often shining light on topics such as race and pre-historical events. Ethics aside, communities on social media (myself included) were outraged by the induction as it labeled a meme harmless by itself a hate symbol when there are memes out there that exclusively make fun of suicide, disabilities, race, etc. Furthermore, the label has ruined the image and identity of ‘Pepe’ built by the social community on the internet over the years all due to an attempt at aiding a failed presidential campaign, which begs the question: “What came out of banning the meme?”. Although it is too early to tell, we can say for sure that it has no part in aiding Clinton to victory over ‘the Donald’.

ALL THAT ANTIMATTERS

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his November, before the eve of the election scare, the Year 13s went to CERN. The idea that we’d be able to sit down and learn about what’s going on at the forefront of Physics, was one that baffled most.

The trip was broken down into 3 parts.

At first there was a small presentation explaining what CERN does. CERN is used to study the fundamental particles and this is done by colliding them after accelerating them close to the speed of light. Particles are first accelerated using magnets and are run through larger and larger rings until they reach the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider (with a circumference of 27 km). After the proton is made to collide with another proton, huge detectors gather information about the collisions, which is in the ballpark of a few million gigabytes and the data is shared with physicists all around the world to gain a better understanding of what happened in the first few seconds of the Big Band.

Countries spend billions of dollars to

be able to access the equipment at CERN because, simply put, Physics. After the presentation that hardly any of us were able to grasp our head around, we were able to tour the museum at CERN. We were given the chance to visit CERN’s Anti-Matter Factory. It was as interesting to us as it sounds like a idea pulled out of Marvel. So, in theory, after the Big Bang, there should’ve been as much antimatter in the universe as there is actual matter. However, if we literally just look around us, we can notice that this is not the case.

For some odd reason that has not yet been proved, there is much more matter around us than there is antimatter.

This leads us to the million-dollar question, Why? (the question, if answered is literally worth a million dollars because that’s the prize money you receive after winning the Nobel Prize) Well, scientists at CERN are trying to create conditions that would sustain an antiparticle for longer than a few nanoseconds, and

Genta Hemmi

Shardul Bansal

they’ve been able to. In fact, today, an antihydrogen particle can be sustained for up-to a 1000 seconds (~16 minutes).

They use this valuable time to run experiments, collect large amounts of data and send it to physicists around the world.

As we got hungrier and hungrier, we sat down in the cafeteria to get some lunch, and never have 20 teenagers looked so out of place than they did at that moment. For now, we can only hope to fill in their shoes in the coming years.

15

MESS EN SCÈNE

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oyeux Noël, Felix! is a French play put together and performed by the Frogs, our ISL liaisons to the French world of theatre, led by Monsieur Fazan. The play follows Détresse Amitié, a call centre for over-the-phone assistance with those feeling suicidal, depressed or just in need of a compassionate soul to converse with. This play takes place on Christmas – a time of celebration and happiness. It doesn’t take long however, to discover that the folks at Détresse Amitié (Gregory Foster, Jennifer Fernandez-Owsianka, Valentina Rodriguez) are a lot more blasé with their customers than we all thought.

Their nonchalant responses were resolute and hilariously expressed by their actors, and were met with enormous guffaws from the audience. We watched as Mme. Musquin (Jennifer) got stuck in an elevator and became (believably) belligerent, or when Pierre (Gregory) revealed his present: the perverted pig portrait. Each increasingly outré caller was fantastically funny,

colourful, and extremely entertaining to watch. A killer wife [Amelia Lozinska-Brown], a lonely lady [Héloïse Bellouard], a suicidal man on edge (who gets hilariously pushed off it), a kinky caller [Chris Hauck] and a troubled tranny [Boris Buschle-Bello] all provided beautiful banter that added to the menagerie of laughs. I adored the quick exchanges and mixed monologues between the callers and the call centre – it included the audience and provides for an effectively effective effect.

We met with nettlesome neighbours ranging from a seemingly Slavic origin, and their gleeful grandmother [Marie Viola] to an absorbed actress [Amanda Bris], with a fabulous foreigner in the middle [Camilla Lozinska-Brown]. The play was pierced by the sudden appearance of our local transvestite, Boris, in the headquarters of Détresse Amitié.

This brought diverse distress to our call centre heroes, particularly Pierre, who found himself the focus of infatuation for the flamboyant personnage.

WOMEN UNI-TED

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y excitement and expectations for attending my first ever TED talk were high: I was hoping to be impressed, to have my ideas challenged, and finally to be blown away by other people’s actions, ideas and perspectives of the world. My expectations were built through having watched past talks made by powerful politicians, inspirational leaders, and experts on the matters being addressed.

On the day itself, I arrived, intrigued and ready to leave with a changed attitude towards some issues. This was not the case. Don’t get me wrong, the speakers were very impressive and they did cover relevant issues, but it just felt like most of them took this as an opportunity to boost their egos; increasing their worth and importance.

Despite this disappointment, I was amazed by the sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen, who launched their own non-governmental organization when they were only 12 years old. They insisted that it was time for us, as youth,

to stop complaining about the state of the world, and to try and sort it out instead. Their example showed me how age and gender are not (or should not be) a barrier when you would like to achieve your goals or have an impact on the world.

The next speakers, Kassidy Brown and Allison Rapson who founded the feminist media company ‘We are the XX’ made me feel empowered from the outset. Throughout their talk, they rightfully addressed how the patriarchy is to blame for women’s slow progress and how we, as women, should start from scratch. This was the highlight of the evening. It went downhill from there.

The talk that I was most excited to see ended being the most disappointing one. Having learnt that Stephanie Case (a human rights lawyer, ultrarunner and founder of Free to Run) would be there, I was hoping to learn how she helped innocent civilians and how women were affected or restricted by

Nikolay Zhurov As the hectic house performance progressed, we also met Zezette [Sophie Bettex], the candid cousin of Thérèse, who was running away from her alcoholic amant, Felix [Logan Suter]. Finally, as the ultimate climax approached and arguments flared up - even a gun was taken out - an untimely entrance by the elevator mechanic [M. Fazan] insolently interrupted the conflict and got himself shot. The characters all had a heartwarming reconciliation over the dismembering and disparition of the body, and the show came to the end.

Or was it? A couple [Thomas Spruch and Anouk Geene] broke out in argument in the audience, criticising the performance, harshly hammering it down. Fret not, for this was part of the act! Their ‘marriage’ concluded with the play. The French play was my favourite production I have seen in a long time, a hilarious mise-en-scène that I regret not going to the second time.

Amelia Lozinska-Brown the ongoing conflicts. Yet she barely touched these topics and she only briefly mentioned how her charity, Free to Run, helped these two Afghan women complete a marathon and how they defied the Taliban in the process.

Instead, she decided to talk about her running around a compound with a tire on her back, as a means of training for the ultra marathon. I have to give it to her, it is an amazing achievement being able to accomplish an ultra marathon of 260km. Yet I personally did not pay the entry fee to learn about her training and her body’s reaction to having run for God knows how long.

The ultimate purpose of TED talks is to inspire and encourage us to take action upon our dreams, or severe situations that we care about. I hope and strongly believe that the TEDx talks that shall be held at ISL after the winter break will challenge our ideas or perception on different current events.

16

THE LAST LAUGH

STUCO Beth Rennie

Tarryn Burrows Hello Students,

W

elcome to the very first student council column! I hope you’re all doing well and aren’t too stressed with this busy, busy semester! This section is a space where we, the Student Council, can discuss issues, congratulate and recognise students’ achievements to further involve our student body. It’s been a pretty busy start the year for the StuCo Team, and we’re aware that there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that many of you don’t see. Fear not because this year The Student Council is striving to hear all of your voices and answer any questions and concerns you may have within the school community! First, we will have a Q&A Session next Monday 21st of November in the MPR at 12:50.

Homeroom leaders have sent us the questions that you want answers to.

The panel of speakers includes very own Ms Secker, Mr Harrison and Mr Foley. If you’re wondering why we can’t wear ripped jeans, if you’ve never known the reason as to why chewing gum is banned or if you just want to come along and listen, you’re more than welcome! Second, I would like to congratulate the senior boys and girls football teams who represented ISL in the Lugano tournament this weekend!

Congratulations to all you who were involved in the French Play on the 1st and 2nd of November; your dedication was evident in the quality of the performance! On behalf of all the Student Council, we hope you have a great month, and as always feel free to contact us at:

FIND US ONLINE

issuu.com/thehigh

studentcouncil@islstudent.ch