PHOTO FEATURE
the Homecoming Parade.
PHOTO BY MEGAN SWARTZENDRUBER
Letter From The Editors
Dear Little Hawk readers,
It’s Tai Caputo and Yomi Hemley! We hope that the start of fall has been exciting. As the weather gets colder, we have been snuggled away in room 3109, working hard on making this magazine the best it can be!
We’d like to start the school year off with an entertaining magazine for everyone. We have some great stories in store for you, such as an in-depth story about the battle over phones, some great recipes to keep you warm, and a fun crossword on the back! We hope you have as much fun reading it as we had making it!
Cheers,
Brady Gluba '25 & Olivia Vande Berg '25 ride in a corvette during
THE BATTLE FOR THE PHONES
By Ethan Lalumiere , Lily Rantanen , and Martha Willard
Rantanen
Photos and graphics by Lily
Mutamun Awadalla
‘27 takes out his phone during class, ignoring instructions from his teacher to keep it in his backpack. Then, he refuses instruction to put his phone in the phone pockets, and is sent to the SPACE by a hall monitor.
“The first time I went to the SPACE was really, really bad, because they made me stay there for five hours. I got in trouble because a teacher falsely accused me of talking in class, but I didn’t, then I got sent to the SPACE,” Awadalla said. “They treated me very horribly. They were very mean. They made me sit there for five hours and do nothing.”
This visit wasn’t for phone use, but Awadalla has been sent to the SPACE for using his phone. The only difference was he only had to stay for the rest of the class period, opposed to 5 hours. As shown by his phone use during class, Awadalla disagrees with the current phone policy.
This fall, the ICCSD school board and districts across the country have been considering and implementing new phone policies. As of mid October, the ICCSD school board has been strongly considering a total ban on phone use during school.
“
“The current policy is on a good path to effectiveness. I think we could be a little stricter. I would just say that everybody puts the phone in the pocket as they walk in the door,”
Iverson said. “Then there wouldn’t be any class time wasted on teachers saying, ‘Hey, put in the pocket, and then students resisting, and then now… we’ve been derailed for 45 seconds, which is not a lot of time, but if that happens with six people, now minutes of class have been wasted.”
““BANNING PHONES IS TOO MUCH. A PHONE IS SOMETHING VERy PERSONAL.”
-MIAMEN ELAWAD
“I think really it’s just a matter of teachers actually enforcing the policy more. I feel like a lot of teachers are like, ‘We’ll do it. I’m gonna be stricter on this.’ And then they never are,” Aguirre said. “Personally, I’m not on my phone a whole lot during the school day, but what’s really distracting to me is people scrolling on Tiktok or texting someone
and I can see their phone screen.”
Though Iverson does not appreciate it when class time is wasted because of phone use, he does not think a full ban will be effective.
“I just don’t think it will work, because I think the people who are having phone problems now will continue to weasel around the rules,” Lucas Iverson said. “I don’t think it’ll be effective and I think it will be a lot of headaches and work for teachers.” Iverson is not alone in feeling that a complete phone ban would be unhelpful.
“I THINK THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HAVING PROBLEMS NOW WILL CONTINUE TO WEASEL AROUND THE RULES."
“I just feel like it’s not really necessary, because a lot of people need their phones for uses like emergency calls. A lot of people just need their phones,” Awadalla said. “It’s not okay to have everyone’s phone taken away.”
-LUCAS IVERSON
While Awadalla doesn’t think City High’s current phone policy is good, Lucas Iverson ‘27 feels differently.
“I feel like banning phones is too much. A phone is something very personal,”
Miamen Elawad ‘25 said. “Students have lives outside of school and if they ever need to communicate with friends or family outside of school, that should be an option.”
Stevie Aguirre ‘26 agreed that they feel there should not be a complete ban so students can communicate with parents and friends, especially to get rides home. However, they do think students currently have their phone out too often during class.
From an adminstrative standpoint, some teachers and administrators have become increasingly frustrated with the constant use of smartphones in school. Ruthina Malone, the president of the ICCSD school board, cited the loss of instructional time as a major reason to be worried about cell phones in school.
“We have heard from parents, staff, administrators and some students that the use of devices during instructional time has been distracting and has led to issues related to learning for students,” she said.
Besides instructional disruptions, advocates for phone policies say that phones have adverse effects on students’ mental health. People, especially teenagers and young adults, who spend more time on their phone report higher levels of anxiety and depression.
Malone also expressed concern that phones were escalating fights and other unwanted activities. Fights and disagreements that started outside of the school day were being coordinated and organized online during school hours. Bystanders were filming fights and posting them on social media.
Constant access to social media is also a concern. In the three weeks directly following the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia, over 700 students were arrested on charges related to violent threats made
against schools in the surrounding area. For the most part, they were spread through the use of social media.
Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana all have statewide restrictions banning students from using phones during school hours, with details varying between states. Five other states– California, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, and Virginia–all require school districts to have phone policies in place. Many others–although not Iowa–recommend or encourage policies.
Since August, the ICCSD school board has been working on a phone policy that will encompass all middle and high schools in the district. The final policy is set to be decided at the second school board meeting in October.
Right now, the Iowa City Community School District’s phone policy is based
on how administrators and staff feel they can enforce cell phone rules from building to building. However, things can differ from room to room as well, and standards are largely decentralized.
“One issue I remember is that there would be one teacher that was a stickler of no cell phones out, and then they'd have a teacher where the cell phones were out the entire class,” said Mitch Lingo, an ICCSD school board member and former teacher. “That lack of consistency throughout the school day created a lot of problems for all the teaching staff in my building.” These conflicting views can create different expectations from students about cell phone policies in their different classes. This has prompted the discussion around a potential new policy for the district.
A new book published this past March, The Anxious Generation by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, examines the rising levels of depression and anxiety in young people and attributes some of that to the rise of smartphones and social media use. The school board has focused efforts around reading and discussing this book and how it might affect a phone policy.
“ "that lack of coNsIsteNcy throughout the day created a lot of problems for all the teacINg staff IN my buIldINg." -mItch lINgo do you thINk cell phoNes should be baNNed?
smIth '27
“I can see social media negatively affecting all kids, regardless of who they are, because there's a lot of different messages that students are exposed to on social media,” ICCSD School Board President Ruthina Malone said. “I have to limit what I see and watch because there's a lot of negative information that comes from that if you're just consumed by it daily. The book [The Anxious Generation] talks about the overwhelming amount of time that young people are on their devices as opposed to connecting with each other face to face.”
Many different schools around the country have also been implementing new phone policies this school year. Most have based their decisions on the same rationale.
"No, I doN't thINk so. I feel lIke studeNts hav lIves outsIde of school, aNd If they ever Need to commuIcate wIth frIeNds or famIly outsIde of school that should be aN optIoN"
"I doN't. I thINk that IN thIs day aNd age wheN so much Is relIaNt oN phoNes that It's kINd of a NecessIty at thIs poINt."
"I thINk that they should Not be baNNed whatsoever. that would result IN much more chaos, coNflIct aNd coNfusINg thaN help out."
“Since we don't have concrete policies yet, I can tell you what some directors have vocalized that they would like to see,” Malone said. “Some are on the side of a total ban where you can have [your phone] on your person, but it has to stay out of sight in your backpack or wherever you secure it. It would have to stay there from First Bell to Last Bell. Some believe that [they can] try it where [students] can have it out at passing or at lunch.”
Right now, any new policy that could be created is in the development stage, with the board discussing things at its future meetings. They have also sent out a survey to all District students and parents regarding their feelings about cell phone usage in school and its potential impacts.
“We asked it [phone policy discussions] to go to the secondary principals (of ICCSD middle schools and high schools) to discuss what they believe is the most feasible option that we could apply across all secondary schools,” Lingo said.
As of mid October, the school board has asked Superintendent Matt Degner to provide input on a complete ban of cell pho ne use during school.
"We are considering a complete ban in order to remove the distraction on learning that cell phone use is causing students," board member Charlie Eastham said.
This policy would likely go into effect after winter break, near the start of January.
“The timeline that we initially talked about was the end of October, so we can put it in place as soon as folks come back from winter break. We've heard some directors vocalize that if we have a policy we feel good about, we should roll it out. We shouldn't wait,” Malone said.
look like, but the specifics of the policy are still unclear. However, the board members are in agreement that there needs to be a change soon.
Ali BorgerGermann’s classroom is silent as she waits for the bell to ring for First period. It used to be almost always full of chatter, but now all she sees is students looking at their phones.
literally all on their phones, completely silent. There’s none of the chit chat that is an essential component of school.”
“ "They’re hiding Them under The table. They’re hiding Them in The desks. They’re puTting Them in Their crotches."
-ali borger-germann
“If I come into my room and students have arrived early, they’re not talking to each other,” Borger-Germann said. “They’re
The district has some plans for when and what a policy change for cell phones could
is cell phone disTracTion a major problem in The classroom?
Borger-Germann teaches English and AP Capstone,. She has been at City High for 22 years, so she has seen how phones have had an impact on students’ learning.
“They are distracting academically, and they prevent students from socializing with each other in real time, in face to face ways,” Borger-Germann said.
Borger-Germann isn’t the only teacher who feels this way. According to Pew Research, 72% of high school teachers agree that students being distracted by cell phones is a major problem.
Some teachers believe that the best way to decrease distractions in the classroom caused by phones would be to ban them.
“I would be absolutely 100% behind [a phone ban], but I do think that it would be hard to enforce in the halls,” social studies teacher Nathan Hellwig said. “We had a complete ban on–this is going to date me a little bit–[iPods and mp3] things. We would tell kids in the hall to take their headphones off and stuff like that, and kids would be in the bathroom with them. I’m not going to tell a kid who’s in a stall, ‘Hey, take that off.’”
Nathan Hellwig has been teaching at Southeast Middle School and City High since 2000. The ban on iPods and mp3s took place in 2005-2006. Though Hellwig says a complete ban would be hard to enforce because of his experiences with the ban in 2005, Borger-Germann states the current policy also has problems in application.
“It requires me to be monitoring the room all of the time.” Borger-Germann said. “It doesn’t actually put the phones away. It just means they’re hiding them behind books. They’re hiding them under the table. They’re hiding them in the desks. They’re putting them in their crotches. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of places that I’ve seen phones, embarrassing places, honestly, embarrassing to them, but they have no compunctions.”
Borger-Germann is not alone in finding City High’s phone policy hard to implement. As of Spring 2024, 60% of high school teachers found phone policies hard to enforce. BorgerGermann also has ideas for a prospective phone ban that would be easier to apply in the classroom. One plan she proposes is having everyone use the phone pockets all class period, instead of having them used only when a teacher sees you using your phone, but she doesn’t think that that would help with students’ limited attention spans or declining social interaction.
“One method school districts have implemented [where] you check your phone in when you check into the building and
you check your phone out when you check out of the building have been a lot more successful.” Borger-Germann said, “[It] usually takes a couple weeks for students to adjust, but they do, and that seems to help a lot more with the fracturing of attention and the social components.”1
At Herbert Henry Dow High School in Midland, Michigan, junior Angelina Chen is no longer allowed to have her phone at school.
Starting this year, Dow High School has banned students from using phones in class, during passing time, and at school events required for classes.
“
use anymore], but they were also distracting in class,” she said. “It’s inevitable that you get a notification that you want to check and cheating with phones was also an issue.”
At first, feedback about the new policy was very negative. But as students got used to not being able to use their phones during class, they learned to adapt and use the extra time they would have previously spent on their phones to get more done.
“I don’t really feel lIke I’m losIng anythIng useful that I would be doIng on my phone.”
-juan rosado
“Phones were beneficial in some ways. They were helpful for communicating with parents about after school activities, and I used to use Google Calendar religiously [which I can’t
“Before the policy, I’d always reach for my phone during extra work time in class,” Chen said. “Now, I just get random small things done and I’m able to get more work done in class.”
Dow High School is not alone. Different districts across the country have also been starting new phone policies this year or are planning to after winter break.
Mitch Lingo, a school board member, has stated that a check-in-check out system will not be implemented because the number of students at each school makes it unrealistic.
“The new rule at OPRF is that you have to put your phone in a pocket when you walk into a classroom, and you aren’t allowed to be on it during the class,” said Juan Rosado ‘25, a former City student who now attends Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois. “I don’t really feel like I’m losing anything useful that I would be doing on my phone during class time,” Rosado said.
Oak Park and River Forest High School has implemented a new phone policy this year where students are required to put cell phones in little pockets called ‘phone homes’. ICCSD has also been looking at districts such as OPRF for effectiveness and applicability of potential policies.
“We gathered information from districts similar to Iowa City and within close proximity. Some of them are total bans, where you cannot use them at all on campus. Others, they allow at lunch and passing. Some allow for teacher discretion,” said Malone.
However, not all schools have a uniform policy. NSU University School in
Davie, Florida–near Miami–has a new policy starting last month that bans cell phones in bathrooms, but individual classroom policies vary by teacher.
“Especially in high school, you need to really focus on being successful in the future,” NSU student Sofia Lindley ‘26 said. “Because of that, I think they’re fine as long as you are doing okay. However, it’s obviously important to be respectful.
students who have had to adjust to a new phone policy this year, they have realized that it’s not all that bad.
“It‘s really not the end of the world and there are bigger things to worry about,” Chen said.
“ “It’s really not the end of the world and there are bIgger thIngs to worry about.”
-angelIne Chen
You can’t just have a teacher lecturing and you’re on TikTok or something.”
Lindley hasn’t noticed a huge change since the implementation of the new rule. Not as many people are meeting up in the bathrooms during class, but it wasn’t a huge issue before at NSU.
The looming prospect of a districtwide phone ban seems scary. But for
In the Iowa City Community School district, the final details of the new phone policy remain uncertain. But one thing’s for sure–the ICCSD school board and schools across the country believe that a phone policies are not just beneficial for student learning and mental health, but crucial.
“There’s still this sense of cruel optimism that to expect students to being able to have the power, the ability to [put their phones away and focus during class] by themselves at all times, and it’s not reasonable,” Mitch Lingo said.
CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
New Vanguard author Carmen Maria Machado speaks about censorship
TBy Tai Caputo
This the third in a series of interviews with authors whose work has been banned. Carmen Maria Machado is the award-winning author of three books, including the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the collection Her Body and Other Parties, which was named by The New York Times as one of fifteen titles in “The New Vanguard,” a list of “remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st Century.” Machado lives in Philadelphia and in Iowa City, where she spoke to The Little Hawk
City High students have returned this fall to the news that a federal judge has lifted the injunction against state law SF 496, which led to thousands of books being removed from Iowa public schools last winter, including from ICCSD libraries and classrooms. You are an award-winning and bestselling author whose work has been banned in multiple states. Which of your books have been banned and why?
I have had challenges on all three of my books: In the Dream House; The Low, Low Woods; and Her Body and Other Parties. The biggest time was with Dream House. When COVID was going on, there was a huge controversy where this school in Leander, Texas, outside of Austin, had this memoir unit in which [In the Dream House] was on a list of books students could choose from to read
and write about. I discovered [what was going on] when someone messaged me on Instagram saying, ‘I’m in this district. There was a school board meeting yesterday and somebody was reading passages of your book out loud, and also had a sex toy that they were, like, waving around.’ So it was very weird. I found and watched the video, and at first it was kind of funny because, like, this is obviously really f***** up and stupid. But [as I watched], it was like, ‘This book is grooming our children.’ It got really homophobic, really quickly, and I was like, ‘Okay, it’s not so funny, it’s actually really bad.’ I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about it. And then Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, wrote a letter at some point to the public school districts in Texas, and my book was one of two that were mentioned by name. So [the memoir] is the one, I’d say, that is most frequently banned. However, somebody also banned the graphic novel, The Low, Low Woods, in, I think, Louisiana. And years ago, before this current wave of censorship, there was also this time when an inmate in a women’s prison in, I wanna say Missouri, had requested my book to be in the library, and the correctional department rejected it.
That sounds like a lot.
Yeah, it’s really weird, because when I was a kid, I was very involved in my local library and local public library. I volunteered there every summer for years and years. And every year, we would have banned book week, and they would make a big display of all the
books that had been banned, and I always wanted to read the banned books. I would always make a beeline for the display, because I was like, ‘That’s what I want, is what people are telling me I’m not supposed to be reading.’ But it is really bizarre to become an adult and write books and then have those books [be banned]. It’s actually quite f***** up. I just hate it so much.
Your work is known for its vivid and honest portrayal of queer sexuality and sexual relationships. The Iowa law specifically says that school districts should eliminate books that contain “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” Do you think this law is intended to focus on straight sexuality or queer sexuality? Or both?
I think it’s both, because even if you’re talking about heterosexual relationships, work that portrays sex as positive or neutral is a danger to their bottom line, regardless of whose sexuality it is. I think they like to focus on queer and trans people for obvious reasons that aren’t even worth explaining—yeah, they’re homophobic—but I do think that generally speaking, the kinds of people who are passing these laws, who are advocating for these groups, whatever: they are also just generally very sex-negative. (I would say, specifically homophobic and transphobic.) And I think, if you had a straight character having a sexual awakening, I also don’t think they would really like that, because that would show agency and pleasure, which would be against their philosophy.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
We know from reading George Orwell’s 1984 that sex in books can be an anti-government political statement of personal liberty. Do you see your work as political? In what way?
I think there’s a fairly good argument to make that all art is political in some way. This always felt like a very understood thing to me, and yet people do push back against the [idea]. But even something that considers itself apolitical, is political, by the fact that it considers itself, or the author considers it, to be apolitical. And I think that what we commit to the page as authors, what gets bought by publishers, what gets read widely: those are all political questions.
I do see my work as political, and I don’t mean that in the sense that I sit down and am like, ‘What is my agenda?’ I exist in the world as a Latina, as a fat person, as a queer person, as a woman. And existing in those spaces and asserting my right to make art about what I want, and peoples’ ability to read and access that art, is also obviously very political. But I think that’s true even if the author is not queer, or is white, or whatever. I still think that what comes to readers and how readers access that work is also a political question. So yes, I would say that my work is political, but I would also say that all art is in some way political, even if [some people] think that politics does not exist [in art].
Why do you think banning books is so important to conservative lawmakers when they have not banned content that is easily available on phones and computers?
You mean, [why have they not banned online] pornography, or publicly available sexual content? It’s weird, but I think the fact
that it’s art makes a difference. I think that if you’re trying to keep a young person’s brain very shut down, [content] coming in via art is actually more powerful than that coming in via other methods.
I think they mostly just see it as an easier fight. Because it’s easier to say, ‘What about the children?’ and ban a book at a certain school–take it out of a library, you can physically remove it–as opposed to trying to ban, like, sexual content on the internet, which is essentially an impossible task. How would one even do that? So I think for them, it’s an easier battle. And I think they do actually see education as an existential threat. There are ways in which [book banning] becomes a stand-in for other things.
Why do you think people don’t want teenagers to read about queer sex?
I think some people do believe that just by accessing material about [queer] sex, it could, I dunno, ‘gayify’ a straight person. But that’s not of course what happens. What happens is a person who is new in their sexuality who might access some kind of sexual content, might sort of be like, ‘Oh, am I gay?’ It creates this avenue for them to understand [themselves]. And also, in this case in the context of a piece of art, it’s like you’re reading something and understanding something that’s happening, artistically speaking, and you’re also getting this dose of yourself. Now if you are a bigot who doesn’t want your kid to be gay, I can see how that would translate–if you are very, very stupid–it would translate in your brain, to, like, ‘Oh, my kid read a book and became gay.’ But that’s not what happens; we know that’s not what happens.
But I do think that again, parents like this,
and the politicians who are trying to exploit those parents, they keep a tight rein on their families, and they keep this sort of boundary around their kids. That’s what parents do–they’re trying to instill their kids with their values, etc., and the hard thing is, like, when you are in a public school system, it’s not just your child. It’s other children, other peoples’ children. And I am of the philosophy that if you really want to restrain what your kids are reading to such an extent, then you should [be] homeschooling your kids. And that still sucks–I hate that–but that is your right as a parent. Until that child is 18 and then they can go out into the world and do whatever they want. I don’t have kids, but if I did have kids, I don’t want some other parent at my kids’ school who doesn’t share my values telling kids what they are and aren’t allowed to read, especially when professional educators, like the teachers at these schools, are saying ‘We think this book has some value, or we think that kids having access to this book is important,’ which is their job, not the parents’ job.
Do these kinds of bans change the way you think about writing?
What an interesting question. . . No, in the sense that, I’m not letting random homophobes and politicians dictate what I write. That isn’t interesting to me. I also recognize that I am not explicitly writing for teenagers, and if I were, and my work were getting censored—I know that it wouldn’t affect me necessarily, but—I can imagine that if you would write books for teens and those books were constantly getting censored, I can imagine how that would kind of mess with your head a little bit and it might get hard to approach your work. I don’t think that’s true for me specifically. Truly, I am such a cantanker-
“I’M NOT LETTING RANDOM HOMOPHOBES AND POLITICIANS DICTATE WHAT I WRITE.”
- CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
ous, contrarian person, that I’m just like, ‘If they don’t want me to write about this, then I’ll just write more of it. It’s fine. What are they gonna do about it?’ And I feel very lucky to feel that way. But I could absolutely understand, intellectually, how for somebody it would actually create–at least, weirdness, in their experience of committing something to the page.
I do feel lucky in the sense that, I decided a long time ago the kind of work I wanted to make, and this was long before I was published. When I was in school I made decisions about what kind of artist I wanted to be and what I wanted to [write] and what my voice was going to be. And I feel like I made that decision and stuck to it and have never really had to change that, ever; I just sort of just kept honing my voice more and more. But I could understand–especially if that was where you were focusing your energy, working for children or teens–I could see how that would feel weird. Not because you’d done something wrong, but because censors put voices into your head. Which sucks, and is awful.
How would you describe your experience of being an author whose work has been banned? And living in a red state?
It makes me really sad–me, in sort of a literal sense, but also [in the sense of what] I kept thinking about especially with this thing that was going on in the Leander School District. I was thinking about the queer kids in those schools. This is what I argued in the oped I wrote for The New York Times. I was like ‘You know, my book is about seeing things that are hard to see, and the lessons that I learned about my case, like domestic violence in queer relationships; and so there is something really f***** up about telling teens and queer teens that you don’t want them knowing or learning about this stuff, even indirectly. I think also it’s hard because I know a lot of these bans are framed as ‘protecting the children’ or ‘keeping kids safe.’ But that’s not what keeps kids safe. And also if you scratch all of this rhetoric, right underneath that little surface of keeping kids safe is racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. [It’s] not that subtle.
And it makes me really sad for the queer kids in these communities, it makes me really sad even for nonqueer kids, kids who are learning about people who aren’t like them, you know? And it’s heartbreaking as an artist, and–and I feel weird calling myself this–but as a queer elder. As a person who is, you know, a queer adult, it’s really terrible, because for me, like, one of the weirdest things about coming of age when I did—in high school in the early 2000s—is that I just didn’t see stuff about people like me, so I sort of struggled to understand who I was. In some ways that’s different now because of the internet, obviously. As I’m sure you
know, it’s really different being your age and there’s a lot more out queer people. At that age, I knew one girl who was gay, when I was in high school, and she was actually amazing to me, because I was like, ‘Wow, you really know who you are.’ But you know, you just never met other queer people. . . So I think that part of it is they [the people banning books] can see that they’re losing this fight—that queer people are now able to understand themselves earlier in their lives, but they are trying really hard to make that. . . [trails off]. . . There are queer kids in red states. I think also people forget this. Even when you’re in the most conservative place, there are still queer, trans, like, they still exist. And we shouldn’t abandon them, we should be fighting for them, even if we’re coming from places that are more progressive.
What else would you like to add on the subject of book bans in the local schools?
“ULTIMATELY, THOSE BOOKS PERSIST.”
Young people are so vulnerable. This is something that I think about as a teacher, and as an adult in the world (I’m not a parent, but I’m an aunt.). Kids are so vulnerable. And teachers and people who are trying to make curriculum for young people—to not just learn and grow as thinkers and as people in the world, but to help them also see themselves and understand themselves—they’re the best of us. And they do not get paid enough to do this really good work with young people. And the people who either try to interfere with that work or use other people to interfere with that work as a way of furthering a political agenda are the worst of us. And it feels wild to me that in the year of our lord 2024 that we’re still dealing with this, and this is happening on any kind of state level. It’s wild, it’s deeply upsetting, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I wish I could be like, ‘It won’t survive, or it won’t last.’ Ultimately, those books persist, and young people get to grow up and make whatever decisions they want to make about the art that they access and consume. But as somebody who spent my young teenage years not really understanding who I was, it breaks my heart to think that some random politician who’s trying to further this bigger political agenda is going to interfere with young peoples’ abilities to access art. That is terrible, and yet people do it all the time. Obviously we’re in this weird historical moment right now that’s been going on for a while and we’re just in this cultural contraction. . . but it’s terrible. It’s terrible and it feels very discouraging. It’s very heartbreaking. And I feel sad—very, very sad.
- CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
PHOTO BY HATTIE CONOVER
SAUCY PEANUT RAMEN
Quick Peanut Sesame Noodles
By Hattie Conover & Ruby Schulz
Qw/ Sautéed Vegetables
uick and easy meals are always a positive, especially for busy students. This one is packed with flavor and a bit more nutrition than the classic ramen for a weekday lunch. Enjoy with a fried egg for extra protein. I use Trader Joe’s Squiggly Knife Cut Style Noodles because I prefer a bouncy and chewy
texture of noodles so these have been my favorite that I’ve found but regular ramen noodles of any kind work great as well.
Noodles Ingredients:
1 pack Trader Joe’s Squiggly Knife Cut Style Noodles (sauce packet optional)
1/2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp kewpie mayo
½ tsp honey
Green onion & Sesame seeds(optional but recommended)
Sautéed Vegetables Ingredients:
½ a zucchini sliced into rounds
2 mushrooms of any kind
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 tsp sesame oil (swap for chili sesame oil for more spice)
2 tsp soy sauce
Instructions:
1. Boil noodles according to the package
2. Heat up sesame oil in a pan
3. Add garlic, mushrooms, and zucchini and saute for 4 minutes
4. Add soy sauce to the pan with vegetables
5. Take off the heat when the vegetables are cooked to your liking
6. Once the noodles are cooked drain them and add them to a bowl
7. Mix in sauce packet, peanut butter, soy sauce, kewpie mayo, and honey
8. Garnish with thinly sliced green onions and toasted sesame seeds
9. Enjoy the vegetables and noodles separately or together!
LH GAMES
VERTICAL:
1. What you feel during Thanksgiving
2. What leaves do during this season
3. What you carve for Jack-O-Lanterns
4. Movies like Scream, The Shining, & Halloween are this
5. The month Halloween is in
6. The ---- of giving
ACROSS:
7. The current season
8. What the weather is now
9. Red, orange, & yellow things that fall from trees
10. What you wear during Halloween
11. Sport that you play with a brown ball
By Yomi Hemley