BY MIMI HUCKINS ’21
In my junior year of high school I had the same conversation with a teacher that I always had to. We had just split up the class for two separate, smaller discussions and I had not spoken. While we retreated back to our classroom after the brief conversation, the teacher made a remark about me not participating. “I’m trying,” I said timidly. He scoffed and said, “Really?” I spent the rest of the class trying not to cry.
BY NINA LARBI ’22
This year, I succumbed to capitalist America and went Black Friday shopping at a local mall in my hometown. Although I left the hellscape that is the Willow Grove Mall’s Sephora empty-handed and with my pitiful $20 bill still tucked into my wallet, I could not stop thinking about the advertisements, the environment, the staff and the store itself. Advertisements in the store displayed bright makeup looks, from red eyeshadow to purple highlighter, and showcased a diverse cast of models.
BY CHLOE JENSEN ’20
As the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world according to the Population Reference Bureau, the United States is no stranger to the mistreatment of prisoners. With the United States’ problem with incarceration comes another issue: the lack of information that prisoners receive. At the end of last year, several states including Texas and New York began banning books in their prisons. Although these laws have operated in several states for many years, Texas’ recent bill received special attention for banning more than 10,000 books. New York’s bill was even more extreme: the state now is only allowing books from five vendors, which greatly limits the number of books prisoners can read and the knowledge they can acquire, according to Newsweek.
