By Maya Koeppen ‘17 Over the years, everyone’s favorite personality emoticons have been criticized for being too limited in terms of choices. Apple offers a wide variety of Caucasian skin tone emojis, ranging from two girls dancing to a small family, but no other races. The only racial emojis include a dark skinned emoji with a supposedly religious headdress and … Read More
By Stacey Wells ’15 As many individuals recognize, our country needs a major renovation of its educational system. Unfortunately, the higher powers seem to believe that more testing will solve everything. The federal government has been pushing for an increase in testing for years and it has finally begun in MCPS. The PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of College and Careers) … Read More
By Madison Dymond ‘16 When it comes to foreign language classes, most students are lazy. They have no real desire or motivation to speak anything other than English, and these classes are treated merely as obligations. Many students study a language for six years and are unable to hold a conversation in that language. They rarely take these classes seriously, … Read More
By Stacey Wells ’15 Americans often strongly voice their opinions about controversial issues, but it would be more beneficial if they would stop overreacting to every little thing. During the NFL Playoffs, McDonalds aired a commercial that depicted different towns and their local McDonald’s signs. The signs contained messages, such as ‘We Remember 9-11,’ ‘Boston Strong’ and even personal messages … Read More
By Julia Gajewski-Nemes ‘15 Over the past couple of years, anxiety disorders and depression have presumably impacted more teenagers nationwide than ever before. While these mental illnesses need to be taken seriously and awareness of them has spread rapidly, social media websites such as Twitter, with pages such as “@cuttingquotes” and “@depressingthoughts,” and Tumblr, with blogs such as “depressingquotesforyou,” have … Read More
By Jack Armstrong ’15 San Francisco based startup Uber, a taxi service which offers luxury sedans to riders from an app on their smartphone, has been under attack by major cities around the world, most recently Toronto, for operating ‘illegally’ by offering non-licensed taxi drivers in unmarked cars to riders. Since its founding in 2012, the San Francisco based company … Read More
By Steven Witkin ’16 Recently, global resource sustainability has evolved from a casual consideration to an urgently relevant issue, spawning government agencies and studies dedicated to finding out how to delay the exhaustion of resources. There have been numerous efforts to reduce resource consumption, yet most of these developments and attitudes have not reached schools, especially involving the consumption of … Read More
By Zachary Stubblefield ’15 Do not be afraid to use black as a descriptor. Far too often people tip-toe over someone’s skin color like it is sacrilege to point it out. They fear that if they refer to someone by their skin tone and ethnicity, they’ll be labeled as racist. That is such as unnecessary taboo; all it does is … Read More
By Betselot Wondimu ’15 On November 11, MCPS’s Board of Education voted 7-1 to only list days of school closed for the 2015-16 school year while not relating those days to any holidays. The vote came after outrage from the county’s Muslim community, whose protests to close schools on two of their main holidays were rejected with a Board vote … Read More
By Julia Gajewski-Nemes ’15 As high school seniors around the nation continue to perfect their early applications for colleges, many do not realize that social media activity can hinder their chances of being accepted. In a Kaplan survey of college admissions officers from 381 different institutions, it was found that 31 percent of the officers visit applicant’s social media pages … Read More