Pa
COFFEEHOUSE CATCH-UP • Pages
8&9•
MODEL STATUS Haven sophomore gives a glimpse into her life of pageantry.
PantherPress Strath Haven High School, Wallingford PA
Janbruary 2019
Haven Discusses Student Safety One Year Later Abby Loiselle, ‘19 Co-Editor-in-Chief
8
STUDENT VOICES: Haven students participate in a walkout on December 19, 2018 to protest administrative response to the letter and photograph that surfaced earlier that week. Many students who protested felt confused and angry due to lack of information from administration. Photo courtesy Lilianna Torpey
Wallingford-Swarthmore, Post-Letter Two months have passed since the incident that rattled the community to its core. However, the ghost of the racist letter continues to silently haunt Wallingford-Swarthmore. Maddie Marks, ‘19 Co-Editor-in-Chief
S
hock, anger, and sadness. These are three of the many emotions that settled upon the Wallingford- Swarthmore School District and surrounding community the week of December 17, 2018. Surfacing from the social media landscape of the area came two appalling displays of racism and hatred: the first being a picture of a note addressed to “non U.S. citizens” and the second being a picture of two figures in what appear to be makeshift Ku Klux Klan hoods. According to Nether Providence Police Chief David Splain, the Police Department became aware of the note on Monday, December 17, at which point the investigation began. As of the most recent reports made public by the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, the investigation has been handed off to the Delaware County District Attorney, Katayoun M. Copeland. There are currently ten detectives working on the case under her supervision. On December 19, 2018, students held a walkout to protest the lack of discipline from administration to the individuals behind the letter. On December 21, 2018, Dr. Brown addressed the situation via a video shown to all Haven students and staff; in it, he explained that this type of hatred is not acceptable in the community. Later in the day, students were invited to an optional forum in the auditorium to express their thoughts and emotions. On January 2, 2019, the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District hosted an evening meeting to hear concerns about the issue, present the facts of the case, and take questions. Formally, the situation was mediated. But on January 3, 2019, the district and its surrounding area woke up tasked with a challenge that would prove to
be almost more difficult than the events leading up to it. Wallingford-Swarthmore would have to not only live with what had happened, but continue to function and thrive as a community in the wake of it.
T
wo months have passed since the letter and the photograph surfaced, and many students believe that the time has diluted the issue significantly. “The situation is over,” said senior Mei-Belle Sun. “People have moved on.” In contrast with the tumultuous week of December 17, Wallingford-Swarthmore has since settled back into its normal, peaceful routine. Sophomore Maria Andraos added that “The whole thing has sort of blown over. ... No one really talks about it anymore.” It is undeniable that the school and community have gone practically silent about the issue. Many were wary about the return to school from winter break, which fell the week after the height of the incident. However, hardly a word of it was whispered, causing the community to wonder how the issue slipped out of minds so easily. “I think winter break was pretty well-timed in that it gave everybody a chance to sort of breathe,” said visual communications teacher Ms. Kate Plows. Sun agreed that winter break served as a decompression period. “I was mad at first, like most people, but mostly I was shocked that something like this would happen in Wallingford of all places,” said Sun. “But as time passed, I’ve come to accept that things like this will really happen anywhere.” Understandably, when the time came to return to school, everyone had absorbed the events and came to terms with the circumstances in their minds, like Sun did. Continued on Page 3>>
00 marches, 115 school shootings, 98 deaths, 69 gun control measures, one year. February 14th, 2019 marks one year since the infamous Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting. As Emma Gonzalez expressed during her speech at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C.: “In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 more were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone in the Douglas community was forever altered.” The tragedy at Stoneman Douglas reached far beyond the small community of Parkland, Florida as it once again showed the reality of gun violence in schools across the nation. Students throughout the country, from Florida to Wallingford, felt the aftershock of the deaths at Stoneman Douglas. Parkland followed a long string of mass school shootings, dating back to the Columbine shooting of 1999, where 13 people were killed at the hands of two students. Since that day in April, there have been an average of 10 school shootings a year. 2018 surpassed all previous statistics with an average of one school shooting per week. Labeled as the “Mass Shooting Generation,” Generation Z has used 2018 as a platform for “March for Our Lives,” a movement to end gun violence in schools. Despite the drastic growth in school shootings, 2018 was also marked by the greatest change in gun control since 2012 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Following the advocacy of students from Parkland and a surge of movements across the country, state legislatures passed 69 gun control measures. More than half of the states passed at least one gun control measure in 2018. The March for Our Lives policy agenda explains the students’ fight for universal background checks, high capacity magazine ban, and funding for gun violence research. Florida has seen the most radical changes to gun laws and received the most backlash from the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a result. Florida legislature passed a bill named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas that raised the minimum age to purchase a gun to 21, a move that the NRA claims to violates the 2nd and 14th amendments of
Continued on Page 3>>
STUDENT ACTION: One month after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Haven students participated in a walkout to remember the victims and call for action. Photo courtesy WSSD Facebook
g e 11
First semester of Chromebooks has come and gone... did they meet expectations?
ge 4
NEW TECHNOLOGY
Pa