Moorestown Friends School, Moorestown, NJ
Friday, December 15, 2023
2023-2024, Issue #2
Opposing Viewpoints Create Tension Around Student Speech The Israel-Hamas war amplified an atmosphere of social pressure that’s been simmering for close to a decade.
By Dinah Megibow-Taylor ’24
In This Issue Six students attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) from November 29 to December 2 Page 2 Get a glimpse of the ad-hoc process through the Intensive Learning Ad-Hoc, meeting each Friday Page 2
Features WordsWorth visualizes Danielle Dayton’s 20 year tenure to celebrate her retirement Page 6 Seniors Foluke Balogun and Chelsea Mohammed signed their Letters of Intent to play DI womens’ soccer on December 1 Page 7
Pop Culture With the return of the original format of the viral video game “Fortnite,” students experienced a wave of nostalgia Page 3 Art Director Chloe Marshall ’26 predicts the hottest fashion trends of 2024 Page 3
Opinion The WordsWorth Editorial Board reflects on this year’s changed Thanksgiving Happening format Page 8
Us When...
...we see papers crumpled in the stairwell on Distribution Day Photo shared by Internet Archives on Flickr with no known copyright restrictions.
On October 7, Hamas inflicted a series of brutal attacks on Israel, sparking an ongoing war that has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians from an Israeli counter-offense. Students have since engaged in several community forums to discuss the conflict, but they are still hesitant to discuss their stances freely. This hesitancy highlighted the social pressure that students feel generally when speaking openly on issues ranging from the student government to the international political scale. Since former president Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the American cultural landscape has shifted drastically. Cancel culture looms large, pervasive and effective in stifling speech. Social media compounds the problem for Gen-Z; it has both shifted discourse towards online forums, rendering adolescents ineffective at engaging in productive discussion, and it has made it possible for past words and actions to trail the user. The Israel-Hamas war is simply the most recent issue that exemplifies the general hesitancy to speak openly in public forums. Post October 7, the first message that Upper School students received in response to the conflict was an email on October 10 from the Jewish Student Union (JSU) faculty facilitator Debra Galler, who publicized that an impromptu JSU meeting would be happening that day during lunch, inviting “all Jewish-identifying students” to attend. That afternoon, students received a statement released by Head of School Julia de la Torre addressing the conflict, in which she emphasized the importance of reflecting upon the conflict using the Quaker values. This was the only official statement released by Moorestown Friends. Galler wanted to offer a space for Jewish students to gather because she heard fears from Jewish students in the wake of October 7, and she and Dan Sussman, the other faculty advisor of JSU, believed it was the best course of action. She noted that the Israel-Hamas conflict was a “very fraught topic all around,” comparing it to the topic of Trump’s election: “The reason I make that equivalency is because we’re usually a pretty outspoken community, and in both of those instances it felt like people felt more silenced than willing to speak.” Diversity Committee also functioned as a space in the weeks following the October
7 attacks where Upper School students — regardless of religious affiliation or political position — were invited to engage in a discussion of the topic in a worship sharing format on November 1, facilitated by student Diversity Committee clerks Haila Desai ’24 and Sophia Lalani ’25. Students sat in a circle and went around, where they could speak out of the silence using the ‘I’ perspective to share their feelings about the conflict or choose to pass. After the circle was completed, anyone was invited to speak. This discussion method was utilized to “give people the chance to speak but not force them to speak,” said Lalani. In addition to this discussion, Diversity led a meeting that focused on media literacy in regard to the conflict. Despite these efforts, some students, including Ali Sabir ’26, sophomore class president and Muslim Student Union (MSU) member, are still hesitant to openly share their views with the community, especially following the community’s continued response to the Israel-Palestine conflict. “In general, I don’t [share my views with the community]. With close friends, I do … Bigger spaces, absolutely not … It’s a small school; everyone knows everyone.” Sabir attended the Diversity Committee discussion, but did not choose to share, a choice that he rarely makes in discussion forums, he added. In unofficial school spaces, such as the hallways or public spaces during passing times, Sabir has been confronted with the topic: “I’m just … trying to get to history [class], and somebody will just bring up something about Hamas, which I find ridiculous.” Nicholas Caputo ’24, chooses not to engage with school-sponsored public forums, citing an atmosphere of intense judgment that he finds increasingly prevalent in the community outside of MFS: “I’ve talked to alums who have come here for years and they say, ‘No, this [atmosphere] is a relatively new thing,’ so going off of that, this is something that’s been [brewing] since about 2016, ever since everything got very polarized.” “We really tried to use Diversity [Committee] as a space for students to come and talk about their feelings about Israel and Palestine, no matter what side they’re on and to learn about the conflict from the perspective of other students,” added Desai, who noted that she observed tension between students during the discussion. “Obviously
we are a pretty divided community, and there are some students of the minority opinion who do not feel safe to share.” Most statements shared during the meeting were by Jewish students expressing their fear and anguish; most were ardently in support of Israel’s right to exist and its defense against Hamas attacks. There were also students who expressed their antipathy towards the pro-Israel position. From both sides, there was an acknowledgement of the horrors of war that have occurred, including the deaths of innocent civilians — Israeli and Palestinian alike. Though these community discussions took place in October and November, this hesitancy to share in large forums is endemic. The group setting where this atmosphere is most starkly highlighted is Meeting for Worship for Business (MFWFB), where student engagement with school-related discussion topics is significantly lower than that in smaller student government committees, such as Agenda Committee. As a student government faculty adviser, one of Upper School Director Noah Rachlin’s jobs is to work with the six student government Clerks on devising methods to improve student participation in larger forums. “I observe people who articulate and act in accordance with the idea that there’s a ‘chilling effect’ in the community, such that they don’t feel as though socially, they [can] say certain things,” said Rachlin. In response, in recent meetings, he has worked with the Clerks to “build in some of these lower-lift systems to try to utilize to help people have more positive moments of interaction with each other, which it feels like folks aren’t having in the US right now” to shift away from the model of the ‘turnand-talk,’ — where students talk in small groups and the clerks travel around the room and gather students’ ideas — which is the primary mode of facilitated discussion used in MFWFB. Some students with opinions on either side of any particular issue are hesitant to speak openly, demonstrating that this fear is not specific to one group: “Everyone’s very judgmental at this school...if you don’t agree with the dominant view, you’re an outcast,” said an anonymous student. The student said that they neither wished to share during the MFWFB discussion about Thanksgiving Happening for fear of rebuke, nor openly share their moderate political views in public spaces. Rachlin is concerned with remedying the issue of social pressure rather than building systems for conversation that accommodate that atmosphere: “I would rather we be working to address that challenge rather than seemingly just accepting that as a reality and building a system that matches that thing,” said Rachlin.
The Man Behind the Music: Steve Kolaris and the Final Friday Bell By Charlotte Nesevich ’25 MFS students’ ears are long accustomed to the ring of the bell that sounds to mark the beginning or end of a period — except for the final dismissal on Fridays, which is always marked by a cheerful tune rather than the traditional rhythmic chime. “I do look forward to the songs, it does make [Fridays] even better,” said Ben Batra ’24. The man behind the music is the Director of Technology Steve Kolaris. Kolaris mentioned that the tradition first began “years ago” when he was experimenting with the newly implemented speakers: “ I thought it would be nice and uplifting to get a song to get us going into the weekend. We started doing it more and more, and then it just became a regular tradition.” Caitlin Bailey ’25 also appreciates the music and the energy it brings to the school on Friday afternoons: “I like it when they play music on Fridays … it’s a nice thing to look forward to on a Friday afternoon when you’re going home for the weekend.” While the weekly songs have become second nature to many students, Kolaris says that the hardest part is actually “trying to pick the songs. Because [the songs] obviously have to be positive, and clean. A lot of the popular
songs aren’t as clean as [faculty and staff would] like them to be. You’ve got to think that whatever you play is appealing to a large range of ages.” Rather than selecting randomly from a
“The man behind the music is the Director of Technology Steve Kolaris.” pool of approved songs, Kolaris tries to keep a certain cultural relevance in his choices: “Some of it is tied into an event that’s going on that month or that week. Sometimes it’s club-related, or related to an activity, or a holiday, or a culture … Sometimes, I’ll play something about rain if we’ve had rain that week. Or I’ll play holiday songs, because the holidays are coming up.” In the past, Kolaris has catered the music to support local sports teams by playing the Eagles’ hype song “Fly Eagles Fly” during
their Super Bowl campaign in February of 2023. Previously, when the Phillies played in the World Series in November of 2022, Kolaris aired their hype song, “Dancing On My Own” by Calum Scott. After singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffet passed away at the age of 76 in September 2023, Kolaris played Buffet’s hit song “Margaritaville” in honor of his career. Kolaris said, “Maybe a lot of kids didn’t know him, but they were probably going to hear about it. So it was a neat opportunity to introduce them to new music. A lot of people do come up to me, and they ask me about songs I played.”
Steve Kolaris and his desk set-up. Photo by Charlotte Nesevich ’25.