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The Bell R inger
Titans’ Marcus Mariota: Here to Stay or Time to Move On? Page 4 Blek Le Rat: Parisian Artist Paints The Hill Pages 12-13 Montgomery Bell Academy | 4001 Harding Road, Nashville, TN November 30, 2018 | Volume LXXV, No. 3
State of Mind
The Bell Ringer investigates the role of MBA’s guidance counseling department in a world that better acknowledges mental health issues.
and planning, John Curry and Mrs. Bassett organized a panel on religion in which practicing religious leaders from Christianity, Islam, and Judaism came to talk to students about their varying belief systems. The religious leaders described their own journeys of faith and also talked about religion on a broader scale by discussing the importance of inter-faith dialogue and the role of religion in our society See ISRAEL, Page 5
See MIDTERMS, Page 8
PHOTO: Webb Hunt
MBA’s New Religious Diversity Initiative and Trip to Israel It’s difficult to know where to start a conversation about religious diversity at a school where the vast majority of the student body practices one religion. Often times, when we discuss diversity at MBA, ethnicity and political ideology are the two social signifiers around which we discuss oppression and difference. Although those discussions are
certainly important for students to have, religion is often unnecessarily footnoted as a topic of discussion. The discussion of faith only appears in the form of a prayer at important student events. However, this year marks the start of a change in perspective at MBA. In the form of several different initiatives, students and the administration have started the ball rolling in their consideration of the role religion plays at MBA. Through their own initiative
By: John Raulston Graham Opinions Editor Almost every boy, at some point during his six years traversing of MBA, will experience a differing political perspective. MBA is home to political ideology ranging from that of the son of a liberal, Nashville, political family to the Belle Meade cowboy, who possesses a large truck and extreme adoration of the second amendment to nearly everything in between those two extremes. MBA is a place of limited cultural or regional diversity, as almost every student shares a similar identity, class, family background, and certainly education. As The Bell Ringer previously reported during the 2016 election, votes were split nearly down the middle of the school between Republicans and Democrats, and during the primaries the leading vote getters were Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, both relative extremists. In the latest midterm election, the school division held fairly firmly split, as the school overall voted a split ticket, Bill Lee for governor and Phil Bredesen for governor. While this hardly reflects the extremism of the 2016 election at MBA, it indicates the divisions within the school. The lack of extremism could be a sign of progress and an inception of civility in reaction to the presidential election. In interviews conducted by The Bell Ringer, students who self-identified as everything from “conservative republican” to “far left” universally expressed a disdain for Trump’s discourse and commented on varying aspects of his presidency, including his policy inconsistencies and outward base mentality in his
Story on Page 3
By Aden Barton Features Editor
Midterms and Civility in Politics at MBA