The Black & White Vol. 58 Issue 4

the

B&W

Print Editor-in-Chief Alex Robinson

Print Managing Editor Max London

Print Managing Editor Katie Hanson

Print Production Heads Noah Grill Joey Sola-Sole

cover photo by ANNA YUAN, design by JACKY LOCOCO

theblackandwhite.net Online Editor-in-Chief Dana Herrnstadt Online Managing Editors Ally Navarrete, Anna Yuan Print Production Assistants Samantha Levine, Jacky Lococo, Sam Nickerson, Sam Rubin, Eva Sola-Sole, Stephanie Solomon Online Production Head Alex Silber Online Production Assistants Kyle Crichton, Greer Vermilye, Christina Xiong Multimedia Editors Jack Gonzalez, Jack Middleton Multimedia Interns Lexi Fleck, Bella Grumet Photo Directors Annabel Redisch, Kurumi Sato Photo Assistants Charlie Sagner, Jessica Solomon, Joey Sussman Webmaster Jonathan Young Communications and Social Media Directors Isabelle van Nieuwkoop, José Wray Yearbook Liaison Anna Labarca Puzzles Editors Kaya Ginsky, Mathilde Lambert Business Managers Khanya Dalton, Min Yeung Business Assistants Bertille Aubert, Inanna Crabbe, Sarah Makl, Shivani Sawant, Quinn Sullivan Traffic Manager Zoe Chyatte

The Black & White is an open forum for student views from Walt Whitman High School, 7100 Whittier Blvd., Bethesda, MD, 20817. The Black & White’s website is www. theblackandwhite.net.

The B&W magazine is published six times a year. Signed opinion pieces reflect the positions of individual staff members and not necessarily the opinion of Walt Whitman High School or Montgomery County Public Schools. Unsigned editorial pieces reflect the opinion of the newspaper.

All content in the paper is reviewed to ensure that it meets the highest level of legal and ethical standards with respect to the material as libelous, obscene or invasive of

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Print Copy Editor Meera Dahiya Online Copy Editor Hirari Sato Sports and Style Editors Sara Azimi, Aditi Gujaran, Bennett Solomon Metro Editors Blake Layman, David Villani Perspective Editors Mateo Gutierrez, Emma Iturregui, Clara Koritz Hawkes Education Editors Zara Ali, Danny Donoso Sports and Style Writers Ella Adams, Andrew Eagle, Mia Friedman, Anna Kulbashny, Matthew Mande, James Marzolf, Afsoon Movahed, Eli Putnam, Gabe Schaner, Meera Shroff, Reuben Stoll, Ben Stricker, Eve Titlebaum Metro Writers Lexi Fleck, Celina Fratzscher, Sammy Heberlee, Christian Hill, Trey Lee, Emily London, Jocie Mintz, Jesse Rider, Ben Waldman Perspective Writers Holly Adams, Bella Brody, Bella Grumet, Chloe Lesser, Eva Levy, Heather Wang Education Writers Ben Baisinger-Rosen, Taylor Haber, Bella Learn, Jack McGuire, Jaclyn Morgan, Sam Mulford, Lincoln Polan, Eleanor Taylor, Sarah Tong, Ethan Wagner Editorial Board Jack Gonzalez, Taylor Haber, Emma Iturregui, Clara Koritz Hawkes, Chloe Lesser, Emily London, Jack McGuire, Ben Stricker, Ellie Taylor, David Villani, José Wray Adviser Ryan Derenberger

privacy. All corrections are posted on the website.

Recent awards include the 2019 Gold Crown, 2018 and 2017 CSPA Hybrid Silver Crowns, 2013 CSPA Gold Medalist and 2012 NSPA Online Pacemaker.

The Black & White encourages readers to submit opinions on relevant topics in the form of letters to the editor, which must be signed to be printed. Anonymity can be granted on request. The Black & White reserves the right to edit letters for content and space. Letters to the editor may be emailed to theblackandwhiteonline@gmail.com.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS For each of our covers this past year, we’ve either either focused on a unifying theme for our stories or selected a single idea we wanted to highlight. We think each method is powerful in its own right, but this cycle, we wanted to try something new.

A few weeks ago, the swim team won the state championship. Though none of us are on the team, we were elated about the win. After all, it was a state title for our peers and our school; the sense of accomplishment the team felt was likely immeasurable. When news spreads of a euphoric moment, the joy of the moment spreads, too. We wanted to use our cover to do just that.

Recognizing accomplishments heightens the impact and reach of a certain sports team, club or person. In this issue, we chose to acknowledge other accomplishments as well.

These pages feature student passion and talent through showcasing student artists, sharing the story of a persistent student athlete

and discussing prominent student activists who testified before the Board of Education to voice their concerns.

While it’s important to discuss and showcase accomplishments, it’s just as important to do the same for conflicts. Individual student accomplishments may often go unnoticed, but so do students’ concerns, and we want to shine a light into those dark corners.

This magazine covers the cancelation of potential African American History and African American Literature classes for next year, the downfall of Montgomery County’s last local print newspaper and an ongoing trend of students shoplifting.

Following the mental health seminars, many of our readers felt there hadn’t been a strong consolidating effort to address mental illness issues in our community. Through our mental health roundtable, a conversation between student, teacher and professional stakeholders, we chose to not only recognize

the issues in our community but act on them ourselves and continue substantial dialogues about mental health.

Every article we publish, accomplishments and conflicts alike, offers the opportunity for a new conversation. We pride ourselves on listening and responding to feedback, but we recognize that our stories don’t address every accomplishment and concern in our diverse community. While we encourage our readers to share in the celebration of swimmers and divers, young activists and student artists, we also invite you all to share your voice with us, so we can profile new perspectives in future issues.

As always, we thank our indispensable adviser Ryan Derenberger, focused writers, driven editors and expressive production team. They have brought visionary ideas to our magazine, and we can’t wait to see what new conversations their ideas start.

Alex Robinson Editor-in-Chief

Katie Hanson Managing Editor

photo by CHARLIE SAGNER

Max London Managing Editor

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CONTE Table of

Junior Lucia Kaiser took this photo of an apartment building on her iPhone during a trip to New York City this September. The building was designed by famous architect Zaha Hadid. Photo courtesy LUCIA KAISER.

Issue 4, Marc

h 2020

ENTS 6

Students teach adults by testifying in front of Board of Education

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Student programmer has a new language: java

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Exploring Bethesda through its cultural grocery stores

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Final county newspaper folds, plans online presence

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Female writers report on their experiences, reflect on Women’s History Month

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Q&A with industry leader looking to make a positive impact with carbon negative initiative

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A slice of Bethesda’s best pizza restaurants

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Student EMT sees outside the Bethesda bubble

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Student gamblers gain profits, lose self-control

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A roundtable discussion on mental health at Whitman

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Controlling the narrative: Birth control users reflect on shifting culture of contraceptives

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Staff Editorial: Give more students a larger role in SMOB election

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A celebration of talented student artists

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African American-focused classes canceled due to lack of enrollment

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Local organization strives to uplift victims of human trafficking

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Student athlete transforms from ruling the bench to the basket

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Students steal merchandise, dodge consequences

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One writer’s perspective secretly rating memes for Facebook

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Paging through the best local, independent bookstores

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Boys swim and dive captures state title

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Crossword: Love and luck

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Board of education for

Provides platform Student Advocacy

by Jack Mcguire

Whitman is full of politically active students; some march in front of the Capitol for issues like climate change, tie ribbons to their backpacks to commemorate victims of gun violence or participate in political activism clubs. But some students in Montgomery County have directly brought student advocacy to the county’s attention by testifying in front of policymakers at the MCPS Board of Education. This school year alone, 69 students have testified for a multitude of issues.

Two student activists — eighth grade student Sekayi Fraser, who is the Cabin John Middle School student body president, and Richard Montgomery sophomore Hana O’Looney — made waves when they testified Jan. 13 and Jan. 15, respectively. Both students were advocating for issues within the same domain: access to quality hygiene products in MCPS schools.

Fraser’s path to appearing before the BOE was longer than most. Last year, he ran for student body president of Cabin John with the promise to bring a thicker, two-ply toilet paper to MCPS bathrooms. After months of failed attempts at getting Cabin John administrators to stock the bathrooms with two-ply toilet paper, Fraser finally decided that if he wanted to make real change, he would have to testify in front of the BOE. Fraser promptly contacted MCPS officials and set a date for when he wanted to testify — an opportunity available to all MCPS students, but one that not many take advantage of.

“Nothing would have ever happened if I never stepped out of my comfort zone and testified in front of the BOE,” Fra-

ser said. “Testifying was really nerve-racking, but I got through it knowing that I could make real change by speaking.”

Fraser finally got his chance to speak in front of the BOE Feb. 13 and issue his demand for the county to upgrade the toilet paper in student bathrooms from thin single-ply toilet paper to more comfortable two-ply paper. Fraser noticed that the bathrooms in the BOE offices were stocked with soft twoply toilet paper, and he said MCPS students shouldn’t be denied the same luxury that Board Members have.

For the most part, parents, students and businesses across the county have supported Fraser and his proposal. Scott Attman, vice president of regional paper supplier Acme Paper and Supply Company, donated 80 cases of two-ply toilet paper to Cabin John after watching Fraser’s testimony online.

“People will see what Sekayi did and realize that they can and should stand up for any issue they believe in, no matter how small,” Attman said.

Some county officials have offered critical responses to Fraser’s proposal. Montgomery County Chief Operating Officer Andrew Zuckerman, among others, said that Fraser’s demand for two-ply paper is unrealistic because the aging pipes in MCPS schools are unable to process the extra ply of toilet paper.

“We have a lot of old pipes in our schools,” Zuckerman said. “Before we stock bathrooms with two-ply paper, we’re going to have to conduct a study about how the thicker paper will affect the pipes.”

Officials are also concerned about the added cost of two-ply toilet paper. The county currently purchases 7,000 cases of toilet paper a year for $29.30 per case, totaling

$200,000 per year, according to Zuckerman. If the county upgraded to twoply, the price would increase to a total of $236,250 annually. MCPS has $74.1 million to spend on school supplies and materials in the 2020 operating budget, and many county officials think that the county shouldn’t waste the money on toilet paper.

O’Looney is also worried about potential resources that would be diverted by upgrading the county’s toilet paper.

A member of the board of directors for EmpowHER, an organization of MCPS students dedicated to female empowerment, O’Looney believes the county should instead invest in providing menstrual products in student bathrooms, and testified in front of the BOE and the Maryland House Ways and Means Committee outlining her argument.

“Menstrual hygiene is a human right, and all our students at public schools should not be expected to carry menstrual products around with them,” O’Looney said. “It’s a huge educational equity issue, and in a school system that claims to be as progressive as MCPS, it really needs to be something that happens.”

Because of the MCPS budget cap, O’Looney has found herself at least partially pitted against Fraser in the fight to see each initiative funded.

“I know that two-ply toilet paper is something that students want, but this discussion shouldn’t be happening before we have access to a human right in public school bathrooms,” O’Looney said.

Regardless of whether O’Looney succeeds in getting students across MCPS access to menstrual products, her extensive advocacy has brought the issue of menstrual product accessibility to the forefront of the minds of students, parents and government officials across the state.

After hearing O’Looney’s testimony in the Maryland House Ways and Means Committee, Delegate Kirill Reznik reached out to O’Looney and worked with her to draft House Bill 0208, which would mandate public schools across Maryland provide students with access to menstrual products in all bathrooms by 2024.

“It takes a certain kind of person to want to become an advocate for an important issue,” Reznik said. “To do so for an issue that is so personal and be willing to talk about very personal and private things in front of lawmakers — you need to be a person of particular strength and commitment.”

Reznik and O’Looney are uncertain if the bill will pass, since Reznik drafted an almost identical bill last year that the Maryland Senate didn’t pass. In their dismissal, state senators cited the proposal’s lack of funding and its potential to impede county autonomy as grounds for its dismissal. The failure highlighted a need for county-level lobbying, O’Looney said.

O’Looney has also inspired change at other schools in the county, including Whitman and Earle B. Wood Middle School. After seeing her testimony on Instagram, students at Whitman and Wood initiated programs where they put pads and tampons in women’s restrooms.

The Whitman SGA started the Ladies Project, an initiative where female SGA members stock Whitman’s bathrooms with menstrual products.

“Her advocacy really inspired a lot of us in leadership,” said senior Maddie Menkes, who is the co-chair of the Ladies Project. “She showed us that this is

a real issue for a lot of girls that needs to be addressed.”

O’Looney has bold plans for the future of her movement. She plans to lead a coalition of EmpowHer members to lobby for the new menstrual health bill proposed by Reznik and to organize a letter writing campaign that targets delegates that opposed the bill last year.

“Testifying and organizing these protests has been such an unbelievable experience for me,” O’Looney said.

“Even if nothing happens, I feel like I’ve learned so much about advocacy and public policy.”

Fraser also found that arguing in front of the Board of Education has given him experience and skills that will help him succeed in life, he said.

“I’m only an eight grader from a random middle school in suburban Maryland,” Fraser said. “But something inside of me makes me feel like I’ve made some sort of an impact on people’s lives, even if it’s not for a super serious issue.”

Nothing would have ever

happened if I never stepped out of my comfort zone and testified in front of the BOE. Testifying was really nerve racking, but I got through it knowing that I could make real change by speaking.

graphics by SAMANTHA RUBIN

-Sekayi Fraser

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PUTTING THE “PRO” IN PROGRAMMER

On early Sunday mornings senior Wesley Smith rolls out of bed, walks all of five steps to his desk and after slipping on a pair of headphones, dives right into his first programming “bug” — an error in computer code that can interfere with the program. He has a reverence for these first hours after sunrise, he says, when he’s the only person awake in his house aside from his family’s skulking housecat.

There’s already plenty to do, from running diagnostic checks and monitoring servers to perhaps watching a quick YouTube video during a break. For now, Wesley will spend his first bout — typically around four to five hours — writing, reviewing and most importantly, revising lines of code for Craftimize, the tech startup company that he has worked for as a remote coder for the past three years.

Craftimize conducts all of its operations online and works primarily in web and software design. The company has eight full-time employees, all of whom are either in high school or college. They work together online but live in different areas across the country. Due to Craftimize’s more relaxed working environment, Wesley can set his own hours and work from home as long as he gets his projects done before their deadlines.

“I enjoy the availability because I get to wake up whenever I want, I do my work at like two in the morning,” Wesley said. “It doesn’t really matter what time I get to work, and the flexibility is helpful.”

Currently, Wesley is creating a website for people who run

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“boosting” services, where players pay veteran gamers to “boost” or add experience to their in-game avatars while they spend time offline.

When he’s coding, Wesley’s monitors relay an incomprehensible flow of code that, to the untrained eye, might look like someone fell asleep on the keyboard. But in his past six years of coding, he has grown into a skilled programmer with an eye for details. And when it comes to bugs, Wesley knows exactly what to look for and how to translate these multicolored strings of backslashes and hyphens into commands, as if he were reading a novel. Bugs are one of Wesley’s simple reminders about the imperfections in code.

“It’s panic in my mind,” Wesley said. “If it’s something ‘mission critical,’ which means it’s already deployed to production and I see that something’s happening that’s breaking the usability of the product, I panic.”

Wesley spends around 45 minutes of his four to five hours of coding time behind a screen tweaking bugs. They’re such a commonplace issue for coders that in Wesley’s computer setup, one of his three monitors displays a live “debugger” which highlights the defects of his programs.

Video games have heavily influenced Wesley’s programming journey. Working for Craftimize allows him to program for games he once played in middle school, a concept that instills hope in Wesley that he has inspired the next generation of coders, he said. In seventh

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O F honed his craft, 5 E TA 010 7 Over time, Wesley posting his eagerness to provide assistance on internet message boards. Although there weren’t many programmers willing to let a 12-year-old work on their gaming servers, Wesley found opportunities by offering his skills for low costs, sometimes even for free.

Each time he worked on a gaming server, he would come away with experiences that helped build his growing skillset.

“At times it feels hopeless, like ‘I don’t know if I’m actually going to get any better,’ but I think I realized how everything I did, I learned from,” Wesley said. “I just step back and say, ‘that was experience I just gained.’”

At the end of his freshman year, Wesley created a business profile and began sending out a summary of his qualifications through various websites. He posted his resume on the video game-oriented chat room Discord in hopes of finding some freelance work, but his soon-to-be boss Mason Mater gave him a better offer.

“I said ‘I’m looking to be hired, here’s some of my freelance experience, I’m looking for $12 an hour,’” Wesley said. “Mason needed a programmer at the time. He just DM’d me, asked me about my experience and said there might be a job for me. I wasn’t even looking for a job.”

Throughout his three years at Craftimize, Wesley has risen through its ranks. He’s gone from being the youngest, most inexperienced hire at the company — a feat, given that the typical employee is around 19 years old — to taking on leadership positions on collaborative projects and managing the progress of college students. Professionally, Wesley has gone from working on servers for two dozen users to creating content for thousands.

“Before, I was writing my own game modifications that really only I used, but now I’m producing content that’s serving upwards of 200,000 unique users,” Wesley said. “It’s why I started programming in the first place: to impact other people.”

As he has grown more experienced in programming, Wesley’s work has changed the way he thinks, he said. When he was younger, he lost confidence in his academics after struggling in his math classes, which ironically are the courses that lay the foundation for coding.

After immersing himself in coding, Wesley started to recognize the very same principles in his math classes that he had been teaching himself through programming. Math

Photo by CHARLIE SAGNER

concepts all started to make sense during one fateful Algebra 1 class, he said. While the rest of the class was wrestling with some new concept, Wesley miraculously understood the information straightaway.

The overlap between math and programming comes through writing lines of code.

After years of studying several programming languages — types of standardized coding syntax which have different uses — Wesley, who compares proficient code to a well-written English paper, has trained his eyes to recognize when a line is adequate and when it needs revision.

In addition to being an outlet to learn about video games, coding has always been a means of dealing with the more emotional strains on his life, Wesley said.

“When I was twelve, my father passed away,” he said. “We used to spend every weekend together, so when he was gone, I kind of had this void in my life. I really wanted to do something, and I wound up playing Minecraft for quite a while.”

Wesley’s family members have consistently been some of his biggest supporters, watching his interest in programming sprout from a hobby into a passion that has defined his teenage years, he said.

“I thought that it was a place for him to experiment and feel comfortable: a space to solve something where he wouldn’t have someone looking over his shoulder or someone asking how long he was working on it,” his mother Michelle Smith said. “It was a way for him to find some independence.”

Even with a trained eye and a debugger continuously running, Wesley said he still makes small errors, but he’s realized that as long as his projects function properly, he doesn’t need to hold each individual line of code to his personal standards.

“I used to be a lot more of a perfectionist than I am now,” Wesley said. “I realized at some point that it was an unhealthy habit. I was spending more time caring about something being perfect than actually just writing

a good product.”

As he’s gained proficiency, Wesley has been able to transfer his skills behind the screen and implement them more regularly to his life, especially in school. His junior year, Wesley worked on designing a website for his biotechnology class. Although it was never fully completed, AP Environmental Science teacher Mira Chung saw his underlying skills in the field, she said.

“I would say his brain is trained for a logical approach,” Chung said. “Wesley has never necessarily been a complainer in terms of faulting people. He typically takes it upon himself to compartmentalize his work.”

In Programming 3, an independent study course for the few students who have completed the rest of the classes in Whitman’s computer science curriculum, Wesley and his project partner, senior Olaf Hichwa, have been designing a flight controller for a drone, the brain of the machine. While Hichwa has brought his expertise on drone technology to their partnership, Wesley has contributed his programming knowledge, which Hichwa called “essential” to their success in class.

Looking forward, Wesley hopes to pursue some of the more complex parts of coding, hopefully learning about artificial intelligence — the kind of topic that would make more sense coming from a professor than YouTube videos and Minecraft freelance work — in college, he said. He also hopes to pursue a career in programming at a tech giant like Google or Facebook.

Regardless of where Wesley’s programming prowess takes him, his six years of typing and staring at screens have taught him about adapting his mindset both on and off the computer, he said.

“It’s not like when I used to walk into a math test that I used to consistently fail, where I thought to myself, ‘I can’t do this,’’’ Wesley said. “Programming has taught me to always start off with the mentality of ‘let’s try it.’”

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Pasta, Pakora and Paella: Bethesda’s cultural grocery stores offer residents a taste of foreign cuisines

by Celina Fratzscher

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Before our annual party to celebrate German St. Nikolaus Day, a holiday that falls shortly before Christmas, one of my parents drives to German Gourmet to stock up on Weißwurst, Landjäger, Spätzle and other difficult-to-find, authentic German goods. On their most recent trip, my parents met a woman who made an annual five hour trip from her home in North Carolina to German Gourmet in Virginia to stock up on German goods for the Christmas season.

For regulars like this North Carolina native or my family, the long drive is completely worth it, as no product from Safeway or Whole Foods compares to freshly cooked Nürnberger or Lebkuchen — and I’d take a cold bottle of Almduddler over a can of Coca-Cola any day.

Luckily for Bethesda residents in search of local, authentic foods, this area boasts a rich variety of traditional, ethnic stores where both immigrants and non-immigrants can enjoy the unique selection and wide array of cultural foods that these stores offer.

Vace Italian Delicatessen

Chef Valerio Calcagno grew up in New York surrounded by a vibrant Italian community and many Italian delis. While working in D.C., Valerio noticed a lack of Italian specialty stores in the area and decided to open a deli to sell his homemade pastas, his daughter Diana Calcagno said.

“My father was a chef, and his dream was actually always to sell his frozen pastas,” Diana said. “They didn’t have a pasta machine here, so my dad would have to drive all the way up to New York, make the pasta and drive all the way back until they were able to save up enough money to actually buy a pasta machine.”

When the shop was first founded in 1974, boxed pasta, wine and other Italian goods were largely unavailable in mainstream grocery stores in the U.S., Diana said. Vace stepped in to fill the gap and became one of the first stores in the area to offer homemade dry pasta as well as other Italian-made goods like Nutella.

Since then, Vace has expanded to offer a wider variety of frozen goods, the majority of which are homemade.

“Ninety-eight percent of everything in our freezer is actually homemade. The pasta, the lasagna, our fresh sausage — all of that is homemade,” Diana said. “It’s made in a small little factory where we produce weekly every type of product we sell.”

In January, The Washington Post ranked Vace as having one of the top 10 best pizzas in the D.C. area. Since the ranking was published, Vace’s average number of pizza orders has increased from 100 to 150 pizzas a night.

As the popularity of the store has grown, the demographic of customers has expanded as well, Diana said.

“When the store opened, there were a lot of Italian customers,” Diana said. “Now, there’s no real demographic. It’s just kind of anybody who really likes true Italian food and good homemade food.”

Guru Groceries

New to Bethesda, Guru Groceries opened its doors in July 2019. Owner Deepak Khemka, however, has been in the grocery business for over 30 years.

After coming to the United States from India to attend university, Khemka noticed a lack of grocery stores that offered South Asian, specifically Indian foods, despite the high demand for them.

“There’s a big community for Indians around here, and they wanted some food,” Khemka said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, so I know what people want and their needs.”

Khemka has often closed stores and then reopened in a new location.

Last year, he decided to move Guru Groceries to Bethesda from Rockville, since many of his customers while he was based in Rockville were coming from Bethesda to buy goods.

From mango ice cream to fresh samosas, Guru Groceries offers a large selection of South Asian and Indian foods, many of which are imported directly from India. While Guru Groceries was initially moved to Bethesda to provide a much needed supply of authentic Indian foods for Indian families, the store has gained popularity among various other demographics as well.

“It’s been growing,” Khemka said.

“People are getting to know us since we opened through word of mouth and advertisements, and everyday I see that it keeps growing.”

Vace Italian Delicatessen

Pescadeli

Originally named A&H, Pescadeli began as a Spanish wholesale business owned by two brothers, Alfonso and Herminio Martinez. After Alfonso’s passing, current owner Santi Zabaleta bought the business and chose to transform the wholesale location into a new retail store.

The name, Pescadeli, emerged from a combination of two Spanish words and is reflective of the variety of products that the store has to offer, Pescadeli fishmonger Jose Emilio said. “‘Pesca’ stands for fish and ‘deli’ for the prepared foods — two words in one,” Emilio said. “At Pescadeli, we have fish and a small prepared section where we sell tortilla español, paella and some salads to go with fish.”

Along with fresh fish and prepared foods, Pescadeli also offers a variety of ingredients necessary for Spanish cooking, such as wine vinegars, olive oils and paella spices. For those who wish to cook their own authentic Spanish dishes, staff is always available to teach customers the different uses of the various ingredients, Emilio said.

“In Bethesda, businesses are growing more than other places because it’s more secure, and there are more customers around the area,” Emilio said.

“Once they discover the place, they decide to come here more often.”

Guru Groceries

11 photos by JESSICA SOLOMON

Pescadeli

Montgomery Sentinel newspaper folds, leaving a “news desert” in Montgomery County 12

photo by JACKY LOCOCO

BY EMILY LONDON

Every Thursday morning for the past 165 years, the Montgomery County Sentinel newspaper has arrived on subscribers’ doorsteps across the county, reporting on the biggest local stories of the week.

Over the years, it covered events from the Civil War to the more local Giles v. Maryland court case during the Civil Rights Movement. For that case, the Sentinel’s strong reporting uncovered information later used to free an innocent man from jail.

Founded in 1855, the Sentinel is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the county. Some alumni from the paper — like Bob Woodward, one of the two Washington Post reporters who uncovered Watergate, and Brian Karem, a CNN journalist — have graduated to national news organizations. As a Montgomery County paper, it covers one of the largest counties in the U.S. with a population larger than that of states like Delaware, Rhode Island and Alaska. The Sentinel has even won the Maryland Press Association’s News Organization of the Year award four of the last five years.

None of this, however, could save the Sentinel. The Montgomery County Sentinel closed print publication Jan. 30 after more than one and a half centuries in business.

Newspapers closing is nothing new for Montgomery County. Just 15 years ago, there were eight local print newspapers. But in 2005, the Montgomery County Journal shut down, the Washington Post’s local weekly Montgomery “Extra” section went under in 2009, and the Montgomery Gazette closed all five local editions in 2015.

These newspapers, along with over 2,000 others across the country, closed for many of the same reasons as the Sentinel. With the advent of the Internet, advertisers stopped buying ads in newspapers and switched to platforms like Facebook or free sites like Craigslist, causing a substantial amount of print newspaper funding to disappear, University of Minnesota journalism professor Matthew Weber said.

To combat this, associate publisher Mark Kapiloff, the son of Montgomery County Sentinel owner Lynn Kapiloff, thinks moving the paper online could work for the Sentinel and is planning to revive the Sentinel online later this year.

The Sentinel’s more significant issue, however, is not the loss of advertisers but a loss of readers. The Sentinel’s circulation — reaching over 200,000 in its heyday in the 1990s — was just 5,000 households for its final print edition.

“No one really wants a print newspaper anymore,”

Lynn said. “Everywhere you go, people are just on their phones.”

Whitman students, like others across the county, don’t go out of their way to read local newspapers.

An informal Black & White survey found that 29 out of 39 students read or watch national news regularly or semi-regularly. But only two students follow local news in the same way.

The Sentinel closing marked a new era for Montgomery County. Now, there are zero local print newspapers left, creating a “news desert” in the county. A “news desert” is a community without a locally-based press outlet. These deserts have spread over the last 15 years as more than one in five newspapers nationally have closed.

As of 2018, more than half of all counties in the nation have one or zero local newspapers.

A lack of local news coverage creates issues in a community, including significant decreases in public involvement in local politics. Without local news, there’s nothing to inform potential voters about current events or hold local politicians accountable, Weber said.

“You definitely see a decline in the amount of civic engagement in communities as soon as you lose that newspaper,” Weber said. “Right off the bat, people are less aware of what’s happening, and there’s a drop off in voting rates.”

Because there’s no newspaper to hold governments accountable, government spending also tends to be higher, Weber said.

“The local paper serves as a lifeline for their communities in terms of keeping the government accountable,” he said. “You lose that critical watchdog function without it.”

In the past, papers like the Sentinel and the Montgomery County Gazette have filled that role. Former Gazette writer Kathy Gambrell remembers when her newspaper broke the story about the Board of Education’s misuse of credit cards in 2014.

“It was a reporter who really held the county’s feet to the fire,” Gambrell said. “We were able to give readers a really good view of what was actually happening.”

Some newspapers are becoming solely digital to survive. The University of Maryland student newspaper, the Diamondback, announced in March that they will stop publishing print newspapers.

Online newspapers, however, aren’t as good at informing communities, Duke University public policy professor Philip Napoli said. In his research comparing the production of news articles between different types of media outlets, print newspapers published 50% of the stories in the study despite only being 25% of the sources.

“Print newspapers are still overproducing relative to their amount when it comes to original, local news,” Napoli said. “Online news represents only a drop in the bucket.”

With the loss of the Sentinel, Montgomery County loses a newspaper with a reputation for honest journalism with integrity, Lynn said.

“It’s sad that the Sentinel is closing,” Lynn said. “But we’ve always given just the facts and always kept our standards. I’m very proud of that.”

13

Women writers reflect on their careers, the role of women in documenting history by ellie taylor In 1963, Judith Welles walked into The Washington Post’s offices, a collection of writing samples in her hand. She had just graduated from Vassar College and was hoping to land a position as a beat reporter. After writing obituaries for the local newspaper while in college, the chance to tell the stories of “living people” excited her, she said.

To her dismay, she didn’t land the position. Nor did she land the position of assignment reporter, sports reporter or any other familiar role. Instead, Welles was assigned the role of “dictation reporter.”

Rather than researching and reporting on her own, she would be receiving phone calls from male beat reporters and typing up the stories they called in. Because there was a chance she would have to go out in the city alone at night to report, the role of beat reporter was “too dangerous” for a woman, her bosses told her.

“That wasn’t acceptable,” Welles said. “So I walked out of there.”

She was able to land a new job at the Department of the Interior, where she wrote speeches for the department’s secretary. But her experience at The Washington Post was not an isolated one.

During Women’s History Month, the need is even greater to recognize the historic contributions of women in journalism and analyze how the nature of female journalism has evolved over time. Welles faced gender discrimination in the 1960s, but that discrimination dates back to the turn of the 20th century, as women were staking out their place in newsrooms across the country.

Even before the female picketers and club leaders of the 1910s

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women’s suffrage movement, women advocated through writing.

From 1869 to 1914, there were about 12 female-run newspapers in the American West dedicated to spreading the messages of the suffrage movement and to shedding light on the plight of the nation’s women.

In 1853, Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis established the Una, one of the first publications in America that aimed to highlight the push for women’s rights. The newspaper, run entirely by women, served as a mirror for female readers, offering a clear reflection of the institutionalized oppression they faced until publication ceased in 1855.

The Revolution soon followed, another feminist publication brought to life by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the late 1860s. Their publication sought both to address the general disparity in the treatment of men and women in society and to outwardly push for suffrage. The publishers printed 10,000 copies of The Revolution’s first issue.

Though received positively by many and inspiring a number of women to join the movement, the Una and The Revolution eventually lost their audience to more conservative publications.

The Women’s Journal was one such publication. While still raising awareness about the disparate treatment of women in society, it included sections dedicated to gossip, humor, letters and poetry, among other topics. The Women’s Journal created a relationship with its readers that extended beyond feminism; it formed a bridge between maintaining the current status quo and effectuating radical societal change, appealing to conservative and progressive citizens alike.

At the same time as the suffrage movement, a new strain of female

journalism was evolving, staking out its place on the front pages of the nation’s elite newspapers and pioneered by “girl reporters.” Also called “stunt reporters,” these young women flocked to newsrooms around the country, going undercover to report on controversial issues and publishing their findings in widely read exposé series.

Nellie Bly is one of the most well known “girl reporters” of this era. In her series “Ten Days in a Madhouse,” Bly chronicled her experience in Blackwell’s Insane Asylum in New York City after being intentionally admitted. Her series was published in The New York World, and soon after, other young women followed suit.

Nell Nelson reported on the sordid, cramped factories and inhumane working conditions of the nation’s inner cities in her series “City Slave Girls.” A different woman under the byline of “Girl Reporter” published a series in the Chicago Times, shedding light on the city’s illegal abortions, posing as a young woman seeking medical treatment with the intent of uncovering which doctors would offer to perform the procedure.

Through their actions, the female reporters sparked real-world change. Bly’s work resulted in an increase in funding toward treatments for mental illnesses, Nelson’s exposé inspired labor organizations to push for protective legislation and the Times’ “Girl Reporter” fueled nationwide dialogue about the traditionally controversial issues of abortion and women’s healthcare. Their work inspired many of the “muckrakers” of the early 20th century, like Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair, to utilize elements of photography and writing as ways of drawing attention to the often overlooked issues plaguing America’s inner cities and lower class.

The female reporters’ unique first-person narratives serve even still as a window into the minds and ambitions of women like them at the time, immortalizing their adventures and feats in a way that is both personal and unobscured by the retelling of history books. More often than not, though, these women’s names weren’t preserved along with their work. Like “Girl Reporter,” the names Nellie Bly and Nell Nelson are both pseudonyms.

While in writing these women could be perceived as almost movie-like heroines, their activities still clashed with traditional gender roles of the time. As a way of preserving their reputations, few women made the decision to use their real names in their published bylines.

Alexandra Robbins graduated from Whitman in 1994 after serving as editor-in-chief of the Black & White her senior year.

While at Whitman, Robbins excelled, writing investigative pieces on controversial subjects like drug use, eating disorders and shoplifting, realizing that “people liked to tell [her] things,” she said.

After attending Yale University, where she wrote for the school newspaper her first two years, Robbins realized that she “had more to say that would fit in a newspaper or a magazine article,” and began writing her first book at 23 years old. She went on to write others like it, including “The Overachievers,” in which she returned to Whitman to investigate the culture of overachieving that pervades similar high schools around the world.

Despite being focused mainly on “plowing down any barriers,” Robbins felt that in her early journalism career having her byline read “Alex Robbins” rather than “Alexandra Robbins” gave her an “edge,” she said.

“People didn’t necessarily know from my writing that I was a woman,” she said.

She remembers a friend telling her about overhearing one of the newspaper editors at her university talking about Robbins’

story which had been published in the local paper that day, complimenting the story but mistakenly labeling her as a man.

“She told me, ‘He was reading your article and he said, Who is this Alex Robbins guy? I have to get him to write for me,’” she said.

Now, her published byline reads “Alexandra Robbins,” and although American workplace culture in the new millenium still has room to grow, she believes there are “so many strong women” within publishing houses.

“Women should always uplift and support other women rather than trying to compete for some token female brass ring as if there can only be a few women in a company that succeed,” Robbins said.

While Robbins has access to a female-dominated workplace in her line of journalism, many other reporters do not.

After turning down her offer from The Washington Post and accepting the position of speechwriter at the Department of the Interior, Welles stuck with her position for years, writing speeches for various U.S. cabinet members. During that time, Welles would often survey her surroundings, only to find that she was the only woman in the room.

“I would be in meetings with all of these important people and men, and if I tried to ask a question, it was just like, ‘Later, later,’” Welles said. “It was very marginalizing.”

Now, more than 50 years later, Ashley Parker (‘01) still sometimes finds herself in that same position. As a White House correspondent for The Washington Post, Parker has spent a great deal of time in the same environment as Welles once did, covering Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign as well as the 2016 presidential race.

“I can remember, especially early in my career, looking around rooms and realizing ‘Oh, wow, just about all the people who are making decisions are white guys,’” Parker said. “But I do totally also think it’s changing.”

Now, at The Post, Parker is conscious of diversity. Although she thinks “every organization can be better,” she’s able to find a “pretty diverse group” of reporters in any given newsroom, she said. Just on the seven-member White House correspondent team, Parker works with people of different genders, ethnicities and backgrounds.

The prospect of passing better habits to new generations excites insiders like Parker.

“I think one thing that’s nice about Women’s History Month is it spotlights women who have been doing interesting and daring and heroic things,” Parker said. “I think that’s a nice way for my daughters and women everywhere to be reminded that women have been doing awesome things for eternity.”

For Marisa Bellack (‘95), who is currently The Washington Post’s Europe editor, as much as she feels female voices are important to include in the newsroom, it’s just as important, if not more important, that they are included in the stories being published, she said.

“I think less about being marginalized myself and more about how female voices have a potential to be marginalized in our publications and what I can do to rectify that,” Bellack said.

As women navigating the field of journalism at different points in history, each reporter, writer and editor has learned something valuable along the way. For Robbins, that lesson is to “have a thick skin,” and to “know your strength.” For Parker, it’s to be persistent without getting discouraged. For Bellack, it’s to be aware of others’ situations.

For Welles, the most important thing is to trust curiosity, the same curiosity she relies on today as a local historian. Sometimes, she feels she asks people too many questions and “makes them uncomfortable,” she said.

“They’re not meant to be intrusive; I’m just interested in you,” Welles said. “I’m interested in your life. I think it’s the old adage: be yourself, like yourself, and don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions.”

Women should always uplift and support other women rather than trying to compete for some token female brass ring - Alexandra Robbins

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tz

in

by Jocie M

Q&A

with Microsoft director of sustainability

Michelle Patron

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I

n January, Microsoft announced that it would become carbon-negative by 2030, meaning that annually, they plan to absorb more carbon than they emit. In the same plan, the company announced that it aims to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it has emitted in all its 45+ years of operation by 2050. Though many companies have informally set a goal for carbon-neutrality, Microsoft is one of the first large corporations to officially set a carbon-negative goal.

The Black & White sat down with Bethesda resident Michelle Patron, Microsoft’s director of sustainability, to discuss the new initiative and her career in sustainability. Patron has worked in the energy sector since 1999, and before beginning to work for Microsoft in 2016, she worked as President Obama’s energy adviser. She has also worked for the Department of Energy, PIRA Energy Group — an international energy consulting firm — and the National Security Council.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

The Black & White: How did you initially become involved with a career in energy?

Michelle Patron: I’ve worked in energy all my life. Like any career, you just have to just follow your passion and develop useful skills. For me, that was scientific skills, advocacy and marketing skills and trying to identify the organizations that are working in the same stage as you. Networking is also very important.

HELLE PATRON

MIC photo courtesy

B&W: Since you began working in energy in 1999, how have attitudes changed toward renewable energy?

MP: The entire world’s perception of energy has changed. The whole conversation of understanding energy usage has changed a lot in the past 10 years. I’ve seen a transition from viewing it as something that was just about economic growth to something that was about really helping us solve these harmful environmental changes.

B&W: Why did Microsoft choose to go carbon-negative?

MP: Microsoft has been active in addressing climate change for many years, but it wasn’t enough. We continue to see developments in science, and the world continues to emit carbon.

It’s up to companies like Microsoft to start taking action and showing the world how we can solve these problems. As a big technology provider, it’s also up to us to provide big solutions.

B&W: How will the company achieve this goal?

MP: There are several ways to take control of our carbon footprint. We’re talking about the emission not just from the electricity we use as a company, but also from our supply chain, from our employees and from our customers. We’re looking at everything and reducing all our carbon emissions. To become carbon-negative, not only do we have to reduce our carbon emissions, we need to begin actually removing carbon. There are nature-based solutions, like planting more

trees that suck up carbon. There are technologies that don’t exist yet or are very expensive, but they can literally suck carbon from the air.

They’re called “direct air capture.”

B&W: How can Microsoft acquire these inaccessible carbon capture technologies?

MP: We’ve realized we cannot solve the problem alone; the government needs to play a role in this and so do other companies and universities. For our part, Microsoft will be launching a billion dollar Innovation Fund, which will invest in technologies that are promising but not yet cost-effective. These technologies have included advanced construction material, mobile technology that can store energy for months and carbon-removing air filters. We will help get these direct air capture technologies out into the market.

B&W: What do you hope are the impacts of the billion dollar Innovation Fund, Microsoft’s investment in up-and-coming green technologies?

MP: That’s not going to be enough to combat climate change. It’s just a drop in the bucket, but if Microsoft does it, other companies will follow and also begin to support carbon capture technologies. We can scale up. Not only will we be setting an example for other companies, but we will be building the market itself. The fact that we have set these goals means that we’re sending a huge signal to the market that we need these technologies. Hopefully, we can spark a market for more green technology.

B&W: Have other large companies addressed their carbon emissions?

MP: Microsoft is one of the early movers here.

A lot of companies have begun operating at carbon-neutral. They will buy renewable energy and invest in projects around the world, but they’re only committed to removing an equal amount of carbon they emit. It’s really important, but right now the world really needs carbon-negativity.

B&W: As the director of sustainability, was this policy your idea?

MP: Microsoft is a very big company, and this project belongs to everybody. Lots of people had very important contributions to it. There’s a sustainability team, and the people on that team, myself included, played a very big role in going carbon-negative. But when you’re part of a company, it’s not about an individual. It’s about different members of the team that work together and get things done.

B&W: What has personally compelled you to push for renewable energy and carbon-negativity?

MP: The science is clear: Over the past year and a half we’ve seen really stark reports coming out that even U.S. agencies are responsible for the rise of carbon emissions. The [climate] attacks are becoming more apparent and the cost of inaction keeps growing. I want Microsoft to have a big role in providing these solutions.

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Crust Us, We won’t be Cheesy: Best Pizza Places in Bethesda

BY DANNY DONOSO, MATEO GUTIERREZ, JOEY SOLA-SOLE We’re not here to get pretentious about pizza. We’re just a couple of guys on a quest to find the best slice in the D.C. area. We started close to home with the famous — or infamous depending on your opinion — square Ledo Pizza and continued to Friendship Heights for a more well-rounded experience, where we visited Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza, Pizzeria Paradiso and Comet Ping Pong.

We rated each for their crust, toppings and wow factor, which is a blend of the atmosphere of the restaurant and the feeling we had biting into each piece. With each review we’ll also give an overall score out of 10, which is an indicator of our experience and the experience you’ll most likely have if you visited the restaurant. For each location, we ordered a classic cheese pizza and one of the respective restaurant’s speciality pies.

Graphic by JOEY SOLA-SOLE

Ledo Pizza: 5

The square slice has been a cornerstone of the Bethesda dining scene for many years. Throughout each of our childhoods, we’ve amassed fond memories of dining here with our families. Walking into Ledo, recollections of elementary school birthday parties and youth basketball team lunches filled our minds. But as we’ve grown up, our palates have matured.

Visiting Ledo more recently, we’ve come to take note of the slightly floury crust, the overly sweet tomato sauce and the burnt cheese resting atop the pizza. Put simply, it lacks the authenticity and richness of high quality pizza. This was largely highlighted by their specialty pizza: the Barbeque Bacon Chicken Pizza. This caloric slice sways between mouthfuls of rubbery bacon and a sweet barbeque sauce.

We’re not saying that Ledo is awful. There’s a reason we still dine here occasionally. It’s classic, consistent and quick — only taking us 15 minutes to pick up two small pizzas. In addition, Ledo has had an enduring and meaningful connection to the Whitman community, hosting many fundraisers for the school’s clubs and programs. Overall, it’s a solid 5/10.

Crust: 4/10 Toppings: 5/10 Wow factor: 7/10

Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza: 6.5

Pete’s was a name we had heard tossed around by many of our peers when we were brainstorming. When we walked in, we immediately understood the appeal many of our peers had raved about. It has the feel of a classic pizzeria: an open kitchen where you can see your pizza fed into a coal oven, large pizzas sold by the slice and outdoor seating on the corner of a busy and lively block in Friendship Heights. Although we went during the day, we could sense the pull Pete’s would have during a busy Friday night.

Along with their vibrant atmosphere, Pete’s serves a stellar slice.

The crust held up well, showed a nice char on the bottom and had bubbles near the edge. The sauce was also balanced, providing a great base for a cheesy pizza. What stood out to us about Pete’s was the cheese pull. For those who are unfamiliar, the cheese pull is a classic test of separating one slice from another and seeing how far the cheese pulls apart.

Unfortunately, we weren’t as fanatic over their specialty New Haven Pizza as their cheese pizza. It’s a white pizza topped with garlic, pecorino romano and oregano. However, there was one final topping that threw us off: the clams. We enjoy clams, and we enjoy pizza. Separately. To our dismay, the combination of the two resulted in a pizza that tasted overwhelmingly of salt water. Overall, Pete’s was a step up from Ledo, earning itself an overall score of 6.5/10.

Crust: 8/10 Toppings: 6/10 Wow Factor: 6/10

Comet Ping Pong: 8

With its bare brick walls, loud swing music, ping pong tables and strangely enough a Vespa hanging from its ceiling, Comet Pizza’s hip atmosphere is what set it apart from its competition. The constant clank of ping pong balls bouncing off of walls and tables in the back room reverberates throughout the restaurant. While the loud volume can drown out conversations, it makes it a great place to challenge your friends to a game while eating rich, savory pizza. Comet’s vibrant atmosphere matches its unique pizza style; the pizza’s irregular round shape gives it the feel of homemade pizza you would make with friends and family.

The dough is thin but enjoyable, and the flexible crust makes it an easy fold for us experienced and professional pizza eaters. Their delicious signature pizza, The Stanley, features large chunks of Italian sausage and bell peppers. The thin dough makes it difficult to keep all the toppings on the floppy slice, but if you’re able to get a bite with sausage, you won’t be disappointed. With its overall great taste and fun character, Comet Ping Pong is a great place to go with friends late at night to have a good time. 8/10 would recommend.

Crust: 7/10 Toppings: 9/10 Wow Factor: 8/10

Pizzeria Paradiso: 9

Pizzeria Paradiso, similar to Pete’s, was a restaurant we had never been to. We entered with few preconceptions, save the one glowing recommendation we got from one of our editors (Ally Navarrete).

Pizzeria Paradiso greeted us with a game of cornhole and a massive connect four game outside the restaurant. Inside, the restaurant grants a welcoming view of the wood fired oven and the arcade at the back.

The service was wonderful, attending us quickly and delivering the pizzas promptly.

The pizza itself was the best of the day. With a light crust, an immaculate sauce and a wonderful array of toppings, Pizzeria Paradiso tops our pizza ranking. The cheese pizza even won us over, despite having a controversial addition of blue cheese on it. Their unique, round, signature calzone was filled with prosciutto, topped with pink onions, and encased in an airy dough, making it a crust lover’s paradise. Overall it was an amazing slice, perfect for any occasion, earning a near perfect score of 9/10.

Crust: 9/10 Toppings: 8/10 Wow Factor: 10/10 19

How being an EMT burst the“Bethesda Bubble” Bub

bySammyHeberlee

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Content warning: This article contains language that pertains to drug overdose and domestic abuse.

Everyone knows about the “Bethesda Bubble,” that invisible barrier that separates Bethesda from the “real world.” It distances residents from the opportunity gap and diversity that exist elsewhere. But even though this bubble can be insulatory, it might not be as bulletproof as we may think.

Last April, I started volunteering at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Rescue Squad as an Emergency Medical Technician. EMTs provide prehospital care for patients in an emergency setting, including treating each patient in an ambulance and transporting them to the hospital.

Most stations in Montgomery County, including BCCRS, are staffed by volunteers at night and paid career EMTs during the day. BCCRS is one of three stations in Montgomery County — Cabin John and the Rockville Fire Departments are the other two — with a junior member program that allows high school students between the ages of 16 and 18 to volunteer.

All junior members are probationary members of the rescue squad, which means they must undergo training and ride in the back of the ambulance. Junior members have almost the same responsibilities as any adult probationary member, including a weekly shift, taking an inventory of the ambulance, restocking any missing or malfunctioning equipment and doing chores around the sta-

tion.

The lone exception is that junior members’ shifts are only from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on school nights instead of the required overnight shift for all other members. My assigned duty is Friday nights, so I ride overnight from 7 p.m. every Friday night to 8 a.m. Saturday morning.

Since I joined the rescue squad, not only have I learned a great deal about medicine and patient care, but my perception of Bethesda has changed, through the coworkers I’ve met, the eye-opening calls I’ve dealt with and the sexism I’ve realized permeates the workplace.

When the captain in charge of new members assigned me to Friday nights, I was disappointed. On Friday nights, while my friends were hanging out with each other, I would be doing something completely different than anyone I know.

I’ll admit, I thought about quitting before my first shift. Even more distraught about the Friday night situation was my mom. She didn’t want her 17-year-old daughter sleeping at a rescue squad with complete strangers.

But I decided to stick it out, at least for one night. Going in with a pretty pessimistic attitude, I didn’t expect to have much in common with anyone on my night crew, especially because I thought everyone would be several years older than I was.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There’s one other high school student on my night crew; I now text her more than I text any of my other friends from school.

In EMT class together, we bonded over

the disparities we witnessed within Montgomery County — there was one woman in our class who works comfortably for the U.S. State Department while another man had to take four buses just to get to the training academy.

A student at George Washington University, who’s originally from Georgia, is also on my night crew. When I first started working, she was always available to answer any questions I had, something a lot of the other higher ranked members aren’t as happy to do. And there’s a guy who just went back to school after he had to take a year off to look after his sister.

He spends the afternoon waiting tables at P.F. Chang’s before coming to our shift.

I’ve been exposed to people with vastly different backgrounds than my own — people who didn’t grow up in Bethesda like I have — and it has given me a more diverse perspective on both the workplace and Bethesda itself. Not only have the people I work with impacted me, but a lot of the calls I get and patients I meet replay in my mind for weeks.

Most of the rescue squad’s calls are to low-income housing areas, for people who have little to no medical care. Even though Montgomery County ambulance service is free of charge, patients who are in obvious need of medical assistance often try to refuse our care because of the anticipated steep hospital expenses they know they won’t be able to afford.

In one of my friend’s most impactful shifts, there was a call for a mother who overdosed and rolled on top of and killed her infant. The call was dispatched

as an overdose, so the crew didn’t know about the baby until they repositioned the mother. A drug overdose by itself would be overwhelming enough, but a suffocated infant is scarring in a way you would never be prepared for, not anywhere in the world, let alone in suburban, utopian Bethesda. When the crew returned to the station that night, they were traumatized — but the Emercengy Medical System system offered little to no mental health support. Talking openly about mental health may nearly be the norm now at Whitman, but in EMS, there are very few resources for those who need them most.

Another call I was dispatched for began normally. We arrived at a nursing home patient’s bedside for dyspnea, or trouble breathing. The patient chatted with me about her kids while I hooked her up to our oxygen tank. But when we were leaving the hospital after transport, she abruptly died in the emergency room. She was the first of my patients to die, and the fact that someone whom I enjoyed talking to had died so suddenly was shocking.

These patients bring me out of the “Bethesda Bubble” and straight into reality.

Yes, most Whitman students are privileged, but there are plenty of Bethesda residents who are severely disadvantaged. We get calls to nursing homes where patients have already been complaining for an entire day before their nurses paid attention to their possibly life-threatening problems. We get calls from homeless people who have dialed 911 just in hope that they get out of a dangerous situation, whether it be the freezing cold, rain or lack of shelter. We get calls about people passed out next to dumpsters and calls from others who have no family or friends to notify.

I once had a call for a woman who was suffering from domestic abuse. She refused to go to the hospital because she didn’t want to wake her two young children. When we arrived at her apartment, three policemen were already there.

Even though her injuries were minor, we could tell how anxious she was.

The ambulance driver entered the apartment a few minutes after me, and

when he opened the door, I remember the patient jumped from the couch, thinking that her boyfriend had returned.

She said it wasn’t the first time her alcoholic and abusive boyfriend had lashed out and then left the apartment in a hurry. We asked her if she thought there was a chance he would come back. “Probably,” she told us, “but I bet he went to a bar to get drunk for now.”

It was one of my first calls, but I still remember it so vividly. After learning of the trauma this woman had suffered at the hands of her boyfriend, I became acute-

I’ve never heard anyone at the station, man or woman, talk about it. Even when sexism is blatant, many still find a way to ignore it.

My old night crew officer, for example, was eventually asked to resign after receiving several complaints of verbal harassment from women at the station, including one junior member. I go on calls with five men and myself, and everytime I find myself standing in the back of each patient’s room. Maybe it’s because I have the least experience, maybe it’s because I’m only 17 and everyone else on the call is an adult, but part of the reason I so often shrink to the back is be-

It has given me a more diverse perspective on both the workplace and Bethesda itself. ly aware of the gender dynamics in the room. I was standing in her apartment with only one other woman and five men. How could that have possibly made her feel any safer?

The EMS world is male-dominated, and that imbalance creates a variety of problems ranging in all degrees of seriousness. At my station, all of the four chiefs are men, as well as every night crew officer except for one. All of my EMT class instructors were men, I don’t remember ever having a call with a female paramedic and there are no women at my station who are qualified to ride the rescue squad, the unit that performs technical extrications and some firefighter operations. To me, the gap between men and women in EMS is glaring, but

cause I feel out of place: I’m the only woman there.

Inequalites in America often receive national attention, but growing up in Bethesda, I hadn’t personally experienced them. I started volunteering for the rescue squad because I was interested in medicine, but I’ve learned so much more than how to treat and care for patients. I’ve been exposed to a world outside of the “Bethesda Bubble,” and my experiences have proven to me that, while Whitman students do have privilege and opportunities many people do not, it’s unfair to assume that everyone living in a certain area is subject to the same privileged lifestyle.

Graphic by EVA SOLA-SOLE

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Whitman students go ‘all in’ on online sports gambling

by Matt Mande Students’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.

The first time junior Colin placed an online bet, it was before British Youtube celebrity Olajide Olatunji, more commonly known as KSI, took on American Youtube celebrity Logan Paul in an amateur boxing match in November. He bet $45 on KSI. “I had never done anything like that before,” Colin said. “It was just an impulsive decision that ended up making me some money.”

KSI ended up winning the fight in a split-decision victory. Colin won $70 in profit, and because of the successful first experience, he felt encouraged to continue betting on boxing matches along with other sports. Colin has placed five bets over the past three months, and his net winnings have surpassed $100.

“I’ve pretty much just won everything,” Colin said. “There’s only been a few bets that have gone the wrong way.”

News of successful sports gambling experiences similar to Colin’s has spread and incentivized other Whitman students to try it, despite its illegality. In May 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which imposed a nationwide ban on sports gambling. However, Maryland law still considers sports gambling illegal.

Although gambling usually carries a stigma of money loss and addiction, some students’ experiences tell a different story.

Junior Chad gambles because, for him, it’s fun and profitable, but he’s cautious about the dangers of falling into addiction, he said.

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graphic by NOAH GRILL

According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, 60% to 80% of high school students report having gambled in the past year, and six to eight percent of these students are at risk for developing a serious gambling problem.

“Gambling is addictive for the same reasons that other things are addictive,” psychologist Linda McGhee said. “They stimulate areas of our brain that crave excitement and thrills.”

The emotions gamblers feel, although possibly enjoyable, are dangerous. Those with addictive predispositions can become dependent on sports gambling — especially teenagers.

“Betting is more dangerous for teens because the decision-making parts of their brain haven’t been fully formed,” McGhee said. “Also, because teenagers are more likely than other people to be addicted to being online, it’s just a natural extension that online sports gambling would be very prevalent in the teenage population.”

Chad started betting at the beginning of the college football season in September. He created an account on a gambling website, mybookie.ag, and added $50 to the account. He lost money with his first bet on a college football game, but despite that initial loss, Chad continued betting on college football, basketball and baseball, as well as NFL and NBA games.

“It makes the games way more entertaining,” Chad said. “You really get into them and have a nice emotional release when something goes your way.”

Six months after Chad’s first bet and without any additional deposits, he now has over $500 in the same account. He prides himself on his ability to make smart bets and consistently profit, he said.

“I find the right ones, and I bet on them,” Chad said. “I just kind of got that eye for seeing the right and wrong lines.”

For others, choosing which teams to bet on involves less instinct and more focus on data. Seniors Lucas and John both use Action Network, a website that provides a variety of statistics on teams from every sport to help gamblers.

“It gives you a ton of statistics about teams, including averages and which lines are the best to take,” Lucas said. “It’s primarily how I choose my bets, and it has really helped me improve my winnings.”

Similar to Chad’s introduction to the hobby, Lucas started betting during the college football season and used mybookie.ag to place bets based on his instincts. At first, Lucas struggled to win bets and lost hundreds. He became frustrated, so he decided to switch to a different strategy.

Lucas stopped using mybookie.ag and found an actual bookie, a friend’s older brother, who sets betting odds, accepts and places bets, and uses Venmo to pay or receive money from his clients.

He also started basing his bets on Action Network statistics around the same time. Since then, Lucas has won back what he lost and gained some profit.

“I thought sports betting would make watching sports more fun and make me a little money,” Lucas said. “It has definitely done both those things.”

Although sometimes fun and profitable, sports betting comes with serious risks. Gamblers all have biases that can cause them to make poor decisions, senior Bradley said. For instance, they may bet on teams they want to win, making it difficult to stay objective and bet without emotion, he said.

Bradley is a Baltimore Ravens fan and generally avoids placing bets on their games. However, when the Ravens faced the Tennessee Titans in the NFL playoffs, he decided he would make an exception. To his disappointment, the Ravens ended up losing, causing Bradley to lose $60.

“I usually live by the rule that you should never bet on your favorite team because they can only let you down,” Bradley said. “I chose not to bet on them the entire season, and they won 14 straight games. When I finally did bet on them, they let me down.”

Chad, Colin and Lucas have also had their fair share of losses. Chad remembers betting $15 on six different games in the NBA. The teams he bet on lost five out of the six matchups, resulting in Chad losing $60. He used this as a lesson to avoid betting on NBA games, Chad said.

Colin, although winning the majority of his bets, lost $30 on a boxing match. Lucas lost $50 when the Titans defeated the Patriots in the NFL Wildcard playoff round.

“When something doesn’t go your way, it can be very depressing,” Chad said. “It really depends on how much you lose, but either way it never feels good to lose money.”

Although none have lost money overall, these student gamblers rely on their own salaries to maintain their hobby. Bradley gambles using money from his job as a soccer coach, while Colin, Chad and Lucas all work as lifeguards. Still, all four believe they aren’t addicted.

“I feel like you’re addicted when you start to gamble money that you don’t have,” Bradley said.

“I’m very happy to say I’ve never done that.”

But psychologist McGhee said simply having an income isn’t enough to avoid addiction.

“The question is can you stop, and will you continue to do it even when you’re hurting other parts of your life,” McGhee said. “No side hobby should be preoccupying your life. You shouldn’t be spending all your time researching teams and betting.”

Whitman’s gamblers, although denying addiction and holding steady jobs, are aware of the dangerous potential for an addiction to develop, Chad said.

“I do think I could get to a point of addiction, so I’m generally careful about that,” Chad said.

“But honestly, I think it’s added something fun to my life, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.”

I do think I could get to a point of addiction, so I’m generally careful about that. But honestly, I think it’s added something fun to my life, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

23

Roundtable discussion about men health

By Jocie Mintz and Emily London Graphic by Joey Sola-Sole

M

24

ental health programs at Whitman have expanded significantly over the last decade. In 2014, former Principal Alan Goodwin created Stressbusters, a council of parents focused on reducing student stress. The next year, staff and students implemented Sources of Strength, a youth-led suicide prevention program that builds connections between students and faculty. The county also implemented Signs of Suicide, another suicide prevention program, during the 2017–2018 school year. That spring, the SGA began hosting mental health seminars in every class. The seminars, each of which included a student sharing their own experience and a presentation about different mental illnesses, have evolved to cover new conditions with each year. And this school year, OneWhitman discussions provided a new avenue for students to discuss mental health.

To assess how constructive these initiatives have been and what steps our community should take next, we sat down with students advocates, involved community members and dedicated faculty Feb. 13.

Participants: Junior Pia Alexander, English teacher Matthew Bruneel, school social worker Emily Callaghan, psychologist Karen Crist, counselor Angela Fang, sophomore Leo Levine, senior Harley Pomper and senior Anthony Rabinovich. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

The Black & White: What do you think of Whitman’s climate surrounding mental health?

Harley Pomper: It’s improved over the last few years. We definitely have a culture of awareness, but I don’t know if we necessar-

ily have one of action regarding improving our mental health and circumstances right now. I also think that although people are more open about it, some people kind of treat it as a joke.

Angela Fang: I feel like, from a counseling perspective, it’s somewhat biased in a sense that we only see students who are more willing to talk about it. So I probably don’t see as many students who would be more closed off to it in terms of being open to talk about it. But there’s definitely a portion of people who still don’t quite fully understand it.

Matthew Bruneel: I worked here for five years and then left for the Peace Corps and came back, so I remember a pretty clear contrast of how Whitman used to be versus how it is now. It used to be that we never discussed depression or anxiety — that wasn’t

le n ntal

really a part of the conversation when it came to student health. There was the book “Overachievers,” and there was a sense of the pressure that students are under, but it never got framed as a mental health issue. Now, it’s really become very open, transparent in the discussion. I don’t know about the resources, but definitely the discussion of it is better.

Emily Callaghan: My title is actually new here too; I’m the school social worker. So there’s obviously some sort of awareness and need that they decided to put a full time social worker at Whitman.

B&W: How effective do you think Whitman mental health initiatives have been?

Anthony Rabinovich: I have no idea what Sources of Strength is. I have friends who have and are going through the full spectrum of mental treatment options who have never heard of that. That speaks to the difficulties of getting resources that already exist.

Pia Alexander: In the mental health presentations, I really liked the student speakers because it gives a more personal view of what each person goes through. But other than that, it’s still kind of focused on statistics, and it’s hard to really see what mental illnesses they’re talking about.

It says a bunch of hotlines that you can reach out to but nothing that’s really tangible and right there.

Leo Levine: In my experience with the mental health seminars, oftentimes the sort of things that will be said about mental illness feel very cookie cutter. It’s frustrating to me personally because I know people whose mental health and mental illnesses are expressed a lot of different ways.

Rabinovich: I appreciate the little bit of a focus on checking up on your friends, even if it’s a cookie cutter approach.

Because that fosters the sense of, not only do these people care about me because they’re my friend, they legitimately want to see me improve as a person.

Karen Crist: I guess the question is how to continue these conversations between students. For me, it’s so powerful hearing about someone’s own experience, and then you can check in on a more regular basis with the people — you have a structure for that.

Levine: Something that worries me also is the fact that you sort of have developed this narrative of, ‘I had mental health issues, and I went to treatment, I went to therapy, and then I got better.’ In reality, recovery is not at all a linear process like that, and involves a lot of taking 12 steps forward, 10 and a half steps back. Recovery is not linear.

We really have to establish the idea that maintaining your mental health is a constant thing.

B&W: What additional resources or initiatives do you think could help the Whitman community in addressing mental illness?

Fang: We see articles in the news about how your diet could affect your mental health or how your lifestyle can affect your mental health and things like that, and I think what we’ve been doing has done a really good job in the past two years of creating awareness in the community.

But it would also be beneficial to our community to make

everyone aware of what a positive mental health process would look like. On a daily basis, this would be helpful because, like Harley and Anthony said, we do have a lot of different resources in the community. But there’s something to be said about promoting overall positive mental health.

B&W: Do you think people at Whitman take mental health issues seriously enough?

Bruneel: I feel like only when it becomes a mental health crisis, does there actually become any accommodations for a student, rather than [them] saying, ‘I’m just stressed right now, I can’t do it’ and letting that be enough of a reason not to do an assignment or to get an extension or whatever it is. Nobody here feels in power to actually change those academic pressures or do anything about it, which is where mental health actually hits the wall.

Pomper: In areas of privilege, the stress is really high regarding academics because you have well educated parents of higher socioeconomic strata who have the background to push their kids. It might be the responsibility of that particular school to dial back the pressure, but in other areas, those higher expectations and higher standards for students are visibly shown to improve the education for students who don’t have other resources available. So it’s really tricky because a Whitman-tailored answer is going to be very different than an answer for another school system.

B&W: Right now, the majority of people in this circle identify as female. Do you think there’s a relationship between gender identity and mental health?

Alexander: So actually, my dad’s girlfriend is a therapist, and they were having a conversation a couple of days ago, where they were saying that females reach out more and that they were more willing to admit that they needed help.

Although that may be true, I think it’s just so much on the individual — and I don’t really like to group people to say, ‘all girls are okay with getting help,’ because for a lot of them, it’s still really hard to admit that they need it. I think a lot of guys feel the same way, so it’s not necessarily a gender thing and that might just be how the culture shapes it.

Levine: Just approaching mental health from the concept of gender is very difficult, especially because you need to be aware of the fact that trans communities are very disproportionately affected.

Pomper: If we’re talking in extreme generalities, females might reach out more, but there’s also a wide range of female dismissal of mental health issues. I think a lot of women experience the sort of circus of having to explain that it’s not related to their period or other factors, which can be really frustrating.

Bruneel: I do see one of my roles as a male teacher is to model what it means to be a male who is able to speak frankly about his emotions and to speak about things other than the typical masculine topics. I do really cherish that role, and I see how being a model for boys in particular is something that I can do. But that being said, these are also lessons and values that we can impart to all students.

25

controlling the narrativ

the evolution

of birth control in teenage users

N

ewspapers are arguably one of the most effective tools to chronologically place important events in our community’s and nation’s history. They reflect more than simple facts and data; emotional sources, compelling anecdotes and driven writers give us better insight into the past. The Black & White’s archives, which stretch to the beginning of our publication in 1962, have given our writers an opportunity to understand Whitman’s culture 20, 40 and even 50 years ago.

A 1975 Black & White article titled “The Pill: Clinics offer varied services” provides an exceptional look into our community’s culture surrounding birth control almost 50 years ago. The story, which chronicled one writer’s experience going to a family planning center to investigate the process of acquiring birth control, highlighted the taboo culture around female contraceptives. Going through the archives a few weeks ago, the article started a dialogue among our editors of how the culture and stigma around female birth control has evolved, and we decided to write an article addressing this evolution.

The article below is the original 1975 story, run alongside a current article from one of our writers. Hopefully, this side by side comparison broadens your mind to new perspectives, as it did ours.

The Pill: Clinics offer varied services by jill johnson

26

Glancing furtively in several directions, I opened the door of the Montgomery County Health Center on Cordell Avenue and stepped inside. A very pregnant receptionist smiled my way and asked if she could help.

I cautiously mumbled something about contraception and, carefully considering her

present condition, wondered whether their methods were unreliable.

Having been told that the nurse would speak to me shortly, I sat down and thumbed through a magazine which was four years old.

It contained a large spread of maternity patterns which I gingerly bypassed.

“The nurse will see you now,” called the receptionist, and she trundled off down a corridor. I was ushered into a hygienic-looking little room complete with white enamel sink and towel dispenser.

Without pausing for a breath, the nurse jumped right in. “Are you pregnant?” she inquired. Seeing my surprise, she added, “So many girls wait to come to us until they are.”

She then hurriedly proceeded to question me about an interminable series of diseases, none of which I had had, and all of which sounded horrendous. And then came the killer question… “Have you ever had ‘relations?’”

What a delicately phrased interrogative!

However, I decided at this point that I’d better give up the game, especially since she was about to schedule me for some tests. As politely as possible, I told her that, after all, I was only writing a story on contraception and was attempting to gain “first-hand knowledge.”

The nurse looked very flustered and ran off to get some supervisor. I contemplated making a quick exit, but they were both back before I could, looking rather stern.

What exactly was I doing? Publicity was the last thing they wanted, I was told. Parents would complain, they explained, eyeing me as somehow radical and subversive.

Nevertheless, the clinic at 4848 Cordell Avenue in Bethesda, is a public facility supported by county taxes. A state law passed in 1971 clearly stated that a minor can obtain birth control without parental consent and

that the records kept for medical purposes will remain strictly confidential.

The county clinics differ from “free” clinics in that they are staffed by three fulltime doctors paid by the county. Free clinics are staffed by volunteer doctors. Both provide services free of charge, although free clinics depend on donations from those who can afford to pay.

Montgomery County supports nine family-planning clinics. They are located in each of the six county health centers, two on the campuses of Montgomery College and one at 12701 Twinbrook Parkway.

One must have an appointment to visit any clinic since certain days are set aside to take care of family planning. Appointments can be made at the Bethesda clinic, which is operated for this area, by calling 654-5525 or through the school nurse.

Last year these clinics received 2,700 visits from individuals needing contraception.

Of these, one health department worker estimated that 65% obtained the pill, while about 20% were given IUD, and the rest chose other methods (diaphragm or foam.) Anyone seeking birth control is given a complete physical examination. A detailed medical file is also kept in confidence with the understanding that the individual agrees to take responsibility for keeping clinic appointments since regular check-ups are necessary.

In addition to birth control, each family planning clinic also provides the following services: screening for venereal disease and cancer, pregnancy tests, and counseling and abortion referral.

Although leery of publicity, the staff of the Bethesda clinic was genuinely concerned and helpful. They were prepared to discuss the pros and cons of each method of birth control.

ve:

birth control in the modern age

by Holly Adams Some students’ names have been changed to protect privacy.

The day after President Trump’s inauguration, the phones at Potomac Family Planning Center were ringing off the hook.

People were calling the women’s health and abortion services clinic to ask if they would still provide abortions, birth control and other services that Trump planned to defund during his time in office.

Despite attempts at the federal level to defund resources that provide birth control, Montgomery County has many facilities that provide safe and judgement-free spaces for teenagers and adults to receive birth control for contraception and other medical uses. Title X, a federal program established in 1970, has allowed clinics to expand their confidential family planning services to serve low-income women who may not have access to private gynecologists.

Since the birth control pill became available in 1960, its use, along with other forms of female contraception, has become common. In the United States, 12.6% of women aged 15-49 are currently on the pill, and 62% of women 15-44 use some kind of birth control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As birth control usage has risen, the culture surrounding contraception has evolved alongside it. In an informal Black & White survey of 55 female students, 71% reported that they believe there isn’t a stigma around birth control at Whitman, and 86% reported having had a conversation with a friend about birth control.

Use of birth control in younger and older women alike has expanded to address other health issues beside pregnancy prevention. It can treat acne and side effects of menstruation like cramps, premenstrual syndrome, premenstrual dysmorphic disorder and migraines through regulating hormone production, said Dr. Diane Snyder, a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist at Women’s Health Specialists.

“The pill, the patch, the ring, the shot and the implant all work by suppressing ovulation,” Snyder said. “When there’s less bleeding, there’s less pain.”

Junior Emily went on birth control after an incident her freshman year: She had to leave class because she suddenly felt sick and couldn’t see straight. After going to the doctor, Emily found out she had extreme period-related side effects that caused her to almost faint in class.

After the episode, Emily expressed interest in going on the pill because it would make her period-related symptoms like cramps, back pain and headaches less severe. Her parents helped her get the medication from her pediatrician, understanding that it was for necessary medical reasons, Emily said. Although teenagers go on the pill for different reasons, she still believes there is some stigma around birth control at Whitman.

“In front of girls, you can talk about it and relate to it,” Emily said. “I would never bring it up in front of guys. I feel like it’s not weird to say you’re on birth control, but you have to say ‘but I’m not having sex.’ You have to explain the reason because otherwise people are going to make certain assumptions about you.”

Since many students are more comfortable talking to their parents about birth control than past generations have been, they’re able to receive and afford birth control prescriptions through private gynecologists or other physicians, paid for by insurance.

For girls who want to receive birth control without parental consent, however, clinics like CCI Health & Wellness Services continue to provide Title X services and keep every appointment they have with patients confidential, said Dr. Melissa Clark, the associate chief medical officer at the CCI Health & Wellness Services. If they don’t want to use their parent’s insurance, they can choose to anonymously pay as a sliding-scale patient which ensures confidentiality, Clark said.

“A lot do not know that you can actually access birth control as a confidential healthcare consumer,” Clark said. “It’s completely fair to come in and even just talk about it if you have questions.”

Locally, CCI Health & Wellness Services has multiple locations — Silver Spring, Gaithersburg, Takoma Park and Greenbelt — that each provide a variety of birth control and family planning services, including pregnancy tests, STD testing, STD treatment, emergency contraception like Plan B, the birth control pill, Depo-Provera shots, IUDs, Nexplanon, prescriptions for the NuvaRing and free condoms.

Junior Rebecca’s parents have always been against her taking birth control and always disregarded her whenever she mentioned that she wanted to go on the pill, she said. After realizing that her parents wouldn’t help her get birth control, Rebecca and her therapist made an appointment with her pediatrician without her parents’ knowledge. From there, Rebecca made appointments with gynecologists and other doctors and was able to start taking the pill as an out-of-pocket patient without using her parents’ insurance.

“The process itself was pretty easy,”

Rebecca said. “But having that hidden from my parents and having to remember to take the pill everyday on my own — that factor of secrecy was probably the hardest part.”

At Whitman, 24% of female students are on some form of birth control, according to the same survey. Out of these students, 70% said they’re on it for reasons other than pregnancy prevention.

Junior Lisa Ota, who went on the birth control pill for pregnancy prevention, believes there’s not much of a stigma around birth control at Whitman.

“I’ve never experienced judgement or anything like that, and I know a bunch of girls are on birth control for other reasons outside sex,” Ota said. “I think there’s a pretty good community.”

While doctors consider the pill generally risk-free, there are some adverse effects that women can experience. These may include short-term nausea and headaches caused by the estrogen in the pill, the patch and the ring, as well as possible weight changes and shifts in mood caused by progesterone, another hormone in many birth control prescriptions, Snyder said. At her practice, Snyder offers many different doses of the birth control pill, so patients can find one that works best for them if they’re experiencing any of these side effects.

Since it was introduced, the pill’s composition has subtly changed, with it now including a lower dosage of hormones. This new composition reduces the likelihood of possible side effects that patients could experience without compromising efficacy, Snyder said.

Some Whitman students, such as Ota, still experienced some of these adverse effects. She experienced months of poor appetite as well as noticeable changes in her mood after going on the pill. After about six months of these initial effects, her body adapted to the new medication and she no longer experiences these effects, she said.

The effects of progesterone in birth control can cause some patients to experience changes in mood or undergo more severe mental effects, Snyder said. Kaitlin Payne (‘12) said she experienced random episodes of crying for months after originally going on the pill in high school.

These effects gradually went away, but she said the emotional changes were too much for many of her friends to handle, prompting them to stop taking the pill.

Now in medical school, she said that she has seen an evolution in education of other forms of birth control since her time at Whitman. She said that many of her friends were unaware of other forms of birth control in high school such as the implant — a very small rod inserted under the skin in the upper arm — or an IUD, which is inserted in the uterus.

27

While still less common than the birth control pill, other forms of birth control like the IUD, an intrauterine device, are becoming more common for teenagers. Morgan, a junior, decided to get an IUD for pregnancy prevention instead of the pill because her mom experienced depression when she had been on the birth control pill as a teenager.

To avoid any mental effects and the burden of having to take a pill everyday, Morgan researched many different types of birth control and ultimately decided on getting an IUD. She believes that the MCPS health curriculum doesn’t teach enough about the different types of birth control since she had to teach herself about the process, she said.

“I don’t think there’s enough information about sex in general,” Morgan said. “I feel like it’s very shameful.”

Health teacher Nikki Marafatsos believes that the curriculum covers all methods of birth control equally: She gives students a comparison chart of the more common and less common forms of birth control to allow them to compare on their own. She thinks that if the curriculum al-

lotted more time to birth control, she could teach each type in more detail, she said.

During her time in high school, Marafatsos believed there was more of a taboo around birth control and doesn’t remember her peers really discussing it. Today, she has seen the conversation shift about birth control in her own classroom.

“I have students who are very open about sharing information about their experiences, even talking about their own experiences among classmates and opening up to the whole class,” Marafatsos said. “We’re at a point where people are more educated about it and more willing to discuss it, which I think is good.”

Although taboos around birth control have eased some for young women, many teenagers still struggle with accessing birth control either because of their socially conservative parents shielding them from access or because of stigmas within their family’s culture that limit their options, Ota said. Although her parents are open to talking about birth control with her, the conversation within her parents’ families when

they were growing up in Japan was much different.

“I know it’s harder for Japanese families because there’s such a conservative ideology usually in their family,” Ota said.

Although Clark recognizes that in many cultures parents avoid conversations with their children about sex, she believes that the conversation in America has shifted into a newer, healthier form. Now, Americans are more open to talking about sex, birth control, and especially the prevention of STIs, since the AIDS crisis.

In addition to reduced stigma, birth control coverage has expanded in the last decade, as the Affordable Care Act mandates that insurance companies cover all FDA approved contraceptives at no cost to insured patients, Snyder said.

“There are many women around that world that have no access to any of that and have no control over their reproductive [health],” Snyder said. “I always tell my patients that they need to appreciate that they have this.”

Scholarships and Awards The Support Education Foundation is proud to provide scholarships to students who strive to further their education and professional development awards to educators who have made a difference by positively impacting student success.

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$3,000 Community College Scholarship

Visit SupportEducation.org for more information and complete eligibility requirements. Applications are due by April 1, 2020.

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$1,000 Maurice Erly Professional Development Award

Students need to be more politically involved in choosing their

Staff Editorial If you ask any MCPS student to name the current Student Member of the Board of Education, they will probably give you the correct answer. Ask them to explain how the SMOB is chosen, though, and they’ll probably draw a blank.

The SMOB is the most prestigious and powerful student political position in Montgomery County. The student elected to office isn’t just an arbitrary figurehead; they hold equal voting power to that of the adult board members, and they cast ballots regarding public policy. They vote on policies like the boundary study and the Racial Equity Bill, which affect over 160,000 students.

But other than talking with candidates at occasional school visits and watching a single half-hour debate, students are largely uninvolved in the SMOB selection process. The SMOB nominating convention, which attendees affectionately call “nom com,” convenes for one day each February with the goal of deciding which two candidates will run in the general election. The convention is comprised of students who have opted to attend the event on behalf of their school and vote on the SMOB nominees.

For many readers, this article could be their first time learning about the SMOB nominating process; in an informal Black & White survey of 88 students, only 10 were aware of the convention in the first place.

Currently, only 12 of Whitman’s 2,000+ students can vote at the convention. Attending the convention isn’t an opportunity that most students know about; members of the student government end up filling up most of the few hundred spots.

Only a handful of these spots go to students outside of the SGA, and even then, those attendees are typically involved in regional student government. This year, all of the Whitman students who attended the nominating convention had some tie to either local or regional student government. The effect of the student voting cap is clear: Students only get to passively hear from the two nominees that the convention chooses rather than having a role voting at the convention.

There are two reasonable yet substantial ways to fix this issue. One step is to publicize the nominating convention. The

SMOB

fact that the vast majority of students don’t know that they can voice their opinions earlier on or can attend the convention by filling out a standard permission slip proves that the current system doesn’t effectively reflect the student voice.

Convention organizers could increase publicity for the event through a wide array of formats, including video messages, social media initiatives and working directly with schools. One of the best ways to reach students is through social media. In the same Black & White survey, 97% of the students reported having one social media account and 95% reported that they have a presence on multiple platforms. Flooding students’ Instagram and Twitter feeds with information on the convention may therefore increase attendance.

More broadly, Montgomery County Regional, the student leadership organization that represents the entire school system, could work with stakeholder groups within high school communities to increase awareness. If the convention organizers were able to work alongside specific schools’ student governments and spirit organizers — in Whitman’s case, the SGA and Whitmaniacs — they could help bring awareness to the convention within new groups. The MCR student government could partner with schools, using each system’s connections to the student body to increase the breadth and depth of either outreach. This grassroots organizing could take form in loudspeaker announcements, information delivered by General Assembly fourth period delegates or even a reminder in Whitman Shorts.

Another method could be through multimedia broadcasts. Administrators require English teachers to show the debates between the finalists in April, but teachers could also show an advertisement for the nominating convention in February, explaining that there are more than two candidates earlier on in the process. This way, students get both a better understanding of how the SMOB finalists are selected and have the opportunity to attend the event.

More than simply increasing awareness of the convention’s existence, MCR should stop limiting the number of students who can vote at the event. This would allow more students to have a voice.

As it currently stands, the 12 Whit-

man delegates who attended the convention in February and voted weren’t elected by their peers — they were simply the students who were enthusiastic enough to sign up. There’s no accountability in who the delegates select. They aren’t representing the interests of their student body. If the convention gets to unilaterally decide who can run in the general election, then a larger number of students should at least have the power to impact the vote.

Student attendance would add a level of accountability for the delegates. With high attendance, students would listen to more of the candidates’ platforms for themselves and form their own opinions on who deserves to get the nomination. With their newfound voting power, students would be able to discuss with other delegates who they think should get the nomination rather than having a handful of nearly random students represent Whitman.

There’s always the possibility that if the student voting cap were abolished, too many people may sign up to attend the convention. The county should collect definitive statistics on how many students each school intends to send, ensuring that they have enough space in whichever auditorium they rent out. If, for whatever reason, MCR can’t find the space to accommodate more students, they could record a livestream for people to stay involved throughout the whole process. Granted, this might disincentivize students from participating, seeing as they can’t be a part of the convention in person, but it would still be a viable alternative.

Students may not be lining up for miles to go to the convention, but that’s not the point of publicizing the event. The goal is to give students the opportunity to attend and learn about the political process.

Opening up the convention would combat an uninformed electorate and give interested students an avenue to become involved in county politics.

In a county whose students are known for having pride in their activism, we should reconsider how involved we would all like to be in the MCPS voting process.

If the SMOB serves on behalf of Montgomery County students, then students should be informed and fairly represented.

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Creativity is contagious: a showcase of student artwork

by Sam Mulford

1

Senior Georgie Hammond enrolled in ceramics her freshman year just to get her art credit, but she ended up really enjoying the class, she said. Her ceramics teacher, Wendy Kleiner, recommended Hammond continue taking the course. Now a senior, Hammond has taken ceramics all four years of high school and is in AP Ceramics.

In ceramics, most pieces are either sculptures or thrown on a wheel. Compared to her peers, Hammond spends a lot more time using the wheel. Her pieces are mostly functional; she specializes in bowls and vases.

Hammond gives away many of her pieces to family members but also has sold several of her pieces to Whitman families. At last year’s Whitman art show, Hammond sold one of her bowls for $75.

“In ceramics, there are so many different things you can do with a piece,” Hammond said. “Every step of the process there’s an opportunity to make it more unique.”

2

Senior Sophia Kotschoubey has been involved with art since she was young, exploring painting, drawing, sculpting and recently, making collages.

Kotschoubey usually starts a collage by finding a picture in a magazine that she likes. Then, she finds other magazine cutouts with the same color palette and glues them down. She fills in any white spaces with smaller pieces of paper, tape or pen doodles. Sometimes she just uses papers with good textures, like a candy bar wrapper.

“Art is kind of like a mind dump, so whatever I’m thinking about kind of manifests itself,” Kotschoubey said. “Collaging is fun because it has no rules.”

3

For senior Max Freedman’s AP Digital Art concentration, he wants to focus on the surreal aspects of nature, specifically enunciating colors and details in nature that you don’t always see, he said.

A lot of Freedman’s work begins with a drawing, which he then scans onto the computer to alter graphically. For the image above, Freedman’s stream of consciousness dictated the piece — he had no idea what the piece was going to look like until he finished, he said.

“I was in the car, and I had a drawing pad and a pen on me, so I just started doodling,” Freedman said. “I thought it would be cool if I filled up the whole page with that kind of style so I kind of just went with it.”

4

Sophomore Andrea Michel doesn’t have a specific style of photography but loves taking pictures of people on the street. With photography, Michel said she is able to capture unique moments of everyday life that people wouldn’t normally notice.

Michel shot this image in a laundromat, a place she doesn’t normally shoot but thought would be a “vintage” place to take pictures. She noticed a boy playing with a ball, and the

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bright colors and shadows immediately popped out to her. Michel really liked the way the photo turned out — she barely had to edit it because the colors were so vivid.

“I really like the concept of photography, and I think it’s really overlooked,” Michel said. “People think of it as just taking photos and that’s it, but with photography you can make a thousandth of a second infinite.”

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Junior Lucia Kaiser is in her first year of photography at Whitman, but she has been taking pictures all her life.

Kaiser’s favorite time to shoot is when she is traveling — she always brings a camera with her on trips.

Kaiser’s main focus is architectural photography.

Her mom is an architect and Kaiser wants to be an architect when she grows up; she said she has a natural inclination toward the layout of buildings.

“We take smaller parts of buildings, like columns, for granted,” Kaiser said. “Looking at a building, at first you might just see a simple building, but when you take a photo and look back at it and notice all the smaller details, you’re like ‘wow.’”

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The content of junior Raina Hatcher’s paintings rarely resembles reality; she describes her art as being “a mix of impressionism and surrealism.” By contrasting a dark background with vibrant colors, Hatcher’s art always has a distinct look.

A painting can take Hatcher anywhere from a few hours to several months to complete, depending on how inspired she is. The art piece shown took her two class periods to complete.

For Hatcher’s AP studio art concentration, she needs to complete 15 pieces by May. She has already completed 18.

“I think of art more abstractly,” Hatcher said. “I don’t have a goal for how many pieces I’m going to do, I just do art when I feel like it.”

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Senior Jordan Shaibani became interested in slam poetry after learning about it in her freshman year English class.

At the end of her junior year, she decided it was something she wanted to be more involved in.

Shaibani started going to open mic qualifiers in D.C. and eventually qualified for the DC Youth Slam Team, a team made up of middle and high school students. She is also on the East Coast Regional Slam Team, where she has competed in the youth world championships for slam poetry.

Poetry is an outlet for Shaibani to express and cope with her emotions, she said. Through slam poetry, she has made friends with people from all over the world, many of whom she’s still in touch with.

“With slam poetry, I’ve really found a community and a home,” Shaibani said. “Slam poetry is a small community, so you get to know everyone — you see familiar faces all the time.”

3

2

Hurricane

6

7

Aftermath of a hurricane

1

Still

Quiet air remains a part of the space

Just as it was before

Now Holding comfort with loose hands Shallow breaths

Days filled with acts of compulsive insignificance

Awaiting

by Jordan Shaibani

4 5

FIRST-TIME AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY, LITERATURE CLASSES NO LONGER OFFERED DUE TO LACK OF ENROLLMENT

BY MEERA SHROFF graphic by SAMANTHA LEVINE

Mary McLeod Bethune was one of the most influential African American educators and political activists of the 1900s. She was a successful businesswoman, a political advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, a teacher who opened a boarding school to educate African American girls, the vice president of the NAACP from 1940 to 1955, the founding president of the National Council of Negro Women, and as director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, she was the first black woman to head a department of a federal agency.

Despite her lengthy list of accomplishments, Bethune, along with hundreds of other accomplished African Americans in U.S. history, is only briefly mentioned during Whitman’s Honors U.S. History unit on the Civil Rights Movement.

While Bethune is included in Whitman’s AP U.S. History course, the AP course description doesn’t include her as a prominent figure that the course has to cover. In fact, the AP curriculum mandates the course covers only one influential African American activist: Martin Luther King Jr. While most AP U.S. History classes discuss other African American figures, they aren’t required to.

However, Northwood High School’s African American history class covered Bethune and other pioneering African Americans in depth. The eye-opening class, once taught by social studies content specialist Tracy Oliver-Gary,

brought students on a field trip to the headquarters of the National The African American history class was first offered in MontgomCouncil of Negro Women in D.C., where Bethune lived for a portion ery County in 1995, Oliver-Gary said. The 13 high schools that still of her life. There, students learned about Bethune’s lasting impact. offer the course include Walter Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Richard For the first time at Whitman, social studies resource teacher Su- Montgomery, Winston Churchill, James Hubert Blake, Paint Branch, zanne Johnson and English resource teacher Linda Leslie organized Clarksburg, Watkins Mill, Seneca Valley, Northwest, Montgomery and planned to offer similar courses to Oliver-Gary’s, including an Blair, Wheaton and Poolesville. Walter Johnson now offers African African American history course and African American literature American history as a semester-long class, and history teacher Jeremy course in the 2020-2021 school year. But Whitman administrators and Butler, tailors the course around what he deems to be key topics and counselors canceled both classes in early February due to a lack of works in the field. enrollment; fewer than five students enrolled in each course.

Butler explicitly focuses on more recent history because students Junior Lily Muchimba had planned to take the African American especially enjoy recognizing historical figures who are still alive toliterature class next school year to fill in all the gaps she recognized in day, he said. Butler hopes that students who take the class have addiher own knowledge about African American history, she said. tional knowledge that empowers them in difficult race-related conver“I just feel like it’s a complete shame that you don’t really get sations, he said. deeper into the topic about African American history or literature [in “In the traditional U.S. history class, you kind of learn that after other classes],” Muchimba said. the Civil Rights Movement, we had this groundbreaking legislation in MCPS has already developed and approved course descriptions the mid ‘60s, like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and and guidelines for both the African American history and literature then mission accomplished: Racism was conquered, and now we’ve courses. Currently, 13 high schools and one middle school offer Afri- moved on.” Butler said. “So I tried to spend a lot of time on the post can American history in MCPS, while Clarksburg High School offers Civil Rights Movement, post Dr. King to try to help create a more African American literature. realistic and urgent narrative.”

To justify official allocation of a staff member to a class, Whitman Oliver-Gary taught the same African American history at Blake, requires student enrollment of at least 20 students for elective courses, but she chose to include sociological lenses of study. Her students a threshold neither prospective course met for next school year. The completed a project on the achievement gap, for instance, where they African American history class was “geared toward” juniors and se- interviewed other students and parents in their community. Through niors and hadn’t been advertised since the history department doesn’t this project, she aimed to teach students not only what the achieveactively promote history electives, Johnson said. By contrast, the En- ment gap is, but also its effects and why it continues to exist. She glish department advertised the African American literature course, incorporated the project into the curriculum because the achievement also available for juniors and seniors, through flyers posted outside as- gap was a major topic of conversation at the school, Oliver-Gary said. sistant principal Phillip Yarborough’s office and a presentation offered “If you learn about the history of something, it enables you to to parents in January about English courses and electives. understand why people respond the way they respond,” Oliver-Gary The literature course would have included African American said. novels, poetry, essays and biographies Senior Claude Noutak and may have included art and music, thought the African American although the exact syllabus was not history course would have helped “I AM A LITTLE BIT SAD THAT THIS yet planned, Leslie said. Because both open students’ minds and had courses are electives, MCPS merely hoped that students who weren’t CLASS WON’T BE A THING. BUT I DO provides course descriptions for the African American would also HOPE IN THE FUTURE THAT WE classes, granting teachers a lot of freeenroll in the class. Junior AlisTRY AGAIN, BECAUSE dom over the curriculum. Leslie wanted sa Weisman, a white student, to modernize the existing guidelines by said she was interested in taking I REALLY THINK IT WOULD BE including texts written within the last 15 the African American literature BENEFICIAL TO [OUR] SCHOOL.” years, she said. course to get a unique perspective - CLAUDE NOUTAK “I think the benefits of exposing on a different culture. yourself to voices that you don’t norNoutak anticipated that the mally hear are impossible to measure,” classes would create spaces where Leslie said. “The more diversity, the students could talk about their exmore range of experience, the more range of voice, more range of periences with race openly, like her own experiences where people style you can get in your literature and your exposure and your history have whispered or given her looks that make her feel as if she’s an and your voice, your perspective, the richer you are.” outsider when she’s out in the Bethesda area.

Yarborough wants to better represent African Americans in school Noutak hopes students taking the African American history and curriculums so that black students feel less isolated at Whitman, a literature classes will gain awareness that will help reduce racism, she majority white school; 68.8% of Whitman students enrolled for the said.

2019-2020 school year are white, according to the counseling depart“If we can teach these kids how to love other races, then we can ment’s 2019-2020 profile, while only 3.5% of Whitman students are create a more diverse community, and maybe the world wouldn’t be black. Students who see black and brown students portrayed in only so separated all the time,” Noutak said. one or very few ways would have been able to learn about different Counselor Shalewa Hardaway, who spearheaded Whitman’s perspectives through the two classes, Yarborough said.

Black History Month assembly, said it’s important to learn African “There are a lot of contributions that black and brown folks have American history because it’s a part of American history. Hardaway made in this country, a lot of things they’ve gone through,” Yarbor- guesses that the African American history and literature classes may ough said. “People just don’t understand the history of that.” not have had a high enrollment because students already had both reJohnson said she was too new to the resource teacher position in quired and elective classes in mind by the time each course was added her first couple of years to even begin the process of adding a course to the bulletin, she said. and had not yet mapped which other new courses to offer. To add a Leslie and Johnson both plan on offering the African American course to Whitman’s course bulletin, Whitman’s list of offered cours- literature class and the African American history class again next year. es, resource teachers must submit a course request before early Jan“I am a little bit sad that this class won’t be a thing,” Noutak said. uary, a deadline she did not meet in her first two years as a resource “But I do hope in the future that we try again because I really think it teacher. would be beneficial to [our] school.”

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“H

uman trafficking” and “modern day slavery” aren’t words you hear every day in Bethesda — we often think they’re concentrated in international communities. But the reality is more grim than many would expect.

The International Labor Organization estimates that there are at least 40.3 million victims of human trafficking globally and hundreds of thousands of victims in the United States, 99% of whom are women. To combat this issue, activist Andrea Powell founded FAIR Girls — which stands for “Free, Aware, Inspired, Restored” — in 2003 after her friend was sold into forced marriage. It’s a non-profit organization which provides intervention and supportive care to survivors of human trafficking within the D.C. area and aims to eradicate trafficking through prevention education and policy advocacy. Since its founding, FAIR Girls has remained the only D.C. organization to provide housing tailored to the needs of trafficking survivors.

“The thing that’s so surprising to me is that trafficking is happening in Montgomery County,” said FAIR Girls board member Cheryl Battan, a former Whitman parent. “It’s happening a half hour from where you are any time of the day, mostly in hotels and apartments.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures trafficking activities are most commonly defined as the “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons for the purpose of exploitation.” The NCSL states that traffickers force their victims into inhumane conditions: prostitution, forced labor and unsafe housing, among others.

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Survivors are usually trafficked by people they know, including romantic partners and family members, according to Polaris Project, a non-profit organization that works to combat and prevent human trafficking and runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Some survivors report directly to FAIR Girls, while the National Human Trafficking Hotline also refers callers to FAIR Girls. The police also directs some victims they find on the street to FAIR Girls.

Once in contact with a FAIR Girls representative, victims have the option to stay in FAIR Girls’ free housing, the Vida Home, which provides beds for up to six survivors at a time. Survivors can stay at the Vida Home for a maximum of 90 days before moving into a place of their own. The Vida Home’s address isn’t available publicly, so it offers a safe place for trafficking victims to transition out of slavery without the possibility of their traffickers finding them.

“It’s not a shelter at all,” Battan said. “It’s a home.”

Forty of the 52 survivors that FAIR Girls supported in 2019 stayed at the Vida Home, which grants from the federal, D.C. city governments and Montgomery County governments pay for. The other 12 survivors lived elsewhere, in housing supported by FAIR Girls’ partner organizations but still received help from the FAIR Girls staff.

At the Vida Home, survivors work with one of three case managers to determine a set of goals and a step-by-step plan for getting acclimated to their new, free life.

“Case managers provide a whole slew of services from legal and medical services to mental health and group therapy,” Battan said. “It’s very individualized because we meet the girls and young women where they are.”

Case management coordinator Jewel Wright currently works with 13 survivors and meets with each of them once a week, connecting them to healthcare, transportation, social services and other housing programs depending upon their needs.

“When I meet with a new client, I let them set the pace,” Wright said. “They will open up in their own time.

I start out by just listening to them to make them feel comfortable, which allows me to build rapport.”

FAIR GiRLS fights to end human trafficking,

BY SAMMY HEBERLEE supports survivors FAIR Girls also offers a prevention education program called “Tell Your Friends” to middle and high school students in all Montgomery County schools, as well as other nearby counties. FAIR Girls representatives have been trying to plan when to give the presentation at Whitman, Battan said. The goal of the program is to teach students the signs of trafficking and what they can do if they suspect someone they know is being trafficked.

“There are so many misconceptions about who the perpetrators are and who the victims are,” Battan said. “The Tell Your Friends program addresses those misconceptions and discusses signs that you can look for if you suspect that someone you know might be being trafficked.”

Human Trafficking 101, FAIR Girls’ adult education program, teaches police forces how to better identify and keep trafficking victims safe. It also educates medical professionals on how to identify trafficking victims.

Oftentimes, as they are being trafficked, victims escape to the hospital seeking medical care.

FAIR Girls’ staff, most of whom are licensed social workers, can sign up to ride with police officers on routine calls — victims are usually outside on streets between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. — to talk to human trafficking victims.

It often takes three or four interactions with the same female survivor for them to actually open up and trust a staff member, Battan said.

This is because they’re likely scarred from the trauma they’ve been through and the betrayal by their trafficker, someone who likely promised to care for them, Battan said. Staff members give victims toiletries and chapsticks discreetly inscribed with FAIR Girls’ hotline, which is available Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Even though traffickers coerce their vic-

tims into committing crimes, police often charge victims for crimes they committed while being trafficked. FAIR Girls works to expunge these crimes from survivors’ records because a criminal record can make it difficult for them to get jobs and homes, Battan said.

FAIR Girls executive director Erin Andrews is a former federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s office, where she prosecuted child abuse, domestic abuse and human trafficking cases. Andrews and the prosecutors she works with seek expungement for trafficking-related crimes including buying and selling drugs, holding guns, driving without a license or under the influence and prostiution, which is usually the easiest to expunge because of its general association with forced labor, Andrews said.

“When I prosecuted my first human trafficking case, I realized that it’s very challenging to effectively prosecute a trafficker without making sure that the victims are in a stable enough place to cooperate with the investigation,” Andrews said.

Andrews first joined FAIR Girls as the director of policy when she saw a lack of available services for trafficking survivors.

“I realized that when I wanted to refer victims to personalized services, there just weren’t enough of them, especially when I had two or three clients at a time,” Andrews said.

Because she’s actually prosecuted these cases, Andrews feels like police officers and other prosecutors are more inclined to listen to her. Even so, it’s often very difficult to get charges expunged, especially when traffickers indoctrinate survivors not see themselves as a victim — a lot of victims have never even heard the term “human trafficking” before, Battan said.

In an attempt to rectify this problem, FAIR Girls helped the D.C. City Council pass the Trafficking Survivors Relief Amendment Act in April 2019, an act which introduces a statute allowing human trafficking survivors to vacate their criminal records for crimes that they were forced to commit while victims.

“Traffickers will often tell victims, ‘No one is going to believe you. You’re the one doing the crime, so you’re going to have to pay the price,’” Andrews said. “When law enforcement officers and prosecutors charge victims, it fulfills that promise that the traffickers told to the victim. This law will prevent prosecutors from reinforcing the idea that their traffickers are the only person who can care for the victims.”

The women and girls served by FAIR Girls will often stop by the drop-in center, the organization’s administrative building, if they are living independently nearby. FAIR Girls also checks in with the survivors via phone calls, and some return to the Vida Home if they need more support.

“A lot of our clients cycle back into services several times,” Andrews said. “Some people view that as failure, but we view that with respect because it means that they viewed us as a safe place that they could come back to without judgement.”

Volunteers can teach a yoga class, help with resumes, demonstrate job interview skills and teach personal finance skills at the drop-in center. Often, people who have had similar experiences want to help other people going through the same thing, Battan said.

“A lot of the FAIR Girls staff are themselves victims of human trafficking or similar crimes,” Andrews said. “Any policy position that we fight for is really rooted in the actual lived experiences of survivors.”

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Josh Weinberg’s

The Story Behind Rise to Prominence in Whitman Basketball

by Matt Mande

36

Six years ago at Pyle Middle School, head basketball coach Bobby Polley called over senior Josh Weinberg, then in seventh grade, to talk to him at the end of his second day of basketball tryouts. When Josh heard the words “not quite there” and “try out next year,” he was crushed.

The following year, after training at home and at private sessions with coaches from E-Train University, a basketball instructional organization, Josh returned to Pyle basketball tryouts. Despite his efforts, a disappointed Josh left without a spot on the team once again.

“I was pretty upset,” Josh said. “Being a part of that team was a huge deal to me, and to not make it either year was frustrating.”

Eager to find a way on to the team, he joined as a manager, helping Polley during practice and games. Midway through the season, a player quit the team, and taking advantage of the long-awaited opportunity, Josh filled the empty spot. But he spent most of the games sitting on the bench.

“Seeing younger kids playing in front of me was kind of a slap in the face,” Josh said. “But it all just made me hungrier.”

Two years later, Josh made Whitman’s varsity team, pulled up mid-season as a sophomore.

Before his third regular season game Josh stood on the shiny floor of the Whitman gym, his heart racing as he listened to the national anthem. As the final words sounded, the crowd erupted in applause — Josh was ready.

It was a Friday night, and Whitman was facing off against its

rival, Churchill High School. Over the next hour, Weinberg would score 11 points, leading Whitman to a hard-fought victory.

“That was the game where I really validated my spot on varsity,” Weinberg said. “It was also the most excited I’d ever been after a game.”

Now, Josh is the varsity team captain, a position his father, Paul Weinberg, attributes to Josh’s determination and competitive attitude. Throughout his past two and a half seasons on varsity, he has brought energy and leadership to the team, varsity boys basketball coach Christopher Lun said. He’s also the leading scorer on the team this season, averaging 14.9 points per game.

Josh’s rise to the top of Whitman’s basketball program began the summer before his freshman year. He joined the Whitman summer league team and worked to make the most of the few minutes of playing time he got.

“I tried to take advantage of every single time I saw the floor,” Josh said. “My goal was to be that guy that deserves to be out there — not because he scores, but because he guards, comes out with loose balls and really just puts in the effort.”

That fall, determined to get more playing time, Josh tried out for Havoc City Elite Basketball, an Amateur Athletic Union team with skilled players from around the D.C. area. After making the AAU team, he began to increase his speed of play and sharpen his ability to make smart plays, he said.

“Havoc City really opened my eyes to what real basketball tal-

ent was,” Josh said. “It made me more accustomed to playing against better competition.”

When the time came to try out for Whitman, Josh was prepared, he said. Although he wasn’t originally on the starting lineup, Josh worked his way into a spot as a starter midway through the season.

“I started to catch up,” Josh said. “My athleticism and other aspects of my game made me a better player. Everything kind of clicked.”

Josh also worked hard at home, practicing with his brother Max Weinberg (‘18) who was a junior on varsity at the time. Having someone bigger and faster to train with at home and in the gym played an important role in improving his skills, Josh said.

As long as the weather was clear, the two brothers were outside, shooting around and playing one-on-one matchups in their driveway.

In the beginning, Max would always beat Josh when they played against each other, but around the same time Josh began to get more playing time as a freshman on the JV team, he started to defeat his older brother.

“I just remember him slowly starting to beat me,” Max said. “That was when I knew he was going to be really good.”

Josh returned to JV his sophomore season and his teammates chose him as one of two captains of the team. As captain, Josh tried to set an example as a hard working player. He also led the JV team in scoring, averaging over 13 points per game.

His leadership position never affected his work ethic, he said, and he continued to drill both in and out of practice to improve his ball-handling and shooting.

“Josh was always the first to be in the gym before practice and the last to leave after,” guard Tyler Chapman said. “Even on Saturdays, he would get there earlier than anyone else.”

When Josh was pulled up from JV to varsity, he was “overjoyed,” he said. He remembers talking to Lun about what he could bring to the team — his enthusiasm and skill.

“We usually wait until the end of the JV season to pull players up,” Lun said. “We just kind of needed a spark to our lineup, and Josh was able to be that spark.”

Throughout the rest of the season, Josh was a strong and aggressive defender who brought energy to the court, making him an asset to the varsity team, Lun said.

To Josh, moving up to varsity was more than just a chance to play at the next level and help out the team; it was a chance to play alongside his brother, he said.

Max, a senior at the time, had mixed feelings about the situation at first, he said.

“He was the sophomore call-up, and I was the senior riding the bench,” Max said. “That was something as an older brother you hate to see.”

But after a few weeks, Max started to appreciate being on the same team as his younger brother. He loved watching the person he had been practicing against all his life go out onto the court and score for his team, Max said.

When the regular season ended and playoffs began, Josh started to feel a lot of pressure.

“It was my brother’s senior year and the last time I would be able to take the court with him or any of the other seniors,” he said. “Every game was ‘do or die’ to be on the same team as my brother.”

That winter, Whitman ended up winning their first two playoff games but fell in the third round against Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. Although it wasn’t the result Josh was hoping for, he still enjoyed every minute he spent playing on the same team as Max, he said.

“Coming into high school, neither one of us expected anything like this to happen,” Josh said. “To play eight games with him was really special for our relationship, and it brought us closer as brothers.”

The following year, Josh returned to varsity as a junior and a starter on the team. Throughout that season, off-court conflicts between the leading seniors resulted in a lack of leadership, which led Josh and other juniors to question who would take charge in their senior year. Seeing an opportunity to help out the team, Josh decided he would try to step into that role and bring the team together.

Now as captain of the team, Josh is a “natural leader,” guard Jack Goldman said. Although at first there were times Josh struggled to remain positive with his teammates, he has since improved his ability to give constructive feedback in practice and during games, Lun said.

“He’s the guy that will rally the team at halftime and tell you what to do to fix your mistakes on the court,” Goldman said.

Over the past few months, Josh has dealt with two injuries, causing him to miss a total of five games. He was first injured in October, hurting his calf after going up for a layup in Battle of the Classes. Before fully recovering, Josh injured his ankle in a game against Quince Orchard High School.

“It was definitely frustrating to have to sit on the sideline for all those games, especially in my last year with the team,” Josh said. “All I wanted to do was take the court with my teammates.”

Now, to prevent future injury, Josh has been working with trainers at Healthy Baller, a strength and agility program. There, he practices changing directions and accelerating to strengthen the muscles he uses the most when playing basketball.

Since returning, Josh has led Whitman’s team to a winning record in his senior year. He has also made some key shots, including a game-winning buzzer beater against Magruder High School.

“When I hit that shot, all the weight kind of fell off my shoulders,” Josh said. “I could finally just return to the fun of playing basketball.”

As playoffs approach, Josh is aiming for a team win in the sectional final. For the past two years, Whitman has lost in sectionals, eliminating them from the following rounds. Having developed a strong defense and great chemistry, Josh believes this year’s team is capable of breaking that barrier and playing in the state quarterfinal, he said.

No matter the outcome of this season, Josh said he will miss Whitman basketball and the close friends he has made on the team. From overcoming setbacks at Pyle to his love for the basketball community that has supported him throughout the past four years, Josh has cherished his well-earned time playing for and leading the team, he said.

“Regardless of the level I was playing at, I’ve always enjoyed myself every time I take the floor,” Josh said. “I’ll always remember walking into the Whitman gym for practice, spending time with my teammates and getting better.”

“My goal was to be that guy that deserves to be out there” - Josh Weinberg

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Students’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.

On Black Friday this year, junior Grace was shopping at The Grove, a shopping complex in Los Angeles, with a few of her friends from California. After trying on multiple pairs of designer sunglasses, she finally settled on a favorite — but instead of walking to the register and paying for them, she put them on her head and confidently walked out of the store.

The sunglasses cost $1,200. By the end of the day, after visiting multiple other stores, she had stolen $16,000 worth of clothes, makeup and other accessories.

In an informal Black & White survey of 51 students, 55% said they had shoplifted at least once. One in 11 Americans will shoplift at least once in their lives, and teenagers ages 13 to 17 account for 25% of all shoplifters arrested despite making up only seven percent of the U.S. population, according to a study from the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. More than $13 billion worth of products are stolen annually from U.S. retailers, according to NASP. Students shoplift for a variety of reasons. In the same survey, many students who shoplifted reported that their motivation stems from laziness and anxiety related to spending money. One person surveyed said they shoplifted because “it’s easy and free.”

“When you’re with friends, it’s almost like a fun thing to do,” senior Emily said. “My friends and I would go on ‘stealing trips.’ We would go to the mall to see a movie, and then the rest of the day we were at the mall. We would just steal from everywhere.”

Junior Jacob had never been caught shoplifting until a trip to Macy’s at Westfield Montgomery Mall. He had been stealing from Macy’s for a few years, and it was the first store he and his friends went into that day. They stole about $100 worth of makeup products and then left the store. They proceeded to walk around the mall and shoplift from other retailers. At the end of the day, they returned to Macy’s for one last stop, he said.

“My friends and I were walking out of Macy’s, and I noticed a man wearing all black walking right in front of us,” Jacob said. “He slipped behind us, and this guy got in front of me and grabbed my arm and said, ‘Macy’s Security, you’ll have to come with me.’ They had caught us on the cameras or one of the cashiers had seen us put one of the items in our bags.”

The security guard then escorted Jacob to a small room that he described as “almost like a jail cell.” Rather than handcuffing him, the guard took Jacob’s bag and started going through it. Because he had stolen items from other stores, Jacob lied, saying that the only items stolen were from Macy’s in order to avoid further trouble. The security guard then explained to him that if the cost of everything he stole exceeded $100, it would be clas-

graphic by JACKY LOCOCO

38

sified as a criminal misdemeanor.

Jacob’s items were worth $106, but instead of calling the police, the security officers decided to let him go since they thought it was his first offense.

Students who go to the mall with the intent to shoplift often purposely wear outfits that can conceal stolen clothes and accessories or bring a bag that can fit stolen goods, junior Maddie said.

The merchandise that students report stealing often aren’t items they necessarily need. Maddie consistently stole clothes from Nordstrom on the weekends for just a few months, only stopping after mall security caught her sophomore year. To her surprise, the guards she encountered weren’t dressed in outfits that blatantly said “security.” They were dressed like average people.

“I was stealing from Nordstrom, and I would wear out clothes from BP and all the brands they had there,” said Maddie. “I would purposely wear baggy clothes to the mall so I could put on extra pairs of pants or two shirts underneath.”

Even though there’s less security surveillance at lower-end stores, employees are still aware of the continual problem, Maddie said. Additionally, with the advent of apps like Tik Tok that broadcast tutorial videos showing “how to shoplift,” shoplifting has become more popular, said one PacSun manager at Westfield Montgomery Mall.

Employees working in retail in Montgomery County view this petty theft as “pointless,” he added.

“Your parents work for [their money], so why would you not pay or use your money, or get a job?” the PacSun manager said.

An employee working at Altar’d State, a popular clothing stall in the mall, said that shoplifting there happens about four out of seven days a week.

“Sometimes we are able to recover the merchandise,” the Altar’d State employee said. “It’s usually younger girls.

We’ve learned that it’s an initiation for girls trying to be popular, so they come in and they try to steal small items like jewelry and sunglasses.”

Because most of the shoplifters who are caught at Altar’d State are young teens, the store usually first notifies their parents and doesn’t prosecute them, according to employees. Most of the time, parents offer to pay for the stolen merchandise. Altar’d State employees only call mall security if someone is trying to physically escape the store after being caught.

Another employee working at Urban Outfitters said that it has significantly reduced the amount of theft within their Westfield Mall store by almost 60% to 70% in the past couple years, she said.

“It used to be a lot worse a couple of years ago when I first came to this store,” she said. “It was the highest I’ve ever seen in all my years of retail. Our number one way of deterring theft is engaging with customers.”

Because of company policy, Urban Outfitters isn’t allowed to call security on average shoplifters even if they attempt to sprint for a store exit. However, if the products stolen amount to a major cost, the store must call the police right away.

Bonnie Zucker, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in ado-

lescents and adults, views shoplifting as a norm a l step in adolescence, unless it’s an ongoing ritual.

“We want someone when they shoplift to have some sense of remorse about it,” Zucker said. “Even if they’re in touch with the thrill of it, we want them to feel either badly that they stole something they didn’t pay for or feel bad for the owner of the store. We actually encourage people to feel bad about things they do like this.”

While many of her peers steal for the rush, Maddie began feeling incredibly guilty after walking out of stores with hundreds of dollars of makeup and clothes stuffed in her pockets and under her clothes.

“I hated the feeling after doing it,” Maddie said. “Sometimes I was so stressed about the fact that I had this stuff that I felt kind of sick.”

Once security guards finally caught Maddie, the guards called the police and gave her a citation.

She had to participate in a mandatory county class on shoplifting where she learned about the large impact shoplifting can have on businesses. Prices in stores are higher in order to compensate for the amount of money lost to shoplifters, she learned.

“I learned a lot,” Maddie said. “[Shoplifting is] simply not worth it, and then you just end up with all of this stuff that you didn’t earn.”

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I was a topsecret paid meme expert for Facebook Jocie Mintz graphic by Joey Sola-Sole

W

orking for Facebook would be a career highlight for most. For me, it was a side hustle.

Every week for three months, Facebook paid me to tell a data researcher whether or not the memes he shared were funny. It was the best and most bizarre job I’ll ever have.

Most teens see Facebook as an app exclusively for their parents and grandparents. The past several years have been rocky for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO; the app has become a base for spreading misinformation, having possibly influenced the 2016 election outcomes and upsetting privacy breaches. The app has seen a sharp decline in users, losing over 15 million users in the past two years. In response, the company is working to attract teen users by creating new, engaging platforms. These efforts included creating a meme-sharing page that mimicked popular humor-based apps but was run through the Facebook app itself. Designers unimaginatively named the project “Facebook LOL.” I first became involved with Facebook LOL through dubious means. In early September 2018, I responded to the sketchiest ad of all time on Facebook. It said something along these lines: Are you a teen? Do you like memes? Do you want money?

My parents always warned me to never click on suspicious advertisements or give my email away to strangers, but as a teen who likes memes and wants money, I simply couldn’t resist.

Later that month, I received an email from a Facebook

data researcher asking me to participate in the project. I would be added to a Facebook group with around 100 other teenagers around the country who had been looped into this research scheme through the same sketchy ad I had responded to. Though I was reluctant to disclose my personal Facebook information and interact with other teenagers, I agreed once I was promised a $75 weekly stipend.

The Facebook group — titled “What’s Funny?” — was like an alternate reality.

Filled with money-hungry, meme-obsessed teens like myself, the group members didn’t interact much at first, but soon they would become some of my closest friends.

We were all super eager to be let in on a classified Facebook secret. We felt special.

Confidentiality was paramount in the research; I had to sign a five-page non-disclosure agreement — one that has since been rendered null and void — and get a parent signature.

Once the research commenced, a user experience researcher named Severin introduced himself to the group. Facebook hired him to collect data on responses to the Facebook LOL prototype. Severin would post a series of memes to the group every day, and our job as “scouts” for the project was to rate the comedic value of each daily batch.

The only problem: The memes sucked.

I don’t know what Severin was thinking. His sad excuses for memes were stale and uncreative. The group of teens was merciless in our criticism of the platform. From our perspective, it was obvious there was no clear plan for the format of LOL. It seemed like a desperate attempt from Facebook to attract teen users by clumping ancient memes together and calling it “humor.” There was no original content whatsoever; instead, the platform just stole memes from Twitter, Instagram and even iFunny — an older app solely made for meme-sharing.

After two weeks, the memes weren’t getting any funnier and the feedback wasn’t making an impact, so I took matters into my own hands. Wanting to post the first funny thing since the project started, I made a quick post poking fun at the one connection we all had: Severin.

The poor data researcher was the perfect target. He had a weird-sounding name and a tragic taste in memes. After some of my own research, I found out that Severin’s Facebook account was created the same day as the group itself. Suspicious. I posted a harmless message in the group about how I believed Severin was a fake man, expecting to get a few chuckles and maybe even some attention from the man himself. (I later found out Severin is in fact very real).

I sparked a movement. Suddenly, everyone took upon themselves to create their own memes, all making fun of Severin. I felt a little bad for him; he was just some grown

man doing research and continually being cyberbullied by teens. At first he never responded, but after we incessantly harassed him with memes, he began to comment with GIFs of his stunned reactions. Out of the blue, Severin started using our memes as his own Facebook profile picture and banner. I think he secretly liked the attention.

Soon, the group became overrun by our own original memes. Not only did we make fun of Severin, but we also made fun of Facebook itself and the ridiculousness of the LOL platform. We were having the time of our lives — and all on Mark Zuckerberg’s dime!

The study was only supposed to last one month. However, this platform of Facebook-curated memes was so underdeveloped that the research team kept extending our project week by week, in an attempt to pull more data and improve the features of LOL. Having started in late October, it ended up lasting until late January.

Over those three months, our group be-

months obsessing over? Heart-wrenching.

What was more heart-wrenching was my loss of income. Severin or one of the other researchers deleted the Facebook group.

There’s no public proof it ever existed.

After harsh criticism from tech news outlets, Facebook decided to cease the development of LOL. The platform was never going to work in the first place; it was ill-conceived and tragically unfunny. My group received our last payment, and we never heard from the cursed page again.

But I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this new community quite yet. Earlier in the project, I was voted the funniest member of the group in a poll one of my friends made. It was an honor. I wanted to keep that title, so I made a new Facebook group. With the new group, we were able to keep in touch and continue sharing only the best memes. About half the members of the original group joined, and we all posted and talked every day for the first few months.

We were having the time of our lives — and all on Mark Zuckerberg’s dime! came close. Sometimes I’d catch myself staying up late just to share a laugh with these teens from all over the country. I added a few of them on Snapchat and followed many on Instagram.

One of the best parts of the group was that we were all so quick to support one another. Nobody truly knew anyone and yet we were willing to open up to each other and have deep conversations. We helped each other come up with extravagant holiday gifts that we could buy with our new income. Someone even lent someone else a bit of their stipend when they needed the extra cash for a loved one’s birthday. Even though we had never met in person, the connections were real. A lot of people automatically assume making friends online is bad and dangerous, but for us, it was incredibly easy to form a real and understanding community.

Then the unthinkable happened: Someone broke their NDA and leaked the details of Facebook LOL to the press. All within the same week, TechCrunch, Mashable and The DailyBeast wrote articles absolutely destroying Facebook for their crude development of LOL. Honestly, it hurt a little. It was one thing when I made fun of the platform — I was paid to do so — but to see professional journalists ridicule what I had spent three

When I decided to reflect on the whole extravaganza for this magazine, I revisited the unique Facebook group I had made. It had been inactive since the summer. Realizing how much I missed sharing a laugh, I dropped a quick hello. Though it had been over a year since the original Facebook project closed, my favorite members were eager as ever to update me on their lives.

A lot of people got into their dream colleges. A few people got real jobs — more reliable ones than reviewing memes for Facebook. One guy even got married. For old time’s sake, we posted a few of our favorite memes. We were all overjoyed just to talk to each other again. Though I will likely never meet these people in person, we’re all connected through the wacky moment in our lives that we shared. Through it all, I realized that even from the most unlikely places a community can arise.

Memes are our most compressed ideas, quick ways to share our thoughts on the situations and ironies of life. We create memes for strangers to laugh at and understand, but in this project it was the strangers themselves I found myself understanding the most. Maybe the true memes are the friends we make along the way.

41

Reading the local

BOOK SCENE Best independent bookstores in the area

by Holly Adams Since the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda Row — a staple of the Bethesda downtown area — closed its doors in Jan. 2018, many community members have missed having a local bookstore. To replace these larger chains when they close, independent bookstores have grown in popularity, with sales growing an average of 7.5% over the last five years, according to the American Booksellers Association.

Independent bookstores around the D.C. area offer more community-oriented spaces to relax, read and browse unique finds that are unavailable at large chain bookstores.

Kensington Row Bookshop

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In 2002, Elisenda Sola-Sole (‘78) opened the Kensington Row Bookshop to create a space where people in the community could come together and be around books, she said. The Kensington Row Bookshop carries mostly used books and is in the epicenter of a vibrant community on Kensington’s Antique Row: an eclectic area with antique shops, gift shops, art galleries and restaurants.

From poetry to historical fiction to cookbooks, Kensington Row Bookshop offers a wide selection of used books along with journals, posters, old postcards and greeting cards made by local artists for sale.

As a part of her community outreach efforts, Sola-Sole provides two spaces where outside groups — such as the history books club, the philosophy club and the weekly meditative journaling workshop — can meet on the upper level. The groups use these spaces for free, but many return the favor by donating books to the store. Sola-Sole also hosts the monthly Kensington Row Poetry Series, an open mic event where community members can share poetry, on the lower level of her store.

“It’s a way of reaching out to the community, bringing the community in, and offering the experience of writing and reading in a creative space,” Sola-Sole said. “In return, the community is very supportive of the shop.”

The Catalan Library, a room filled with books in Catalan, is very special to Sola-Sole and her family who are from Catalonia, Spain.

She decorated the room with quotes in Catalan and a replica of the Sagrada Família cathedral in Barcelona. Surrounding a circular table at the center of the room are shelves of books that her family has accumulated. The wide selection of books aren’t for sale but are available for customers to read in this special room.

Inspired by Catalan tradition, Sola-Sole organizes an annual Kensington Day of the Book Festival on Antique Row, a combination of the Festival of the Rose and the Day of the Book. For this event, she invites the whole community to come together and meet with local authors, watch cookbook demonstrations and hear live music.

The festival brings nearby bookstores in Kensington together; Sola-Sole finds it important that independent bookstores stick together because “they each have their own personality,” she said. It’s why she

has a list of all the local bookstores at the front of her store, she said.

“It’s important for bookstores to support each other because I don’t see other bookstores as competition: I see them as complementing my shop,” Sola-Sole said. “Bookstores are very different, we can’t all have the same books. Rather than send people to shop online, we should send people to other bookstores so that we can all support each other.”

Sola-Sole said that she learns a lot from her customers when they ask her for certain authors or subjects that lead to conversations about the customer’s interests, like their travels if they’re looking for a travel guide. She learns just as much from her customers as she does from the books in her store, Sola-Sole said.

“One thing about working with books is you realize how much there’s to know and how little you actually know,” she said. “There’s so much to learn every day.”

Bonjour Books D.C.

Walking into Bonjour Books D.C. — only a few stores down from the Kensington Row Bookshop — you’re greeted with the sounds of Paris as Yves Montand, a famous French singer, serenades customers through the small radio on the front desk. Jennifer Fulton, a fluent French speaker, opened the quaint French bookstore in April after she realized that her son, who was learning French, had little access to French literature in the D.C. area.

A little sign reads: “Your favorite characters speak French!” under translated copies of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Harry Potter.”

From children’s books to rare books about music and theatre, Bonjour Books offers a taste of France in a space that Fulton designed to encourage appreciation of international cultures. Learning French can be a gateway to learning about so many other cultures that also come from French speaking regions, said Fulton, who met her husband who is originally from Morocco because they both spoke French.

Bonjour Books is a place where anyone can go to practice their French skills while immersing themselves in the culture and a place where prospective American tourists can find a travel guide in English for a trip to France. For many, it’s a “chance to make a connection and not be on a screen,” Fulton said.

Fulton believes that independent books stores are a great way to build community, especially among smaller groups, like the French community in the D.C. photo by HOLLY ADAMS

area.

“People need to come and connect on a human level,” Fulton said. “Every customer that comes in here you make a connection with, and you have a wonderful experience of just talking about literature or life. There’s just nothing like that.”

Second Story Books

The smooth jazz music playing in Second Story Books in Dupont Circle creates a cozy and inviting setting that draws in customers to explore the world without stepping foot outside of the store.

In Second Story Books, customers can browse the large selection of books covering regions across the globe. Yellow tabs signal a new subregion that readers can explore, from South Asia to the Carribean.

For escapist readers, there are shelves filled with fantasy, mystery and all types of fiction.

Second Story Books is one of the few antiquarian bookshops — stores with used and rare books — in D.C., which Stefan Giglio, who has worked there for about a year and a half, said gives the store more character. The store has two locations: one in Dupont Circle and another in Rockville. Along with copies and volumes of historic and rare books, Second Story Books also sells historical artifacts, which they receive from donors, that can be anything from fragments of Mediterranean pottery from the first century to 19th century watercolor and yearbooks from Bob Dylan’s high school years.

Michael Wilpers, a frequent customer, said he loves used bookstores so much that one might call it an “addiction.” While studying for his masters degree in music, he relied on various used bookstores to find rare music history volumes that were either unavailable at large chain bookstores or were simply less expensive. Second Story Books is one of his favorite locations because of the rare selection of books — especially the

large selection of unusual music books — and its prime location in Dupont Circle.

“You can find things here that you didn’t even know existed,” Wilpers said.

Kramer Books

In case you’re in need of a fresh new book in the middle of the night, Kramer Books is open until 1 a.m. on weekdays and 3 a.m. on weekends to cater to their customer’s literary needs at all hours. Because it’s open during “bar hours,” Kramer has become a part of the D.C. nightlife scene, bringing in much different crowds at night than during the day.

Equipped with a bar and cafe in store, Kramer Books is a lively and busy shop that has been an essential component of the Dupont Circle community since 1976. When it opened, it was the first store in D.C. to serve as a bookstore and cafe.

Kailyn Middlemist heard about the bookstore all the way from Montana and decided to work here when she came to Georgetown University for graduate school. She previously worked at Barnes & Noble, where she felt that she couldn’t be herself because she always had to represent the large company. She enjoys the freedom of wearing whatever she wants to work and working with fellow progressive colleagues like herself at Kramer, she said.

“There’s a storied history of being in Dupont,” Middlemist said. “It’s a very LGBT-friendly place and Kramer’s tries to be a part of that which makes it unique.”

Kramer’s has the perfect gifts for any book-obsessed friend or family member. Along with their large selection of novels and biographies, customers can purchase Lewis Caroll mugs, Virginia Woolf candles and socks that say “dangerous women read.”

Although Kramer Books sells recent and popular books, it also has a unique and personal touch, including a “Snow Day stories” list posted in the entrance with recommendations from the staff of the best books to enjoy on a relaxing snow day.

Pierce Carter, a student at George Washington University, keeps coming back to Kramer Books because it feels “homey,” he said.

“It has a nice atmosphere, and they usually have what I’m looking for,” Carter said.

“It’s nice to be around people who know good books I could look at.”

Politics and Prose

Politics and Prose has been a destination for book lovers in D.C. since it opened on Connecticut Avenue in 1984. Along with endless shelves of books covering almost every topic of interest to Washingtonians, Politics and Prose is the only place you can find “Impeachmint” flavored chapstick and Ruth Bader Ginsburg socks as well as the latest po-

44

litical biography or fantasy novel.

Politics and Prose has expanded to two more locations, at the Wharf in 2017 and Union Market in 2018. The original location on Connecticut Ave. is a bustling place on weekends, with customers ranging from college students to families with young children to elderly couples.

The upstairs is a large space with a wide variety of book genres along with CDs, DVDs and tons of buttons advocating for every liberal cause imaginable. Downstairs, a large multi-room section of children’s books offers reading nooks only large enough for small children to curl up in with a good story.

Adjacent to the children’s area is The Den: a lively cafe for customers to catch up with friends over a cup of coffee or enjoy a dish

from an extensive menu of pastries, sandwiches and toasts.

Along with providing a large selection of new books, between its three locations Politics and Prose has hosted over 1,000 in-store events for authors to interact with the community. The store has attracted many wellknown authors and speakers including J.K. Rowling, Pete Buttigieg and Bill Clinton.

Sales representative Sly Samudre decided to work at Politics and Prose because, as an avid reader, he enjoys being able to talk to customers about literature and being surrounded by books.

“You get to interact with all the books,” Samudre said. “More books than you ever really need, but all the books you ever wanted.”

photos by HOLLY ADAMS and ANNABEL REDISCH

Photos by ANNA YUAN

Boys swim and dive captures first state championship in Whitman history Girls place fourth in best finish since 2013

by Eli Putnam On Saturday, Feb. 22, the boys swim and dive team made history by winning its first MPSSAA 4A3A State Championship. The title capped off arguably the boys’ best season in history, with highlights like an undefeated regular season, a regional championship and a third place finish at the Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships.

To add to this dominance from the Vikes, the girls finished in fourth place out of 26 schools in another strong performance.

On the biggest stage of the season, the boys did not disappoint. The Vikings scored 344.5 points, nearly 50 points more than the second place finishing Churchill Bulldogs. The Bulldogs had defeated the Vikes three weeks prior to claim the MCPS Division 1 title and had won States in both 2018 and 2019, so the Vikes came back with a vengeance in the post-season to take them down at Metros, Regionals and finally States. The Vikes won four out of 11 races, and finished in the top three in 7.

As usual, the relay teams were fantastic, winning both freestyle relays and finishing second in the 200-yard medley relay.

Freshman Kris Lawson, junior Alec Cooper and seniors Michael Paulos and Lucca Scott made up the first place 200-yard freestyle relay team, which won with a time of 1:23.39. The time marked a new Whitman team record, Montgomery County record and Maryland state record; it also earned a place among the top 10 boys’ high school

200-yard freestyle relays in the country. In the 400-yard freestyle relay, a team of Lawson, Cooper, Scott and junior Jason Bretz also won, swimming in 3:06.15; again, the team earned a new team, county and state record. Both relays qualified for automatic All-American status.

On the individual side, Cooper had a fantastic performance. Aside from helping the team win the two freestyle relays, he won the 50 and 100-yard freestyle races with times of 21.13 and 46.35 seconds, respectively. Cooper led all boys swimmers with four first place finishes.

“It was awesome to finish with a team win and have everyone compete as a unit,” Cooper said. “We all had a team mentality, fighting for the group instead of the individual, and that’s what helped us win.”

Other stand-out swims included Scott’s third place finish in the 50 free, Paulos’ third place finish in the 200-yard Individual Medley and Bretz’s second place finish in the 100-yard backstroke.

Although the girls didn’t achieve the same feat as the boys, they still had a very good day in the pool. They finished in fourth place with 187.5 points, behind B– CC, Walter Johnson and Churchill. With the boys’ and girls’ combined scores, the Vikes won the meet overall.

Their day was highlighted by four top five finishes, including one second-place finish by sophomore Victoria Svensson, who swam the 100-yard backstroke in

57.27 seconds, less than a second out of first place. Also, a team of freshman Elena Harrison, junior Susan Rodgers and seniors Annie Morris and Ally Navarrete finished third in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:49.59. The girls’ freestyle relays both placed fifth.

On the diving side, two Vikes qualified for the state meet: sophomore Lily Hsu and senior Hannah Donner. Hsu placed sixth and Donner placed ninth; Hsu is in consideration for All-American status.

This fourth-place finish capped off an up-and-down season for the girls; the team finished with a 2–3 regular season record, a sixth place finish at Metros and fourth at Regionals.

Boys swim coach Christopher Schlegel was immensely proud of his team and their first ever State Championship.

“We definitely ran into some bumps along the way,” Schlegel said. “But this team had the grit to push through and get the job done. It was great to see our kids work through some trials and end up as state champs.”

With a large group of talented young swimmers returning for Whitman next year, the Vikes are looking forward to defending their title.

As Cooper said, “Now its time to get ready for next season and go back-to-back!”

Ally Navarrete is an Online Managing Editor for The Black & White.

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Love and luck

by Kaya Ginsky and Mathilde Lambert

ACROSS

1. A bear’s winter home 4. Near the back of a ship 6. Swine 9. Amazement 12. Deprived or lacking something 16. Give money during charity month 20. Valentine’s Day gift, or a symbol for life 23. Rachel’s boyfriend in Friends 26. Nashville’s intl. airport 27. American Military University, abbr.

28. Director of National Intelligence, for short 29. Droplet from the eyes 32. Soup container 33. Essentials 35. Levers in a bicycle or a piano 36. Circle section 39. Hoarder 41. Tattling animal 42. Third in Roman numerals 43. Game streaming platform 45. Pool sport 46. February Westminster competitor 47. Insecure actress Rae 48. Plastic friendship bracelet string 50. National, for short 52. Solo 54. March NCAA event 60. Part of an act 63. Ogles 64. Pub order 65. Street, in Lisbon 66. Gimmick 68. Obsessive Highlighting Disorder, abbr.

69. French composer Erik 70. Cessation of breathing 71. Network Advertising Initiative, abbr.

72. Commonfolk: Hoi ______

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75. 2020 fad oil 76. Conference with famous talks 77. Place inside 80. Predecessor of modern musical notes 81. Track record 82. Scottish noble rank 83. Prefix for definite 84. Disgust, in Mexico 85. Bride’s headpiece 87. Warming headphones 93. Xs and Os: ___ and kisses 96. Person making auction offers 98. Good Morning America, for short 99. Major camping retailer 100. Bostonian baseball cap 102. Dwight D. Eisenhower nickname 103. Argentinian partner dances 105. Leftovers 107. Suffix for “sorta” 108. To let for money 110. Visual recording, for short 111. Aunt, in Madrid 113. Engineering & Scientific Investigation, abbr.

114. Bone, in Milan 115. Charity month race 120. To remove or hide 121. Coldest US state 122. Acronym for a pseudonym 123. House animal 124. Lock partner 125. Guayaquil, Ecuador, abbr.

DOWN

1. Flows opposite 2. Prefix for new 3. Scandalous loves 4. Federal Trade Commission, abbr.

7. Wedding vow 9. Consumed 10. California’s coast 11. Narcotics agents, slangily

13. Trendy protein snack 14. Years and years 15. Singing-gram deliverer, with “guy” 17. Grandmother nickname 18. Slanted 19. St. Patrick’s Day month 21. Requires 22. Valentine’s Day God 24. Cereal grains 25. Reason for days off in the Winter 30. Delivery app, with “Uber” 31. A chest or box used in ancient times 33. Candy heart note 34. Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, abbr.

36. Old McDonald vowels 37. Type of nintendo console 40. Intensity 44. Small island 49. Less clean 51. Violently attacks 52. With 85 across, a charity month dance 53. A large long-handled spoon 54. Candlelighting tool 55. Court case excuse 56. Actions 57. Muse of love poetry (Greek mythology) 58. Word before hero or man 59. Main female character in Grease 61. Super Bowl loser, for short 62. Eg. an email valentine 63. Soak up 67. First aid box 73. Juice WRLD’s dream type 74. Folded-over eggs 78. Cheesy Super bowl appetizer 79. Dakota Native-American tribe 85. Whitman mascot, for short 86. Bible utopia 87. Bright yellow Chinese soup

88. Love, in Lima 89. Religion observed by Bob Marley 90. “Major” northern constellation 91. US election oversight agency, for short 92. Insect that glows at night 94. Sigh, rearranged 95. Talk trash

96. Animals that chirp 97. Baltimore NFL player 100. British gangsters 101. Rose’s spike 104. Pen tips 106. Largest continent 109. Insect found while camping 112. Dwight D. Eisenhower nickname

114. Sure 116. California Earthquake Authority, abbr.

117. Before, poetically 118. “No Type” duo, with Sremmund 119. Electrocardiography, for short

47

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