May 22, 2019
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And these days, where there’s a cloud, there’s a vape pen. In its earliest stages over a decade ago, vaping was marketed as a means to ease the process of quitting smoking cigarettes but now threatens to make a new generation addicted to nicotine. Vape pens and JUUL pods are the new metaphorical poster children of teenage addiction, and the controversial,...
Snowden Farnsworth, Dean Campell, and Owen Hewitt
May 20, 2019
"When I moved to Memphis and began working at Playhouse, I approached the Playhouse On the Square staff with the idea of adding a Queer Youth Theater to our education department, and everyone was on board,” Ms. Carley Crawford said. “Thus, Q&A was born.” Ms. Crawford founded the group in 2015 with Ms. Claire Rutkauskas in 2015. Ms. Rutkauskas grew up in midtown Memphis as a part of the LGBTQ...
Snowden Farnsworth, Editor
May 16, 2019
Does the fault lie with the stars, as Shakespeare wondered, or does it lie with ourselves, that we trust them? Though we have known for millennia that the orientation of constellations in the night sky has no influence on individual human lives, horoscopes remain enduringly popular A survey completed by the National Science Board in 2006 found that 73% of respondents admitted to having read a horoscope,...
Emma Bennett, Co Editor-in-Chief
May 9, 2019
I first became interested in the #MeToo movement walking to a football game last year with my friends and fellow seniors Hannah Grace Howell and Rachel Crane. What should have been a normal Friday night of a few friends going to a football game together quickly turned into something darker. “I was walking with two of my friends,” Howell remembered. “This car was driving down the road...
Laura Beard, Editor
May 7, 2019
On Feb. 26, the United Methodist Church voted against a plan that would allow each church to decide on whether to host LGBTQ weddings and would relax restrictions on LGBTQ clergy. To many in the LGBTQ community, this felt like a step backwards. The space between religious and sexual or gender identity has been notoriously difficult to navigate. People who belong to a sexual...
Snowden Farnsworth, Editor
April 22, 2019
One morning in Aug. 2016 I woke up unable to move. I was completely paralyzed. It almost didn’t surprise me. Over the past year, doctors had discussed diagnosing me with leukemia, lymphoma, neuroendocrine tumors, multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease and West Nile Virus, to name a few. At that point, I was almost numb. I had been relatively healthy up until the beginning of eighth grade. I could count...
Mimi Young, Reporter
April 10, 2019
If you scroll through 19-year-old Swedish model and social media influencer Emma Hallberg’s Instagram page, you will see pictures of her with plump lips, medium complexion, and curly hair, but in real life, she is a white woman with straight hair, thin lips, and a light complexion. This is the social media trend of blackfishing, and it is one of the many examples of cultural appropriation today. Blackfishing...
Cary Robbins, Editor of Feature Stories
April 1, 2019
"When I see racism in the news and stuff, I think ‘oh, that’s terrible. It’s happening to so many people,’” junior Kennadee Carlton said. “I never really think about how in a few years, this could happen to me.” Carlton is not alone in worrying about racism. A study by NBC news found that 64 percent of Americans believe that racism is still a problem. And a survey by NPR, the Robert...
Evan Dorian, Co-editor-in-chief
January 15, 2019
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Or is it? What if the holiday season, generally perceived as being an epicenter of happiness, a hub for celebration and time with family, is actually what brings some people down this time of year? In a survey conducted by the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), 24 percent of respondents who have a diagnosed mental health issue believe their...
Emma Bennett, Co-editor-in-chief
December 24, 2018
Let’s say you’re a Christmas tree, or rather, a Christmas tree seedling. You’re going to want to be planted alongside some sister seedlings in a place where you can soak up the sun, roughly seven feet from your fellow tree friends. That’s about 350 million tree friends, by the way, planted all across the United States. Depending on the kind of Christmas tree you are, you could end up in...
