Close your eyes, and envision a young Hispanic American woman sitting in the President’s chair in the Oval Office. She glances up below a stately American flag and the gaze of a portrait of Benjamin…

One student’s name has been changed for anonymity. 

For many high school seniors, mid-December brings more than festive holiday celebrations and mugs of hot chocolate; it’s that time of the year…

In 2019, the average MLB baseball game lasted approximately three hours, five minutes and 35 seconds. Multiply the average game time by 162 — the number of games each team plays in a regular MLB season…

The Montgomery County Board of Education voted unanimously on April 20 to pass a resolution recognizing May 2021 as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. 

The resolution encourages teachers,…

In the wake of the January 6 Capitol riots, racially charged killings and widespread conspiracy theories, it has become evident that alt-right terrorism is a prominent domestic threat. Just as concerning…

A group of Whitman seniors encountered at least five men with an anti-Israel poster in the school’s parking lot early Tuesday evening.

The top of the sign displayed a Nazi flag adjacent to an Israeli…

Junior Asra Shaikh’s pen darts across her notebook page, jotting down information on metastatic breast cancer. Shaikh listens to Dr. Mary DeShields, the medical director of oncology at the University of…

Following the release of the U.S. News & World Report rankings that named Whitman as the best high school in Maryland and the 111th best in the country for the 2020–2021 school year, many students…

Two juniors found an anti-Asian caricature and caption on a chair in Whitman’s auditorium on Friday morning. The students immediately informed administrators, who promptly photographed the scene and…

“Should the Monarch only provide his/her opinion when asked by the Parliament or should the Monarch provide advice on issues when he/she feels it necessary?” a worksheet for my AP Comparative Politics…

A jury convicted former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter on Tuesday afternoon in the death of George Floyd. The defendant…

During the 1940s, Harlem Renaissance artists such as Langston Hughes leveraged poetry to express the racial struggles of Black people. In the 1960s, Allen Ginsburg’s “Beat Generation” revitalized…

When senior Tatiana Johnson reflected on her time at Whitman before the building closed last March, she said felt classmates sometimes labeled her “loud and Black” during conversations. In her classes,…

This is not America.

 America shouldn’t have rioters brandishing hateful messages, beating police officers into the ground and weaponizing the pole end of the same flag we recite the Pledge of Allegiance…

As Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield yells pre-snap audibles, guard Michael Dunn (’12) is lined up, ready to block Pro Bowl defensive linemen T.J. Watt. Dunn scans his surroundings: the bright…

With signs in hand and fists held high, Ari Gutman (‘17) and fellow members of the Anti-Racist Bethesda Coalition stand firmly outside of Moses African Cemetery, Bethesda’s historic Black cemetery,…

To respect wishes for privacy, some students’ names have been withheld.

Some protest leaders attempt to excite crowds with elaborate chants, but not Walter Johnson High School senior David Gardner….

When Hebrew school teacher Richard Sloane announced that he would collect 11 million canceled stamps, even his mother thought he was crazy. Though canceled stamps are worthless to an average stamp collector,…

“Never forget.” In school, we hear this message all the time, echoing through our history classes. 

Never forget the inhumanity, the pain, the suffering, the blatant and inexplicable cruelty. Never…

“Finally,” then 13-year-old Noah Sapiro said to himself. The Nike Air More Uptmepo Doernbecher ‒‒ a special edition shoe designed by a patient at the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital ‒‒ had…

A rubber ball zips at over 100 miles an hour toward senior James Jabara. He hits a shot back that barely lands between the two out lines on one wall of the giant glass box surrounding the court. His opponent…

During Patricia Tyson’s childhood, rainy days helped define her community. To Tyson, a retired State Department employee, the pitter-patter of droplets didn’t mean cozy afternoons, warm blankets or…

Some names have been changed to respect parents’ wishes for privacy.

MCPS’ online-only learning model has thrust young students into a difficult situation — learning the fundamentals of reading,…

As junior Robert Marshall prepares to repost a photo from @Whitman4Trump, an Instagram account formed by an anonymous Whitman student in support of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, a sudden wave of…

“What do you want for dinner?”

Each time my parents ask me this question, my mind plunges into a frenzy of indecision and my eyes adopt a vacant stare. It’s such an open-ended query; there are…

To the next generation:

Of all the emotions we felt on January 6, 2021, perhaps the most prevalent was exhaustion. We felt drained; we felt numb. Few were prepared to see our Capitol, the nation’s…

What was supposed to be a normal Wednesday spent doing homework and attending teachers’ virtual check-ins was instead one in which students could hardly look away from social media feeds and cable news…

My childhood was dominated by a one-party political system: the Democratic party. For the first twelve years of my life, my parents, my friends and my friends’ parents were all Democrats, and I didn’t…

“Cupid Shuffle” blared on speakers all over Washington, D.C. while President-elect Joe Biden’s supporters flooded the streets outside the White House, celebrating the Democratic candidate’s win…

A number of students were unable to connect to their online classes this morning due to widespread power outages in the Whitman area. According to attendance secretary Tabitha Davis, 631 students reported…

Every year, thousands of high-school students across the country spend their summers competing for coveted — and limited — college athletic scholarships. They travel all around the United States, playing…

At 5 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, most high school juniors would take a nap or finish their homework, but Zach Yaqub has other priorities. After an exhausting, day-long baseball tournament in Virginia,…

Seniors Finn Martin, Adam Melrod, Nicholas Pyle and Jordan Maggin watched from the roof of their hotel as the Pittsburgh skyline lit up with a breathtaking pink hue. The sounds of pop music and a gentle…

Junior Christina Limansky finishes a dance routine she spent hours working on at the Elements Dance Company camp. Breathless, she stretches out her arms while heading over to the bench for a break. When…

In the back of Topher Leonard’s bedroom, the echoes of Fall Out Boy pour out of an old radio. The then nine-year-old Leonard sits hunched over at his desk, fixated on his iPad. He’s playing Minecraft,…

After moving to Bethesda, seniors Esther Ferrero and Lucia Kaiser were often showered in compliments from peers on their style.

“Esther had an elegant and unique style which definitely caught my eye,”…

After struggling to find a way to take the SAT during the coronavirus pandemic, senior Claire Sorkin drives for 90 minutes to an unfamiliar location in Virginia in order to take the test. Upon arrival,…

Dubbed the “frying pan incident,” students and staff likely remember the event that occurred September of last year. A plethora of memes and jokes circulated around the school and on social media,…

The Association for Education Fairness, a Montgomery County parent coalition, filed a lawsuit against MCPS on September 1, claiming that recent changes to the admissions process for the county’s middle…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at her home in Washington D.C. Friday night due to complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer, according to a Supreme Court press release.

While technical…

When brought up in conversation, my ethnic background usually gets two different reactions: “Wait, you’re Hispanic? But you look white,” or  “You’re so lucky; it’ll be so easy for you to get…

Sophomore Yuxi Apel caught a glimpse of the UPS worker walking by her window and wandered downstairs to check what had arrived at her front porch. When she opened the front door, she found a small package…

Graduated senior Lucas Arulpragasm sits in front of his computer, attentively staring at the screen and waiting for an announcement from his dream school, Cornell University. He committed to Cornell earlier…

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…

To a passerby, Rick Berke (‘76) and Michael Gill (‘76) would have looked like any other Whitman seniors going out for a quick meal at a diner in Bethesda in 1976. But they weren’t just any old high…

In 2012, a couple of months after Jennie Yu (‘18) and her family moved from upstate New York to Bethesda, her parents bought Firehouse Deli, which Yu describes as being between a convenience store and…

During junior Stella Hamman’s first day at the Montgomery County Fire Rescue Service Training Academy, she lined up military-style with other teenage cadets in the engine bay, the section of the station…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Larry Hogan ordered all restaurants, bars, gyms, spas and theatres to close March 16. Additionally, Hogan has postponed the April 28 Maryland Primary date…

After State Superintendent of Schools Karen Salmon announced yesterday that all Maryland public schools will close for the next two weeks due to COVID-19, Montgomery County officials stated today that…

All Maryland public schools, including MCPS, will be closed for two weeks March 16 through March 27 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

State Superintendent of Schools Karen Salmon announced the closures…