Every first and third Friday of the month, dozens of students fill Room 3204 of West High to the brim, coming together as GSA/SAGE (Gay-Straight Alliance/Sexuality and Gender Equality). Though categorized as a “special interest club,” GSA/SAGE...

   Masks up, sanitizers packed, three feet apart: the drill for the 2021-2022 school year. Schools throughout the country have reopened, despite the global pandemic, out of necessity for schooling.    The distribution of vaccinations to students...

   “April 15, 2021, in the state of California, is not Tax Day,” Governor Gavin Newsom declared. “It’s ‘Vax Day.’”     Since then, all Californians aged 16 and up have become eligible to receive their COVID-19 vaccines. What does...

   We’ve all been there. We’ve all seen it, or worse, done it. Fingers pulling at the corners of their eyes, exaggerated gibberish flowing from their mouths. This was a light-hearted joke. This was teasing. This was racism.     On March 16,...

   New York City. Denver. San Francisco. Oakland. Orange County.     Torrance.    Around the country, racist attacks against the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community have increased and intensified since the start of the COVID-19...

   As hundreds waited in long lines of vehicles to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, anti-vax protesters were present right beside them. On January 30, approximately 50 demonstrators arrived at Dodger Stadium’s COVID-19 vaccination site: one of the largest...

   A child is sitting down inside a doctor’s office. The doctor holds  a syringe filled with something — the child doesn’t quite know what. Scared of the needle, the child whimpers a little as the nurse gently dabs alcohol-coated gauze on the...

    We all strive to be recognized, to have our identities validated. One way this works is seeing someone we share one or more traits with portrayed in a well-known work of fiction. However, in many of these works — whether literature or television,...

   It was not the fighting or the civil unrest that was Riya Thakre’s (12) take away from the election. It was the “people in New York [who] were dancing, the lights on the Eiffel Tower [that] were sparkling, and the fireworks in London exploding.”...

   In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. While this is true, he also did several other, less favorable things. Because of this, a growing dispute about changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day has become apparent.    Personally, I...

   This year, among other issues, America has dealt with racial unrest, a global pandemic, and a growing partisan divide. Everything, from disease to race, has mutated into a vicious debate: Are masks a moral obligation or an unconstitutional form...

   Like every other teen, I’ve downloaded TikTok, enjoyed watching the 15-second videos, and even created my own. I genuinely enjoyed the app. However, after noticing my ever-growing addiction, I deleted it. From then on, TikTok didn’t seep into...