Last Sunday, the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Miami Heat 106-93 to win the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals in six games. Although LeBron James’ fourth championship headlined the news, one might argue that the Heat’s journey to the Finals as a five seed was a more impressive feat.
Over the past few months, Vice President of Academics John Weaver ’21 has been working alongside Dean of Academics David Laws P’21’23 to help plan out the new academic calendar and adjust the workload.
Every fall, V Formers face looming college application deadlines while having schedules that are chock-full of challenging 500 level courses. In the sprint towards early application deadlines, the mere topic of applying to college has become a taboo subject for many students. There seems to be an atmosphere of secrecy surrounding college-related questions, and many of us completely steer clear of the topic. While every one of us certainly has a right to our own privacy, and we do not need to completely divulge our application plans with others, perhaps the hysteria over dodging this subject has gone too far.
“Cancelling” someone has become increasingly popular among Millenials and Gen Z over the last couple of months. We not only “cancel” people as a joke, publicly scrutinizing them for having unpopular sports opinions or liking unusual foods, but also “cancel” groups on a larger scale, such as criticizing social institutions and public corporations. Goya, an American Hispanic-owned food company, for example, was cancelled and boycotted against when CEO Robert Unanue expressed his public support for President Donald Trump. At the root of this trend, though, it is imperative to understand that the modern generation sees cancel culture as a regulation technique—a means of calling out the offensive and obscene in order for others to become more socially aware of the harms that their actions could cause. While cancel culture does exist at Lawrenceville, rather than preventing offensive behaviors, it does little more than incite division, making people afraid to voice their opinions.
From the way we attend classes to the way we socialize with each other, Covid-19 has completely changed our Lawrenceville experience. While the School has made a clear effort to create a semblance of normalcy amidst this pandemic, our student body has been poorly following the Best for All (BFA) agreement that allowed us to return to campus in the first place. Many of us either downplay Covid-19’s effect on our health or are unaware of how easily the virus can spread. Consequently, we fail to follow the school-imposed guidelines. Yet students are not the only ones to blame. So far, the administration has not only failed to hold students accountable for their misbehavior but also unsuccessfully conveyed the whole set of rules students need to follow clearly. While all Lawrentians know the basic principles—wear your POM and mask and socially distance—we either forget about or do not know about other regulations aside from the primary ones; this, and the administration needs to be more diligent about reminding us. If we want to avoid returning to online schooling in the terms ahead, not only do Lawrentians need to understand that the virus is not another age-old joke and more strictly abide by BFA standards, but our faculty members also need to better help us achieve this goal.
This summer, Satvik Dasariraju ’23 published his science research project in the latest issue of the journal Bioengineering.
