Category Archives: News

National, News

What is a government shutdown?

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By: Alayanna Bouwens

Photo by Tom Fisk on Pexels.com

A government shutdown happens when Congress doesn’t pass funding bills in time; funding bills or “appropriation bills” act like a budget plan and are  designed to fund the government until the end of each government year or “fiscal year” which ends on September 30. During a government shutdown, essential services related to national security and public safety, like emergency medical care, air traffic security and control, law enforcement, and border security, continue to function, though they may face disruptions. 

During this time government workers like air traffic control workers, senators, military employees, FBI workers, border control, etc. are paid something called “back pay” which is a pay check they receive of money that has been stored in case of a shutdown. Workers that are essential to the functioning of our government are required to work without pay while workers that are deemed not essential like department of education workers, NASA employees, national park services staff, etc. are sent home for the remainder of the shutdown. 

This government shutdown affects us because it interrupts government services, delays things like loans, makes longer lines and more delays at airports, national parks and museums close as they have a lack of funding. Lots of small business struggle as loans come to a halt, and causes financial uncertainty for government employees. Overall, it doesn’t affect our day to day lives (if you don’t work for a government agency) but it is still an important subject to know about as a shutdown is a big thing and affects government functions and staff heavily.

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Getting To Know/History, News

Who is Nobel Laureate María Corina Machado?

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By: Karl Salkowski

Photo courtesy of Adobe stock

Maria Corina Machado is a Venezuelan politician and activist. She was born on October 7th, 1967, in Caracas, Venezuela, and served as a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela from 2011 to 2014. Maria directly opposed the governments of previous Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and current president Nicolás Maduro. Maria has advocated heavily over the last two decades for democratic reforms and human rights across Venezuela.

Nicolás Maduro took office in 2013 and has been serving Venezuela since. The 2024 election is widely believed to have been fraudulent in order to extend Maduro’s regime, as he had already become widely unpopular among the common people. Political scientist Steven Levitsky called the official results “[O]ne of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.”

Maria had been an outspoken critic of Maduro since the beginning of his presidency, and due to this, she was banned from competing in the 2024 presidential election. Despite facing persecution and having to go into hiding, she decided to stay within Venezuela to organize opposition efforts and continue rallying for what she believed in.

Maria believes in classical liberalism. She focuses on individual freedoms, free markets, and limited government, which directly oppose the views of the previous presidents. Maduro created a more authoritarian government, attempting to take away individual freedoms in order to extend government power.

She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize due to her consistent effort towards creating a safer and freer Venezuela. She resisted authoritarianism and fought to build a more democratic and fair government. She has made a commitment to non-violent resistance and strived to restore freedom and democracy in Venezuela.

Maria gained international recognition and support for her action in Venezuela. She has won many other awards, including the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. These awards are given to people who defend human and civil rights and lead and mobilize nonviolent resistance.

Overall, María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize due to her unwavering support of democracy and her dedication to providing human and civil rights to all.

Events, Getting To Know/History

A history of Halloween

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 By Hannan Mohammed

Today, Halloween is known as a holiday for people to dress in their scariest costumes and go door to door trick-or-treating, asking neighbors for candy to take home with them. Some people may even carve pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns to celebrate the holiday. But, how did Halloween and its ways of celebrating it come to be, and what was this holiday originally?

Sanhaim

Originally, the holiday of Halloween was known as Sanhaim, a pagan festival celebrated by the Ancient Celtic people. According to an article by BBC, this festival was celebrated about 2,000 years ago, usually on November 1. This was also the first day of winter for the Ancient Celts, and so this festival was also seen as an important transition in the year. According to the World History Encyclopedia, this holiday may have even represented the Celtic New Year.

This holiday was seen as the day in the year where a gap between our world and the spirit world was open, so that the spirits of the dead could cross over into our world. And, according to the World History Encyclopedia, these spirits could pass freely through to the human world and be either good-natured or harmful.

To celebrate this festival, the Ancient Celts would wear their own sort of costumes made from animal skins and heads, a little similar to what we would wear today, and priests (called ‘druids’) would light large bonfires to offer animal sacrifices.

Hallowed Evening

Over time, the popularity of Sanhaim spread across Europe, becoming especially well-known in Ireland. However, Christianity was also spreading by the 5th century, and one way that the Catholic Church attempted to convert the Celts was to incorporate pagan holidays into their calendar.

To do this, All Saints’ Day was moved to November 1 by Pope Boniface IV in the 7th century, incorporating elements of Sanhaim into the holiday. Because of this, the day before became known as the ‘Hallowed Evening’. As the centuries passed and All Saints’ Day became more widespread, this name was shortened to Halloween, and more traditions that we associate with the holiday today became more prominent:

Carving Pumpkins

The holiday tradition of carving pumpkins to create jack-o’-lanterns came from Ireland, centuries ago. Using turnips rather than the pumpkins we use today, Irish people would carve scary faces into the turnips in order to ward off a spirit called Stingy Jack.

A famine in 19th century Ireland forced the immigration of millions of Irish people to the United States, and they brought this tradition with them, making this Halloween activity more well-known. Over time, pumpkins became more widely used as they were easier to carve than turnips.

Image by Lirazelf via Wikimedia Commons

Souling

Trick-or-treating used to be an activity called souling, and it originated in medieval England as a tradition to take part in on All Saints’ Day. To participate, people would go door to door exchanging prayers for food. By the Victorian era, the food that was most often exchanged was a pastry called a ‘soul cake’. Today, people often exchange a greeting of ‘Trick-or-treat’ for pieces of chocolate and candy.

Image by Malikhpur via Wikimedia Commons

Conclusion

Overall, the holiday of Halloween was first celebrated by the Ancient Celts as the festival of Sanhaim, and the holiday was incorporated into the Catholic calendar as the ‘Hallowed Evening’. Over time, the spreading popularity of this holiday and other traditions such as souling and carving turnips and pumpkins turned this into the Halloween that many people celebrate today.

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Editorials/Student Voice, Events, School Life

Nationwide walkout

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By: Siri David

Photo taken by: Josie Hodson

On July 27th, at Annunciation school, Minneapolis Catholic school students were sitting in the pews of church during mass. Sitting outside of the windows was 23-year-old Robin Westman. Once mass started Robin shot through the window. Robin killed 2 kids and injured 19 other people. Robin shot a total of 116 rifle rounds. After Robin did this he then shot himself. Robin had attended Annunciation and was always known to be quiet and reserved to most people; it seemed he didn’t like school.

This shooting was heart breaking. Over the past decade school shootings have become a lot more common. They are the leading causes of death right now for teenagers and children. In 2025 there were a total of 90 incidents of gunfire on school campuses. It has become a nationwide issue that our schools need to be better protected and that kids should feel safe within their place of learning.

The shooting at Annunciation helped start the idea of doing a nationwide walk out. This walk out was put together by an organization called Students Demand Action. The organization used social media platforms to spread the event. Most schools had a club within their school that organized everything for them. Highland had our school’s Good Club organize the event. This club is led by three members who brought together Highland students by posting all over their social media.

The walk out lasted around an hour and a half. We met up with students from two other private schools (CDH and SPA). There were over 100 kids who were participating from Highland.

The whole goal of this walk out was to raise more awareness to the fact that students don’t feel safe in schools, and that gun violence is affecting our day to day life and whether students feel safe in school or not.

Science/Nature

Bunnies

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By: Sylvia Yannsdottir

Image taken by Josh Backflip via Wikimedia Commons

Bunnies are a very common animal, and oftentimes in the city you will see a few casually around your neighborhood. In the United States, the bunny population is an estimated 6.5 million, 4.3 million of which are wild bunnies, while 2.2 million of them are household pets. This number may seem high, but their population has been decreasing slowly over the past few years. This is because of multiple factors: like habitat loss, changes in available food and shelter, diseases, and increasing predators.

Typically, wild bunnies live up to 8-12 years. They are very small, and cute. They have excellent eyesight, digestion, and hearing. They have a wide variety of colored fur too, some of which are just one solid color, like brown, white, black, or grey, but sometimes they have a mixture of colors of fur.

Bunnies can have multiple litters per year, usually 3-5 every year. Each litter can contain anywhere between 4-12 babies. In the cities, it’s not too uncommon to find a nest of baby bunnies in your backyard.

Bunnies are very social and expressive animals that thrive in groups. Research has actually shown that they are very good at communicating, and they are excellent at forming strong bonds and friendships with each other. Bunnies can actually become very sad if they are deprived of being social with others.

Another thing that really shows how expressive bunnies can be are their binkies. A bunny can express its happiness through a leaping, spinning, kicking behavior called a “binky.” These are a very fun aspect of their behavior.

For the most part, wild bunnies are very calm, and unproblematic to their surrounding environment, although in some cases in the city it can be a struggle to maintain a garden if there are constantly bunnies eating the plants you may be trying to grow.

Science/Nature

Elephants

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By: Maya Song

Image by Byrdyak via Wikimedia Commons

The elephant is one of the largest mammals on earth. Elephants live across Africa and Asia and are very popular sightseeing animals. There are approximately 415,000 elephants in Africa and 40,000-50,000 elephants left in Asia. It is estimated that there were once 20 million elephants in just Africa and an estimated number of 26 million on the whole earth. The elephant’s population is continuing to decline because of causes like habitat loss, and poaching, which is also known as illegal hunting.

The elephant’s habitat is very large, they can live in places like forests, savannas, deserts, wetlands and grasslands. Most elephants just need areas with a lot of space as they are very large. They also need their food and water; the elephant is a herbivore and eats food such as grass, bark, leaves, fruits, and roots. An elephant can feed for up to 12 hours and eats over 100 pounds of vegetation in just one day.

When the elephant is pregnant the baby elephant also known as a calf stays inside the mother for about 22 months which is one of the longest gestation cycles. After the calf is born its mother and other elephants in the herd will help the calf stand up as baby elephants are able to stand up a few minutes after birth. When the calf reaches the four month mark they start to eat things besides their mothers milk but will continue to drink its mothers milk for up to two years and can drink 3 gallons a day.

Elephants are social animals and will travel in herds. Most elephant herds are large families that include members over multiple generations; and usually they travel with these same herds for the entirety of their lives.

Elephants usually live around 60-70 years, they usually die because of starvation or a disease called anthrax. Annually there’s a range from 40,000 to 70,000 elephants dying.

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Editorials/Student Voice, Science/Nature

Empty nets and a dying ocean

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By: Maya Vossen-Nelson

Image created with Canva

The ocean absorbs large amounts of heat without a large increase in temperature. Given this property, the ocean has always played a central role in stabilizing Earth’s climate system, but in the past 100 years humans have created a climate that produces heat at an intensity that has overwhelmed the ocean. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the most telling sign of the overworked oceans is that over the past 100 years, the average global sea surface temperature has increased by approximately 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit each decade. This is significant because a large amount of heat needs to be absorbed by the ocean for water temperatures to rise even slightly.

According to NASA, 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean. The ocean is not able to keep up as efficiently as it used to and is creating devastating consequences. 

When the ocean temperatures begin to rise, this is an indicator of extreme levels of carbon and methane in the atmosphere that are trapping solar rays and damaging the ozone, thereby trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The levels of carbon dioxide dissolving from the atmosphere into the ocean have become so high that the water has become acidic.

Fisheries and fishing boats are reporting more frequent marine heat waves and whole fish community die-offs. At the very least, in response to the warming sea temperatures, many fish populations are migrating to colder waters. This has become so noticeable that many fishing businesses are being forced to change their fishing strategies and some are even considering calling it quits.

A perfect example is the seafood industry on the east coast. Boston NPR station, WBUR, reports that “The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. As a result, iconic New England species like cod and lobster have shifted north or moved deeper into the ocean in search of colder water.”

Without any interventions, it will only be a matter of time before the world’s fishing industry is turned on its head.

Science/Nature

Whale sharks

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By: Sylvia Yannsdottir

Image taken by Nicholas Lindell Reynolds via Wikimedia Commons

Whale sharks are commonly known for their size. They are the third largest creature in the ocean; capable of growing up to 12 meters long, and weighing more than 3 elephants combined. Whale sharks are very solitary creatures, and although they are a type of shark, they are extremely gentle and calm compared to other animals in the ocean.

A whale shark’s life typically begins in tropical warm waters, and they spend most of their life cruising around aimlessly feeding on plankton, small fish, and other organisms. They do this by using their teeth to strain through large amounts of water, where they separate their food from water. Generally, they spend up to 7-and-a-half hours feeding each day.

The average lifespan for a whale shark is up to 100 years, if not even older, some reaching 130 years. They grow very rapidly when they are young, but their rate of growth declines and becomes steady after a while, and by the time they are 30 years old, they have reached maturity.

When it comes to reproduction, whale sharks are able to give birth in a unique way. A single whale shark is able to produce eggs that are already formed inside of its body, and over a steady amount of time, it will birth around 300 young.

One thing that makes whale sharks very unique is their patterned skin. Every whale shark has their own individual pattern of white polka dots and stripes that go across their gray bodies. Their patterned skin is not only very pretty but it can be super useful for researchers to identify, or recognize a whale shark.

Whale sharks are in fact listed as an endangered species. This is because of vessel strikes, and being caught or hurt accidentally by commercial fishing services. While it is unfortunate, it is sadly often that those two factors are at fault for the population decrease of countless species in the ocean. Luckily though, there are plenty of organizations out there that are putting effort into protecting whale shark populations.

Local, School Life

Supreme Court visit to Highland Park Sr High

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By: Evie Beaumaster & Grace Wright

On May 1st, Highland Park Senior High School for one day only, became a courthouse.

This wonderful opportunity was brought to us thanks to The Minnesota Supreme Court, the SPPS school district and staff here at Highland Park. We got a front row seat to the inner workings of the Minnesota Supreme Court. This was such fun.

This is a great opportunity for many students who might be interested in law or were just curious about how the Minnesota Supreme Court works. This was such a unique opportunity and there are very few schools that are picked.

Overall, we learned so much about how law works in our local government and about our Supreme Court judges. We got to see firsthand the fun parts of being a Supreme Court judge but also some of the stressful and difficult parts that come with this job. We heard from the judges that having a very good work life balance is hard. We heard about how much discipline the judges must have to make these important decisions for our community. We learned that judges must be impartial to themselves, and have to choose whether or not to take a case based on if they have an opposing opinion about it or not.

There were many interesting parts of this but one of the more interesting parts was when the hearing was done and the judges came out and sat for questions from students (including the authors of this article). This seemed fun for the judges too, as they probably enjoy a break from the courthouse.

We got to sit down with Justice Gaïtias as she was making a classroom visit after the court case. She is the newest judge on the Minnesota Supreme Court and she was appointed in August 2024. She talked about how the transition in the case load from the court of appeals to the Supreme Court was something she didn’t expect. Although the Supreme Court does not see nearly as many cases as the court of appeals, the court of appeals sees nearly 2,000 cases a year and the Supreme Court only sees 80-90 cases. She said that the cases are a lot more intense and unlike the court of appeals there isn’t anyone else to fall back on if they can’t come to a decision.

She talked to us about important characteristics of a good judge and she talked about how judges need to know how to be fair, kind and humble. She also says that they need to have a love of public service because that’s the main point of the job is serving the public.

A student asked a question about if she thinks being on the Supreme Court has changed her as a person. Justice Gaïtias says she doesn’t think it has changed her personally but she did talk about how she feels the weight of the job more now than ever.

Justice Gaïtias emphasized that a big part of the job is understanding how to cope with the harder parts of her job. The Minnesota Supreme Court hears a variety of cases, some of them harder than others. She talked about how all judges need to know how to compartmentalize and find their coping strategies and how they need to be healthy.

Some more personal facts are that she didn’t originally want to be a judge. She wanted to be an actor, but her parents said she wouldn’t make it, so she decided to go into law. She said it was one of her biggest regrets. She went to an international school in Greece growing up. She loves Greek mythology and her pets and kids are named after famous figures.

Getting To Know/History, Science/Nature

The cruel inter-workings of psychology!

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By: Maeve Brady

Psychology, it’s an amazing study of human behavior and cognitive functions, and, within this wide branch, there is so much to discover. That brings me to today’s topic, psychology experiments. More specifically speaking, notable psychology experiments. Now, you may have heard of popular experiments such as the Stanford Prison experiment and/or the Milgram experiment, which was an experiment with the intention of questioning people’s ability to adhere to an authority figure under who they assume to be someone in power. But, besides the most renowned ones, how about the ones barely anybody talks about? Are they considered notable or worthy? Today I will be explaining a very complex and appalling experiment, also known as the MK-ULTRA Project. I will try my best to explain all aspects of it and how it is notable to psychology.

First of all, what even was the MK-ULTRA Project? Well, the MK-ULTRA Project was a very bizarre experiment and the horrors of it run deep throughout history. The project was developed by the Central Intelligence Agency, also commonly known as the CIA. The CIA was a federal service tasked with enhancing national security through analyses of intelligence. Or in other words, the main foreign intelligence service of the United States. To be more specific, this experiment was primarily run by a chemist named Sidney Gottlieb, although Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, agreed to let the procedures go through. This experiment was primarily based around the experimentation on humans and how they react.

This experiment had horrid intentions. In fact, the primary intentions of this experiment was to develop procedures, drugs, and/or some type of methods that would be capable of weakening an individual’s ability to resist, which would result in easier confessions due to this sort of “brainwashing” so that during an interrogation, they could easily get people to confess. It was a project just overall based around psychological torture on its participants. In order to figure this sort of “truth serum” out, experimenters would inject participants with drugs, usually this drug would be lysergic acid diethylamide, also known in the abbreviated form as LSD. They had hopes to discover at what point humans would break and essentially lose control of their cognitive abilities to adhere to authority figures. The ones that were experimented on varied from place to place.

Now, the majority of Gottlieb’s experiments were funded at universities and research centers, and others were conducted in American prisons and detention centers around the world. Typically, the ones being experimented on were people such as soldiers and most commonly prisoners. Prisoners were typically more popular because they were willing to operate in exchange for extra recreation time and were operated on. But, what makes this even more horrific is that many of the subjects had no idea they were going to get experimented on, and were unsuspecting people. And, adding on that fact, they tended to prey on the most vulnerable of people.

This experiment went on for a long duration of time, starting around November 18, 1953 and it was officially halted in around 1963 to 1973. This halt was due to the discovery by the CIA Inspector General staff of what was truly going on. Along with the discoveries of how dangerous and just morally wrong it was, as the subjects were given psychoactive drugs and other toxic chemicals.

Now, this experiment stemmed not only from new fascinations, but it also stemmed from fear and a continuation of the Nazi lead experiments through the duration of World War II. In 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, and with his Nazi party helping him to suppress opinions and political enemies, he created a dictatorship. Due to previous hate of Jews along with Hitler using the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s misfortunes after World War I, many Jews were persecuted. Eventually, this led to Jews being sent to concentration camps in an effort to exterminate them. During the 1940s, Nazi scientists worked in the concentration camps, which were usually filled to the brim with Jewish people, along with other camps containing the Roma people and other prisoners of war. In these camps, along with the starvation and other cruelties they brought to victims’ lives, they also did interrogation experiments.

To really give you a picture of how unethical some of these experiments were, we must discuss Operation Midnight Climax. Operation Midnight Climax was a notorious LSD experiment conducted by the CIA. In 1955, George White oversaw this experiment by first decorating a room to look homey and unsuspecting, then he let everything play out. Paid people would lure unsuspecting people to the scene and then they would be drugged by LSD as George White watched behind a two way mirror. 

Now, the results of the experiment are hard to find. This is because in the 1970s, most of the evidence for the experiment was destroyed. Along with the fact that this experiment was kept secret for most of it due to the fear of peoples’ criticisms.  Although there are similar experiments to this such as the Stargate Project, this project also focused on the study of psychic phenomena. Though similar to the MK-ULTRA Project, its results were dismissed and only proved that the methods were harmful, and killed many. 

Thank you so much for following me along as I explain this intriguing experiment to you! I hope you also found this experiment intriguing and brought you a valuable critical thinking experiment!

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