Op/Ed

Harper Leary

Staff Writer

Unlike all of my friends, I do not get a TransPass through school, yet I still take SEPTA every day.

The School District of Philadelphia’s Transportation Eligibility Guidelines states that “Students in grades 7 through 12 who live 1.5 miles or farther from school are eligible for free Student TransPasses.” 

Now, when I read this at the beginning of the year, it kind of made sense. I could see why they had a distance requirement – it encourages students to get exercise during the day and not rely on public transportation if it’s not needed.

My house falls right on the cusp of the boundary for SLA. When driving or biking, the distance from my house to school is 1.5 or 1.6 miles, depending on your route.

So why don’t I get a TransPass?

It’s because the distance is less than 1.5 miles “as the crow flies”, which is how my advisor put it. 

This means in a straight line from their house to school; try visualizing a bird literally flying from one location to another.

Of course, I am not a crow, and neither are any of my peers at SLA (at least as far as I know). The logic of the rule is confusing. Let’s look at what transit to school looks like for our actual students.

If the student rides their bike to school, the rule doesn’t consider which streets have bike lanes or which direction each road is going. A student could live 1.3 miles away from school but have to ride their bike for 1.6 miles. 

What’s more, as we all well know, Philly has a wide range of weather. Assuming a student walks or bikes to school rather than taking SEPTA, this ‘as the crow flies’ rule doesn’t consider unshoveled or icy sidewalks, a heatwave, rain, or any other factors. 

What stood out to me was how non-inclusive this exception is. What if a family cannot afford to buy a TransPass and the student needs to help their siblings get to school? What if the route fastest to school has unsafe pavement or areas that the student needs to avoid? What if the student isn’t physically able to get to their location by foot and needs a TransPass but now can’t get one?

I could go on, but I hope you get the point. 

My route to school isn’t particularly unsafe, and I can walk, yet I rarely do. Taking the bus means I get 20ish more minutes of sleep, and during heat waves or the middle of the winter, you will not find me walking to school. Fortunately, my family can afford a TransPass, which I use all the time, not just to get to school. When my internship is in person, I use it for the subway. For ultimate frisbee games, I use it to get home. 

I have no problem walking to school when I need to, but others have reasons that are more urgent or dangerous than  mine. Considering all of the factors that already keep students from getting to school and getting there on time, the School District should work with SEPTA to ensure that ALL students get TransPasses, despite how far they live from school.

Those who want to walk will walk. Those that play sports or have internships far from home will have a safe way to return. This small change will not only protect students, but it will also make the journey to school that much easier.

Valeria Escobar Staff Writer

College is one of the most frustrating topics to think and talk about, at least for me. Most of the time I try to ignore this topic completely. “I’ll think about it when the time comes” I always tell myself. But every day that passes, that time when I actually have to start thinking about is getting closer, and I have even more options to consider. 

In middle school I thought I had a pretty concrete college plan for the future. Even though in middle school I didn’t know what I wanted to study in the future, I had an idea of where I would like to study. The “where” part now became one of the most difficult aspects to keep in mind– and for me, that’s a much bigger question than just whether I want to stay in Philadelphia.

The majority of my family lives in Colombia, so for the longest time I thought I would just go to college there, so I could maintain a close relationship with my family. This seemed like a simple option, and basically the only option I had in mind, but now the “college talk” has been happening a lot more frequently, more options come up.

Even though I still like the idea of studying in Colombia, now I understand the difficulties of living there, such as the political problems happening right now, the economic struggles I would most likely go through, and the quality of education there is not as good as in other places. 

My parents play a huge role in where I finally end up in college, so their approval is necessary for me. Currently, they are leaning towards me studying abroad in Germany, since it’s mostly free and the quality of education is also really good. Even though this seems like the best option for them, this is the option that scares me the most. College in Germany would be the opposite of what I had originally planned. It would be extremely far from my family, I also have to think about learning the language, and that I would basically have to reset my whole life there because I don’t know anybody, or their culture. 

Obviously another option for me would be to stay in the U.S. and go to college here, but unlike my other options, this would be the most expensive, If I wanted to go to a good college. 

The college I go to will ultimately depend on what I want to pursue in life, but since I have no idea what that is, geography and money are the biggest factors influencing my decision. 

Hopefully inspiration or my passion will strike between now and senior year, which will make choosing a college, and where exactly that college is gonna be in, a little less complicated.

Marcus Diemer

Staff writer

Discussions can be a great tool for students to learn and talk about different ideas in their classes. They give everyone a chance to voice their unique perspective, which is what makes them such an important tool. However you lose some people’s unique point of view if they are too afraid of being ostracized to speak their mind. 

Personally, I have almost always felt comfortable speaking my mind at school. People are generally respectful even when they disagree which is an important part to making people feel safe in what they are saying.  Teachers have always emphasized the importance of attacking the idea, not the person who has that idea. This was especially true in my sophomore English class, where we were doing a mock mock trial and we had to talk through our constitutional reasoning for why we thought each case was right or wrong. My teacher, Mr. Kay emphasized the importance of refuting the argument, not attacking the character of the person. This kept the discussion respectful and civil. 

The conversation was  difficult at times, especially because people were discussing something they are passionate about. However, learning this skill now as a student will be important for the rest of our lives. 

I can definitely understand why someone would feel intimidated or even scared to share an opinion that may be unpopular with the class. Even if people are only attacking your idea if enough people do it it could start to feel overwhelming. 

There is more to being uncomfortable than people just disagreeing though. It is a difficult skill to master, but actually listening to other people’s ideas is just as important as being respectful. You are not actually gaining anything from the discussion if you don’t really care what everyone else has to say, you are just waiting your turn to speak.

 I’ve noticed this can be a problem in many discussions when people will just say stuff seemingly just to have “participated.” This happens most frequently when students have not adequately prepared. I distinctly remember a friend who had not prepared at all for a discussion of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaids Tale.” His plan was to just sort of go along with what people were saying, but this did now work as well as he hoped. All of his points, though mostly true, did not really add to the discussion since there was nothing that had not already been said. I think the criteria for participation can be a bit narrow when we say you have to talk a certain amount of times, because then people are just trying to get their turn to say something, and do not care as much what they actually say. 

Participating is about much more than just saying your sentence you wrote down in your notebook, it is about seeing other people’s perspective and learning from it. If you don’t feel like anyone cares, you might not even feel inclined to share your thoughts either. 

When I go to college next year, I hope that my professors will place the same emphasis on including different perspectives and being respectful even when there are disagreements. This is an integral part of education and I think SLA got it right.