OLIVIA CUNNINGHAM PT. I

Have you ever googled your name? Usually you expect to find matches to a corky TV character of some cheesy 90’s horror film. Google Yetti Sterensis and all you find are number, dates, and a list of names…Dates of events occurring in Nazi occupied Poland during the Holocaust, numbers of survivors and a list of names a mile long of members of the Holocaust survivors club. Her name is squished among them.

I wonder if she realizes all this; if she goes to these meetings knowing who and what she is among these lists of names. Yetti Sterensis is an eighty-year-old woman with dementia and no memories of Poland or life during the Holocaust. She’s a singer and a mother with no recollection of her children or grandchildren. I wonder how her children must feel? She remembers her music. She is an opera singer. I wonder if her children wish to be simply a melody in her head? A part of the music that consumes the vacant space in her mind? I sure would.

I was disappointed I wasn’t able to find more about the intriguing person behind the picture in the newspaper. All in all, I’m excited to see how we can fill in the blanks. Is it wrong to feel like a friend to someone you’ve only read about in a paper? If so…guilty.

MEGAN FELDMAN

What kind of world would we have if everyone were the same? No races, no religions, no orientations. No variation, no differences. No creativity. A cookie cutter world. Perfection? I dare to disagree.

I’m not going to sit here and say “I see everyone as the same”. Because I don’t. I will see you for who you are. Black. White. Jewish. Christian. Jehovah’s witness. Gay. Straight. Bisexual. Puerto Rican. Bosnian. Indonesian. Ignoring the differences is not what equates to acceptance. Acceptance is seeing the differences. It is processing the differences. It is adopting a frame of mind that allows you to move past them. Acceptance is loving everyone’s imperfections.

At first glance, I seem to be the typical Caucasian. Light brown hair, bright blue eyes, slightly tanned skin. Do me a favor and look a little further. See my heritage. My mother’s ancestors are immigrants to Great Britain; my father’s side descends from Poland and Russia. See my religion. I am Jewish. I am an Atheist. I believe in magic, not God, and I have been to church more times in the past year than I have been to synagogue.

Better yet, do not see me at all. Hear me. Know that I have thoughts, that I have opinions, that I have a message. Hear me. Listen to what I have to say.

Judge a person and you are judging a story. You see the Hispanic who might not speak the best English, but you fail to think of the family that came to America to provide their child with the best possible opportunities. You see the family who wears a foreign six-pointed star around their necks, but you fail to give a thought to the ancestors who traveled to the United States in order to escape religious persecution. You see a homosexual with a ring around his fourth finger, but fail to consider the 2, 000 miles he and his partner drove to get married in Washington, D.C. Everyone has a story. By judging even just one person, you are telling them that their story is unimportant. Their story is just as important as yours.

SAMANTHA SPOTO

Everyone is different, on the outside, but honestly, on the inside, were pretty much all the same. Same emotions, some connections, all people of the same world. When I see someone who is being judged or persecuted, I think to myself “Are they really all that different? What makes them the outsiders?” Growing up, I’ve always been told to never judge someone or think you know them until you have walked a mile in their shoes. With my family being Sicilian, I constantly get the weird-face, one-eyebrow-up glare when people learn that I’m Italian. “ooh…you’re Italian?” Ya, so what? How does that make me any different than you? What makes me any different than anyone else other than where my family came from. Everyone came from somewhere.

All my family was raised Catholic, in Italy and America. My sister and I along with most of our cousins, have almost always attended Catholic school. However, a Religion based school environment doesn’t protect you from persecution. In fact it only makes you more vulnerable. There’s many times where, even in a Catholic school, I can easily relate to situations where I or other people have been persecuted for being close to your own religion. With such a small campus of less than 500 students, it can easily divide the campus. This Catholic Italian girl doesn’t always have it easy, but I’m proud of who I am.

I’m normally the kind of person people would say is always optimistic, I try to keep in mind that everything happens for a reason and that you should always try to make something good out of a bad situation. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Its corny but its true. I always think its important to hear people out and be open to everyone’s opinions, because everyone wants to be heard.

I learned about Project Shattering Silence back when it was still called simply a “Project” yet to be considered. When it officially began, I honestly didn’t really know what to expect. Working with Jared in the past, I knew he had something good planned, the man obviously knew what he was doing. Throughout the time my group has been working on this, I have seen different points of views and heard amazing stories about everyone’s background. But like we have all said, we’re really not that different. We’re a group of very different teenagers coming together for the same purpose. Together we can create something amazing.

ELIZABETH BOONE

So our issue was equality.

I’m white, blonde, and blue-eyed. How could I relate? I couldn’t find an easy, blatantly obvious issue of inequality I’d faced in my life, until I really started thinking. I suddenly realized that struggle for equality really is something that EVERYONE goes through some way which can greatly affect them.

I started thinking about my interaction with other people, and how I struggle for equality, and then it hit me: school. Being in the International Baccalaureate program (IB), it is ALWAYS a game of survival of the fittest and who can be the best. People are looked at quickly and instantly judged as being superior or inferior to others just based on how they look or act. I feel like I am one of those people who are judged, automatically tossed off because I’m not in the math club or not always get straight A’s or maybe not appearing like the genius of the class. I even had a teacher kiddingly say, “You’re bright, but sometimes you’ve gotta see if anyone’s home,” and knocked on his head. I know it was playful, but it definitely ignited something in me.

I knew I wasn’t alone. I’ve heard a lot of other kids talk about others as if the others’ IQ’s were 40. Sometimes really mean stuff. However, after further reflection, I came to find that even I was one of those judging people, immediately casting people off as not the brightest or just weird or some other negative excuse I could make as to disassociate myself from them, and I was surprised. The LAST thing I want to be is the kind of person I despise.

I knew I had found my own, personal story of equality to make this project even more special to me, despite how much it already was being with some of my favorite people, being involved with theatre, and giving all it comes out to be to charity.

And regardless of my story, your story, or your mom’s story, we really do all have the same struggles in friends, family, school, work, and love. So embrace it, and everyone. It’s just life…what more could you ask for, right?