The Echo, HSMSE’s newspaper created by, and for students, is launching its first issue. You may be thinking: Why do we need a student newspaper?
First off, a student newspaper is different from a school newspaper in that it is created to serve the students of a school, rather than the school itself. Student newspapers are centered around sharing the opinions, experiences, and needs of the student body. For four years of our lives, we enter and exit the same building, shuffling through the tight, purple hallways of our school. And so it is essential that we engage with and understand the community we are a part of 5 days a week.
Life at HSMSE is not the typical high school experience. Track and field is our football, the “jocks” are also on the math team, half of our school is underground, and on the cellar floor, you can find chess kids and rubix cubers singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It is the quirkiness that makes our community great and a generally fun and vibrant place to be. Everyone here is doing their own thing and no one is afraid to nerd-out. So although HSMSE is not the typical high school experience, it is ours. The Echo wants to capture the moments and lives that make HSMSE a unique and special place to be.
After the pandemic, and even to this day, many of us can attest that school spirit sort of feels like a slowly deflating balloon. If we are being honest, most students only show up to a sports game if extra credit is being dished out. But it’s time that we get more engaged with what is going on in our community. HSMSE is our school, after all, and high school is what we make of it. By shedding a spotlight on the accomplishments, struggles, resilience and personalities of students, as well as staff, the newspaper serves as a platform to bring us together. The Echo is intended to boost school pride and unity but it’s understood that, at times, the newspaper will create some controversy.
So yes, The Echo is also an agent for change. As highschool students, we now have more of a responsibility to self-advocate. Rather than ranting about any one issue to no end, let’s get to the core of what they are and what we can do about it. A student newspaper allows us to investigate issues (that are often more complex than they appear) to get the answers, options and solutions we need. We are lucky to be surrounded by faculty, administration and a PTA who want to make HSMSE a better place – but unless we use our voice to speak out and offer viable solutions, change will happen without our input. How can we help them help us? We have to get out and investigate ourselves. But make no mistake, this also means The Echo staff needs your energy. We can’t be more than the sum of our parts.
Student journalism is fading out in a time when it is needed more than ever. A brand new research report (November, 2022) conducted by Geanne Belton, a journalism professor at Baruch College, revealed that 73.1% of high schools in New York City lack student newspapers. In schools that have higher concentrations of Black and Latino students, that number surges to 92% and 84%, respectively. The absence of student newspapers shows that the student voice is dissolving into the background when it needs to be at the forefront. We can’t let this happen here at HSMSE. Arianna Bassini, a founding member of The Echo, says it straight; “We are the rising generation. We are the ones who have to deal with all the crap that’s left behind…[a student newspaper] is an opportunity to challenge the things we are just told to accept.”
At its core, The Echo strives to amplify the volume of student voices and share the untold stories of our community. We look to be a source of information and inspiration for one another, unraveling the relationship to our school by highlighting the myriad of ways in which we all connect – in ways we are all proud of. Call it unity, call it school pride – this newspaper begins with that in mind.
