Tbt to the Trampoline

As many of you probably remember, last year a group of students issued their own form of satire, better known as the Trampoline. For those of you that don't remember, it was a pretty blatant satire making fun of the Trapeze, which for those of you that don't know, is our school newspaper (check it out). While it managed to poke fun at a lot of aspects of the Trapeze, the main message emphasized the fact that Trapeze does not cover the most relevant, relatable, read-worthy topics and stories. If you can recall, the "Point- Counter Point" of the Trampoline was something along the lines of "Should lunch table trays be orange or blue???" which describes it all pretty well. 

As an editor of the Trapeze, many people asked me if I was offended by this blatant message to which I  replied honestly that I was not at all. In fact, none of the editors were and this is mostly because we completely agreed with it. Satires have the ability to send a powerful message and in many cases to spark a reason for change. While the entire editorial board agreed and laughed along with the Trampoline, it made me wonder why our goal of making the Trapeze more socially relevant was so out of reach.  

Each month, we scramble to come up with new story ideas however, more often than not, we are limited to what we are able to write about because of fear of crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed. It's a constant battle that takes place whenever the topic of racial quality, politics, or really any other topic that is not completely safe and agreeable by the entire school. With the recent events of Ferguson, as a school paper geared to represent the diverse student body, we initially felt that this was an event that could not go unnoticed. But as an editorial board consisting entirely of white girls, we unanimously agreed that were not in a position to address it. No matter how strongly we felt about the recent news or how badly we desired a change, we couldn't pretend that we felt the same emotions as those who were suffering or even those that we in a much better place to relate to it than we were. And while I completely agreed that we can't for a second pretend that we can address these topics with the same level of credibility, I think that the fact that we are unable to acknowledge such profound and relevant issues says a lot more about the way that we address racial profiling as a society. As goes for a lot societal issues including racial profiling and gender inequality, acknowledgment is the first step to change. Change won't happen if only a select few feel comfortable talking about it but somehow, our ability to acknowledge something is limited by our race which can impede our ability to move forward in terms of a school newspaper or an entire society in general.