When we gather at recess, students and teachers ask for volunteers and work up skits and jests to publicize upcoming events. We have a literary magazine because a self-selected editorial board gets together every year, solicits stories, poems, and artwork, and puts together a generous volume or two. Seniors work through the fall and winter to produce our yearbook, which becomes a photographic gazette of the year s highlights. We have an irregular paper filled with mock news, absurd contests, and unlikely polls because some of our writers want to make us laugh now and then. We have a spring prom because the junior class takes responsibility for it, under the provisos that it be informal in spirit and raise enough funds to make it cost-free, to include everyone.
Some initiatives respond to immediate needs.
Groups organize to participate in the City Year Servathon and the Walk For Hunger, to support prisoners rights, and to raise funds for AIDS research. The Gay-Straight Alliance meets to confront issues of sexual identity. Students raise money every few months to purchase groceries and prepare a Thursday-night dinner for 150 needy guests at Neighborhood Action, a service agency in downtown Boston. A Model United Nations team meets after school to coordinate research and practice public speaking in preparation for a conference at a local university. Two assemblies on slavery in the Sudan led to the formation of Freedom, a student group dedicated to investigating and opposing the practice of slavery around the world.