1. Fact Checking Policy:
If you submit a journalistic article to INFO,
we will take the following steps before
publication:
1. First, if you detail any interactions with
any other member of the LREI Community, you
must share the entirety of these
interactions with us prior to publication.
2. We ask that you submit a “work cited” page,
if applicable to your article.
3. If you mention or imply a mention of
another member of the LREI Community, we
will check that specific section with the
mentioned person(s).
4. We will fact check any evidence presented
in your article, whether that be
statistics, or reference to school policy.
This policy will not apply to articles that
are personal, artistic, or satirical.
2. sexual harassment policy for 10 minutes
during our various homeroom periods.
Now onto why we found this issue of INFO
so inspiring. As stated in the open letter,
EI students have always been told to stand up
for what they believe in. AS soon as we enter
the school, we are taught the significance of
speaking up. We write letters to the mayor,
we go out and protest, and we learn how to
become activists. INFO magazine is a tool for
change and was used for exactly that this
past week. The magazine is already sparking
conversation and drawing attention to
previously ignored issues. We feel it is so
important to have an uncensored, completely
student-run space and we just wanted to thank
the INFO leaders for bringing back that
space. We are so excited for the future of
this magazine and everything to come for our
community!
Sincerely,
- Verity Berthelsen and Violet Wexler
Letter from the Editors
From Tilda, Piper, Z, and Rhyus
Dear Verity and Violet,
Thank you so much for writing this
edition’s letter to the editors! We value
your input, and it’s incredible to see that
the work of the student body has resonated
with and sparked conversations among
underclassmen. Also, thank you for raising
Letter to the Editors
From Verity Berthelsen and Violet Wexler
Dear INFO Mag,
When we first read this edition of INFO
we felt a mix of outrage and inspiration.
Outrage as students in this community and
inspiration realizing that this magazine is
making change. Last week's edition of INFO
kickstarted the conversation that led to the
meeting in the PAC on Friday, which was a
very important step in healing the
relationship between the administration and
the students. As two people who signed the
letter, we acknowledge that it caused hurt
that we, as a student body, did not intend.
It was not a personal attack on anyone, it
just felt like a “final stand” of some sort.
Emotions around the school have been running
high recently and the way we see it, the main
point of the letter was to facilitate
communal healing, but it is important to
remember that intent and impact are not
always the same thing. That being said, the
claims around the sexual harassment policies
were not acknowledged during the meeting. As
students and especially female-identifying
students, sexual harassment education is
vital to our safety, not only in school but
in the outside world. We need to be prepared
for the real world and school is the place to
do that. We understand that complaint without
suggestion brings no action, so based on the
feminism club's open letter we ask that at
the very least we go over the
3. the issue of the Sexual Harrasement policy,
which we address in this edition in our
“response”.
After the meeting on Friday, the Feminism
Leaders and INFO Editors began drafting a
response, which we have published in this
edition. We have broken it into four
sections: “What has happened since
publication”, “Recognition of hurt”, “Things
we want to address”, and “Moving forward and
next steps”. We hope all involved in the
publication of the letter, or anyone who read
the letter, reads this response. If you have
anything we wrote that you would like to
respond to, feel free to write the next
letter to the editors!
The cover of this edition was made by
Zane Walker. He included an artist’s
statement about his work: “The cover for INFO
this week is a block print titled:
Which(ever) way the wind blows. This refers
to the line in Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean
Homesick Blues’: “you don’t need a weatherman
to tell you which way the wind blows,” which
inspired the name of the revolutionary group
the weathermen. This print depicts members of
the radical, often militant, organization
being arrested at a protest, and ponders
their position in the history of activism and
oppression.”
Beyond the response, this edition
contains another anonymous bathroom review, a
fully usable LREI Bingo created by Ben
Connolly, and a fantastic drawing from Mae
Tigay. We also have a lovely list of
Valentine's Day themed book recommendations
from the Book Club X-Block. Finally, we have
an incredible snippet of Samuel Beacher’s
weekly newsletter, which we highly recommend
checking out!
Thank you so much everyone!
Tilda, Piper, Z, Rhyus
QR Code for submissions
4. Response From the Feminsim Leaders and
INFO Editors
What has happened since publication:
Last Monday night, January 24th, the
leaders of the Feminism X-Block sent a letter
to Allison and Margaret who forwarded the
letter to the rest of LREI’s faculty. On
Tuesday, January 25th, the Feminism X-Block
leaders and INFO magazine published this
letter, titled “To the administration,” to
the rest of the student body. From January
25th to January 27th, a series of emails
between the Feminism X-Block leaders and the
two Co-Prinicpals were exchanged. The
Feminism leaders requested an initial meeting
between the leaders and Co-Principals, and
then invited the Co-Principals to join the
X-Block on Friday, January 28th. A response
from Allison and Margaret was sent to the
high school’s entire faculty and all those
who signed the letter, inviting everyone to a
community circle to discuss what was written
and what was happening around the school. We
are writing this letter to address many of
the concerns discussed in the meeting, and to
respond openly to the school.
On Friday, January 28th, many students
who signed the letter, and many whose names
were not featured but its content deeply
resonated with, joined administrative and
faculty members in the PAC to discuss the
impact of what had been received and
distributed days before. The restorative
conversation was led by Ty and Marion and
aimed to address questions such as: what
happened, what were you thinking/feeling at
the time, what can we do moving forward, and
any follow up questions that might arise.
Students and faculty trickled in and out of
the space as intentions, frustrations, and
emotions were expressed and recognized. The
meeting ended with all those remaining going
around the circle to share a single word such
as “inspired,” “unsure,” “grateful,”
“conflicted,” etc., to express the final
feelings of those engaged in the conversation
as the meeting came to a close.
We want to thank Marion for creating a
space where ideas, feelings, and opinions
could be shared. The conversation began with
every person present speaking into the
microphone, and this introduction added a
layer of comfort and established the circle
as a space where every voice was given value.
Marion organized a candid conversation
between everyone within the community. All
voices were heard equally and with the same
sense of importance. Because of her
leadership, the discussion was able to
embrace many of LREI’s core values and
allowed students to share their perspectives.
Finally, on Wednesday, Allison invited
students involved in the publication of the
initial letter to the student center, to talk
about the feelings of the LREI Community.
Students began by discussing the meeting on
Friday, and then talked with Allison about
the policies inside the letter
5. that they supported. Most students felt this
conversation was very productive, and felt
like their voices and opinions were listened
to and affirmed. We look forward to more
conversations similar to this in the future.
Recognition of hurt:
We would like to address our mistakes. In
the letter, the Feminism leaders discussed
trying to include more underclassmen members
in the X-Block, and the difficulties
experienced due to room capacity. This was
written in the beginning of the drafting
process, and in the time before publication,
they reached out to a member of the
administration who resolved the issue. The
paragraph was published anyway, and the hurt
and pain that resulted from this decision was
real. The INFO Editors have removed this
paragraph from our website, and have
republished a revised version. We feel
terrible about this oversight, and want to
sincerely apologize to anyone who feels
personally impacted. Again, we want to
reiterate that the paragraph about the room
capacity was resolved, and publishing
specifically that paragraph was a mistake.
We cannot take back our decision to
publish and release the letter in the way
that we did, and all we can do is ask for the
forgiveness of those that were hurt from what
was in all honesty a true oversight and a
mistake. While our intentions were truly
positive, they are stained by a mistake that
has caused real harm. It is something that we
as those that wrote and released the
letter must live with and work to make right.
In addition, we apologize if there was an
implication that there was malintent on
behalf of the administration, yet the
policies mentioned in the original letter had
very real impacts on the student body and we
still believe that these issues deserve to be
addressed and changed. To the members of
admin and the part of our community we hurt,
we are deeply sorry. We see the work that all
of the members of our community do. We care
for everyone in our community regardless of
if we always feel aligned with them in all
pursuits, the fact that we lost that
fundamental truth in our letter is a true
failure on our part.
In addition, we would like to discuss the
paragraph about admissions, specifically
“student ambassadors have been asked to speak
more about ‘rigor’ rather than emphasize our
community or student-teacher relationships.”
It has now become clear that this statement
inadequately contextualizes the intent of the
admissions team, as student ambassadors were
specifically asked to emphasize our school’s
“transformative teacher relationships” in
addition to academic rigor. We apologize for
this misrepresentation. Our intent was to
explain some of the ways in which students,
both ambassadors and others, have previously
felt sidelined from the admissions process.
We look forward to discussing strategies that
will improve communication between students
and the admissions team in order to best
represent the culture of LREI.
6. Things we want to address:
In the meeting on Friday and in
conversations both editors of INFO and
Feminism’s leaders have engaged in since the
publication of the letter, we have repeatedly
heard the content referred to as
“misinformation.” We want to address this
term because we feel that it incorrectly
represents the intent of writing and
publishing the letter. Misinformation implies
that the Feminism Club wrote and distributed
false information with the intent of doing
harm. As we have stated before, the intent of
the letter was to bring about positive change
through constructive criticism of policies
and actions taken that we felt were harmful
to the LREI Community. Calling the letter
“misinformation” not only inaccurately
represents our intentions, but also ignores
the letter’s real content and demands. In
addition, in conversations since publication,
we have frequently been told that “most
people who signed the letter didn’t read it.”
Not only is this incorrect, we believe that
it disregards the agency of all of the
students who signed the letter. We hope that
in further discussions the feelings of the
students that signed the letter are affirmed,
as they must be in order to move forward.
We also would like to address the
conversations surrounding the frustrations
mentioned in the Feminism X-Block’s initial
letter, as it was repeatedly brought up
during the restorative circle on Friday.
Administrators frequently asked about these
dialogues, mentioning that they were unaware
of students’ discontent with the school wide
policies mentioned, as no students came to
administrators with their issues. Students
discussed feeling that there was sometimes
little communication as to follow through
when they did approach members of the
administration, which contributed to their
support of the public nature of the letter.
In addition, a multitude of students
responded that many emotions, opinions, and
frustrations had been discussed in the
confidence of faculty members to whom they
trust and have personal relationships with.
Dialogue taking place in affinity groups was
frequently mentioned, as were other forms of
conversation, such as student expression/art
on the walls and student-led assemblies.
The topic of conversations in school
brought up frustrations from the faculty and
administrators about a lack of dialogue
before the writing and publication of the
letter. We acknowledge that direct
conversations with administrators was another
approach to address issues such as those in
the letter, however, when writing and
publishing the initial letter, transparency
was our first priority. The public
distribution of our letter “To the
administration” attempted, and we believe was
successful in, opening the conversation to
the entire student body and LREI community.
Due to Covid-19, club capacity restrictions
and scheduling complications, cross grade
communication and engagement
7. have unfortunately been limited. To both
create a school-wide conversation and provide
transparency, we, the Feminism X-Block
leaders, felt that INFO would serve as an
appropriate medium to convey our message
because of its morals, objectives, history
and presence in our community. We refer
specifically to Tenet 3 which states, “Info
will remain a medium in which affinity
groups, action-based groups, and individuals
can voice their criticisms, opinions, and
ideas pertaining to the school,” and Tenet
10, “Info will not publish articles that have
no source in truth or blatantly disregard the
experiences of people with marginalized
identities.” For all these reasons we will
continue to use INFO as a platform to hold
ourselves to our values, that being
transparency and inclusive dialogue, and to
relay information back to our community as we
continue to learn, grow, and make positive
change together.
Moving forward and next steps:
Finally, in order to begin moving forward
as a school community, we felt it would be
valuable to present clear action items. We
would also like to acknowledge that some of
these concerns may already be in the process
of being addressed and we have not yet been
made aware of them. Many of these points were
brought up and discussed at the meeting with
Allison on Wednesday, and we look forward to
continuing these conversations.
1. Implement times before, during, or after
the school day when direct dialogue between
students and faculty can be had, whether
that be regular town halls, more informal
meetings, etc. and when they are held, time
frames should be provided.
a. Town halls should alternate between
meetings for solely students and
meetings where administrators and
faculty are present.
2. Have more updates between faculty,
administration, student government, and
student body after initial communications
about anything that impacts a portion of
the student body. This can and should be
student driven as well as faculty and admin
driven.
3. Student leaders should work with art
teachers to put more student art on the
walls.
4. Plan frequent meetings in which the student
body and the admissions team can discuss
how to best represent our school and school
community to prospective families and
students.
5. Create an accessible, transparent, and
timely assembly sign-up process that allows
student groups to lead topical assemblies.
6. Introduce the Sexual Harresment Policy at a
school meeting and/or advisories, and
provide a more detailed walkthrough of the
policy in 9th and 10th grade Life Lab in
order to make it more accessible when
necesary.
8. a. Feminism Club or other students well
versed in the policy should show how
to access it and how to file a
complaint during 9th/10th Grade Life
Lab.
b. Reassess the language of the policy to
make the process less intimidating for
survivors. Implement a level system
similar to that of the
Anti-Discrimination policy.
2. Hold yearly sexual harrassment training for
all faculty and administrators at the
beginning of or before each school year.
3. Introduce the Anti-Discrimination Policy
and Sanctuary Policy at school meeting
and/or advisories, and a more detailed
walkthrough in 9th and 10th grade Life Lab.
Drawing by Mae Tigay
7.
8.
9. Valentine's Book Recommendations
From LREI’s Book Club
Hi, Info! Members of LREI’s book club
compiled a list of our favorite romance
novels to share with the student body just in
time for Valentine’s day. No matter how
you’re spending the day, make sure to check
out some of these recommendations:
♡ Amelia Westlake was Never There by Erin
Gough
♡ Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of
the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz*☺
♡ Beach Read by Emily Henry*☺
♡ Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter*
♡ Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall☺
♡ Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu
♡ Heartstopper by Alice Oseman
♡ Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch
♡ One Last Stop by Casey McQuinston
♡ Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory*☺
♡ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*☺
♡ Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey
McQuinston*
♡ The Brown Sisters Series by Talia Hibbert*
♡ The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood☺
♡ To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny
Han*
♡ Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
*Available in the library
☺ Available on Sora
LREI Discussion Bingo
By Ben Connolly
Bring this Bingo around to your classes! Play
the game and email INFO editors a picture of
your final result for publication in the next
edition!
“Adding
on to
that”
“Respectfully
disagree”
“Summer
of 2020”
“Duality”
“Society”
“Privilege”
“Pandemic”
“Capitalism” “Systemic”
“Building
off of”
FREE
SPACE
“Does
anyone have
a computer
charger?”
“Are
you on
5g?”
“Does
spelling
count?”
“The
ways in
which”
“Did you
do the
reading?”
“Do we
have first
lunch?”
“What
class do
we have
next?”
“What
page are
we on?”
“Wasn’t
on
Connect”
“Juxtaposition”
“What’s the
assembly?”
“When
does class
start?”
“When
does class
end?”
“Will this
be on the
test?”
LREI Discussion
Bingo
10. As I'm on my way back, I’m on time so far,
and then the train just stops. Me and
everyone else on the train is confused until
we hear an announcement which says that we
must move to the front of the train. Did I
mention it was 3:50 now, no chance I'm making
it on time. What's the lesson? Make sure you
are prepared for the one time when something
unexpected will go wrong. This was utterly
out of my control, so there was no reason to
be mad about it. Of course, this is easier
said than done, and it’s okay, even
encouraged, to have emotions when
something goes wrong, we’re all human. Just
make sure to realize that there’s no point in
getting worked up, and continue on with your
life.
Scan here to subscribe!
I’m Not Your Dad, But You Should Read
This
By Samuel Beacher
I’m Not Your Dad, But You Should Read This
Hey EI, here’s a snippet of my weekly
newsletter! New to newsletters? Each week, I
send out a quick rundown of interesting
things you might enjoy. Read on for a sample
-- and if you like what you’re reading, scan
the QR code below to subscribe! Thanks!
What I learned💡
"There's a place for everything on this
path." - Pema Chodron. Just a quick reminder
that even the "bad/difficult" parts of life
are necessary. Most times, they are not truly
bad, for bad and good are solely matters of
perspective. Without the extremes, there
would be no happy medium. Also, remember to
always look in the shadow for light. The
difficult parts of life are always necessary,
so you might as well look for how they can
help you along the path while you’re at it.
Anecdotal Analysis✍
So, I was going downtown to pick
something up after school and I had an
appointment at 4:00. I left the house at
2:30, and it only takes about a 25-minute
train ride, so I thought I would be fine. I
go down to the 1 train and see there is
nothing coming or going, it's all delayed,
something of a bad omen of what is to come.
