Articles

It's the beginning of seventh period English, and junior Cecilia Acosta is being accosted. A tote bag at her side is packed full with foil pans of miniature cakes, and she has just fulfilled an order of one to a student, sparking a flurry of activity. A throng of students surround her desk located in the corner of the classroom. Even after the initial commotion dies down, every few minutes another student will approach like clockwork and ask what flavors are left, or when they can order one. She cracks a smile, and it doesn't leave.

The Uvalde shooting earlier in the year has cast a long shadow over the educational landscape of America, with many districts, PfISD included, instituting a number of safety changes in response to the event. Now, it's the dawn of a new academic year, and school social worker Lori Carl has been presented with a dilemma.

Growing up I was always told that I was going to go to college, even if it wasn’t clear how my family was going to pay for it. Nobody else in my family had ever gone to college; even still, it was treated as my default path in life, and I never really questioned why I should or shouldn't go. In that sense, I spent the majority of my upbringing taking it for granted. Now, as I enter my senior year of high school and begin college applications, I'm faced with the real difficulties of being a first-generation college student—and the burden of succeeding where my parents did not.

The issues that transgender students face in the education system have been in the spotlight since 2016, when the Obama administration issued directives that granted protections for trans students in schools. Since then, guidelines concerning school policy have been rescinded and reissued, and hotly debated within state legislatures. One issue regarding school policy, however, stands above the rest as a very ordinary but nevertheless pressing concern for trans students. This is the problem of access to school bathrooms.

A mob erupts into anger. Bottles, rocks, and bricks sail through the air. Down the street, inmates of a women's prison set fire to their belongings and throw them to the ground below, chanting "Gay rights." Now-revered icon Marsha P. Johnson scales a lamppost and drops a heavy bag onto a police car, shattering the windshield. All were scenes that occurred on the nights of the famous Stonewall Riots in June of 1969, when a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, triggered a massive riot that ignited a movement and paved the way for the rights and acceptance of future generations.