The Panther Prints

On April 19th, Wednesday, Mill Valley Middle School welcomed a special guest: Chelsea Clinton. She was here to speak about her new book: It’s Your World. A 8th grader, Zara, introduced Ms. Clinton. Following, twenty students, a combination of 6th, 7th and 8th graders asked Ms. Clinton questions. These questions ranged from what it was like growing up in the White House, to advice, to homophobia in the current administration, to how we can create social change. Ms. Clinton answered honestly and warmly. She discussed her proudest achievements, being a mother, running the Clinton foundation, why she wrote her book and criticism she faces in the public eye. She told us about her role model, her grandmother, who surpassed the odds against her. “If you are blessed, it is your duty to extend the circle of blessings.” “Take serious advice from serious people seriously and unserious advice from unserious people unseriously” “Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do wit...

Dear Students of MVMS, In light of the recent events at Mill Valley Middle School involving the writing of defamatory symbols there have been many discussions condemning this incident. Although, I do not believe these students acted with the malicious intentions that the symbols represent, but it is essential to realize there are many people out in the world that do. This incident forces us to recognize that morality on a whole, is relative. Our society, our culture constructs the basis of our morality and our family and history fill in the blanks. In our society, we are given many liberties in what we choose to believe as guaranteed  in our Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. With these freedoms, we must tolerate many opposing points of view and many different views on what is right and what is wrong. We learn from our schools, parents, and friends what is good and bad, and it is usually not a conscious decision. For example, imagine a ki...

    Overall, the Grammy’s were actually pretty entertaining. The performance with A Tribe Called Quest and Anderson .Paak were great and very relevant because of the themes of resistance in their music. Anderson .Paak was definitely a good choice to pair with the old-school sound of A Tribe Called Quest. One of my few problems was how many awards Adele won. “Hello” was good, great even, but 23 as an album was definitely not better than Views or Formation. Everybody and their mom listened to Views and Formation which empowered women everywhere to stand up for themselves. Even Adele wanted Beyonce to win the award for best album of the year. I was also very disappointed that Frank Ocean didn’t submit his album Blonde, because, for me that was the best album of the year and definitely in my top 5 of all time.     Some of my favorite moments in the Grammy’s were when James Corden started rapping and got a bit political, Schoolboy Q was shown wearing a bright pink hoodie...

Show me what democracy looks like!     This: millions of men and women of all ages across the world peacefully protesting for what they believe in, is what democracy looks like. This past weekend I along with many others took the streets. On Thursday afternoon I boarded a plane with my dad, mom and sister to the capital of our country: Washington DC. I wore a shirt with suffragette emblazoned on it. On the plane, many people wore pink pointed hats in defiance.     It was my first time in the capital. Wide eyed, I gaped at the Washington Monument swathed in night. We pulled up at the Watergate Hotel, the infamous hotel where the Nixon scandal occurred. But this hotel has embraced the scandal, making Nixon’s resignation speech what it plays when you’re on hold. The next morning I awoke at noon, thoroughly jet lagged. We turned on the TV in time for Trump’s inauguration speech. It felt surreal to be in the same city as him and I watched bewildered as he proceeded to i...

The day after the day for giving thanks and appreciation we have the retail phenomenon known as “Black Friday”. Black Friday is notorious and I wanted to take a closer look on how it make a national day in America. The term “Black Friday” was first used in a financial crisis 1869 with the unraveling of gold conspiracy. People have also said that Black Friday is called what it is and when it is, because retail companies used to record their profit in red and black. The whole year would be in a loss, until the day after thanksgiving where it would go black, because of the splurges on discounted items, but this is proved to be untrue. Another untrue story is that in the 1800s, the plantation owners could buy discounted slaves the day after Thanksgiving. This makes the holiday rather messy and repelling, however this was not proved either. It began in Philadelphia in the 50’s, the police described the hordes of people that flowed in the city for the big football game, because...

The first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump . Monday, September 26, 2016. The topics discussed were America’s direction, achieving prosperity and securing America. The moderator for the evening was Lester Holt. Lester Holt is an American journalist anchors the weekday edition of NBC Nightly News. He was actually born in Marin County California.     There didn’t seem to be a clear winner of the debate, but as many people noted this debate was mainly about strengthening the connection between the candidate and the voter who was already going to vote for the candidate, because there are few undecided voters.     The debate was beyond anything that you’d suspect, but this election has been anything, but generic. Between the sniffing, interrupting and boos from the audience it was a lively event that was definitely entertaining or worrying.     There are two more presidential debates following this first debate: October 9th and Octo...