The list that follows is a complete listing of the journalism articles I have written for Silver Chips. Each article listed is linked to its PDF page. Bolded articles are ones that I have chosen to include in the "blog posts" below in their entirety.
Through Silver Chips, I have had the opportunity to write for each of the five sections of our paper: News, Op/Ed, Features, Culture, and Sports. This has given me more depth as a journalist and exposed me to many different styles of writing.
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This feature article was co-written with another Silver Chips staff member, Khusboo Rathore. It was awarded a 2019 Columbia Scholastic Press Association Gold Circle Award Honorable Mention.
See the PDF here. Sitting down with her sister and friends for dinner, senior Eve Kuo listens as they discuss green cards and citizenship. Their friends had just received greencards, which was a long and complex process, as it had been for Kuo’s family. Green cards, officially known as Lawful Permanent Resident Cards, are permits that allow immigrants to permanently live in the U.S. Though she has lived in the U.S. for thirteen years, at 17, Kuo remains a permanent resident and plans to apply for citizenship once she turns 18. She does not know how long the process will take; it took her parents a decade to obtain green cards, and half a year to renew her own green card. The path to citizenship has been a long one for Kuo’s family in the past, but the advantages that come with being a citizen keep her on the path to citizenship. I wrote this feature article independently. It was awarded a Gold Key by Scholastic Art and Writing.
See the PDF here. It is a cloudless Sunday morning when junior Nayla Henríquez closes out another deal for her mother’s cleaning business. Henríquez, by now a seasoned professional in business negotiations, expertly explains her mother’s pricing and services to the client before settling on a deal. Henríquez is accustomed to transactions like these. Her mother, like many Blair parents, immigrated to the United States from El Salvador and can only speak Spanish. Thus Henríquez, who is fluent in both Spanish and English, acts as a language broker for her mother, helping her navigate legal and financial matters. Henríquez’s mother has one of her children translate whenever she needs to do a price estimate for a client. “I do her bank stuff; I don’t think there’s a thing that I don’t know. I do her credit cards, I write checks,” Henríquez says. “She’s really dependent on her children, even though she's an independent person and she makes her own money and… owns her own business.” I wrote this feature article independently. It was awarded a Silver Key by Scholastic Art and Writing.
Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identities of the sources. Rows of desks line a small room. Tutors Al-Hafis Adegun and Sophia Liu sit facing their student, Jack, a high school science textbook sprawled out in front of them. Today they are discussing the scientific method. The tutoring session is taking place not in a high school or a public library, but in the Howard County Department of Corrections. The tutors are volunteers for the Petey Greene Program, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has been providing free academic tutoring to incarcerated people since 2008. This feature article was awarded an Honorable Mention by Scholastic Art and Writing.
See the PDF here. “I was going in ready to fight,” admits senior Sophia Johnson about the 2018 National American Miss pageant in Maryland. Not her fellow contestants, but the pageant industry itself. Sophia, like many others, had negative preconceptions about pageants prior to competing in one herself. “I definitely had a bias… I was like, ‘if there are any male judges, I’m going to call them out… if they ask me stupid questions,’” Sophia says. I wrote this opinion article independently. It was awarded an Honorable Mention by Scholastic Art and Writing.
See the PDF here. An Opinion Virtually all racial slurs have become taboo in modern society. The exception? “White trash.” The term is thrown around easily in everyday conversation, newspaper articles, television shows, and sometimes even jokingly used to describe one’s own lifestyle. “White trash” is a derogatory term typically used to refer to poor white people, particularly those living in the southern United States. Partly due to pop culture influences such as the sitcom Roseanne and the reality television show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, the phrase has come to portray poor rural whites through heavily negative stereotypes, often characterizing them as crass, ignorant, and racist. The epithet is not only disparaging to those it labels, but also demeaning to racial minorities. See the PDF here.
Over 500 people crowded in the Blair SAC on Jan. 11 for the “Shutdown Social” for furloughed government employees. The free potluck dinner was organized by Montgomery County Councilman Tom Hucker (D-District 5) for government employees who are not receiving salary during the government shutdown. Approximately 800,000 government employees missed their first paychecks on Jan. 11 because of the impasse between the House of Representatives and the president in appropriating funds for the 2019 fiscal year. “[The employees are] the collateral damage in this whole standoff between the House and the White House,” Hucker said. |