Celebrating Diversity
The Multicultural Fair is a one-day event at OOHS that allows students to explore different cultures around the world. The Multicultural Fair will take place on March 24th during all lunch periods in the auxiliary gymnasium.
“The Multicultural Fair is for everyone: students, parents, and teachers! It’s held in the aux gym, and there are multiple tables scattered around with different countries at them. Almost like little booths.” Sophomore Annie Tanjavur, a member of Student Council said.
Students participating in the preparation and management of the Multicultural fair will split up into groups to represent different countries such as China, Philippines, and India.
Students take time to create booths that will properly represent an entire culture and nation.
“Most groups pick a lot of dominant and popular things within their culture, whether that’s food, or some type of game, or maybe an object. They then almost always have a poster board with the countries name and fun facts on the boards. Sometimes, the people who are even working the booth will dress up in whatever said countries traditional clothing attire is!” Tanjavur said.
The Multicultural Fair is looking to build off of what last year’s fair accomplished and improve.
“We are hoping this year we see even more countries that we do not usually see. Last year, there was a China booth with many different traditional Chinese items that you could pick up and look at.” Tanjavur said.
The Multicultural Fair is a good opportunity for students at OOHS to express and explore the diversity at the high school.
“It’s a great and extremely fun way to show off diversity within our school, and show the different backgrounds from all the different students.
Overall, it’s a great event to come check out and learn more information about other countries.” Tanjavur said.
The Multicultural fair allows students to learn about other cultures in a fun and interesting way.
“I think the importance of multicultural day is that it gives time to let students learn about other cultures that they might not understand. It also provides a more fun and interactive way than being stuck in a classroom watching a video or reading passages.” junior Tyler Fu said.
Environmental Trainwreck
The train derailed on Feb. 3, but East Palestine has been dealing with the aftermath since. On Feb. 4, the city was in an official state of emergency and on Feb. 6, citizens were asked to temporarily evacuate. The city is still working on disposing all of the chemical waste and keeping everyone in a close range safe.
“If you have organisms like a small insect or fish that gets access to a certain amount of toxin within the environment, that fish will in time, get eaten by a bird. Imagine that bird eats 100 fish. Not only is that bird taking on the environmental impact of that one dosage. It’s taking on 100 doses within those fish that it’s eating as well,” Biology Teacher Kevin Guse said.
East Palestine is a small city in Northeastern Ohio, bordering Pennsylvania. Despite the city being relatively small, the severity of the train derailment made national headlines.
Around 5,000 people reside in East Palestine, Ohio, many of which were alarmed at the train derailment and the government’s handling of the situation. Many government officials have visited East Palestine to aid in the damage control, officials including Governor Mike DeWine and former President Donald Trump.
The train derailment was so dangerous because of the chemicals the train contained. Some train cars held up to 1.6 million pounds of hazardous chemicals. Over 700 tons of contaminated solids and almost 2 million gallons of liquids have been collected and disposed of.
“My biggest concern would be the water supply- Even if we “filter” out the toxins, where are we going to put the waste? Where is the toxin going to go? If this contaminates groundwater supplies, that is a huge issue because treating groundwater is almost impossible,” AP environmental Science Teacher Jessica Timmons said.
The train derailed because of overheating in the train car’s wheels. Some trackside detectors and workers detected the overheating moments before the disaster but didn’t have enough time to act.
