Students

Quinn Clark 2-08-2022

Voorhees High School Library via the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School District.

Over the course of three school board meetings in the months that followed, parents argued that the books’ sexual content constituted “pornographic” material that didn’t belong in schools. Many parents cited their Christian values and rights as reasons why they spoke out against the books.

Julia Oller 10-19-2021

Photo by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash

When Angela Jordan started homeschooling 21 years ago, she was Abeka all the way.

It didn’t take long, though, for Jordan to realize that Abeka — the conservative Christian curriculum popular in homeschooling and in private Christian schools — presented a take on history intent on downplaying racism, white supremacy, and sometimes just plain facts.

Christina Colón 5-12-2020

When campus life shuttered in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus, more than 14 million students across the nation were forced to adapt to new routines. Campus lawns speckled with students gave way to uniform rows of faces on video calls. The now coined “Zoom fatigue” replaced “pulling an all-nighter” at the library.

While the pandemic has strained students from all academic disciplines, seminary and divinity students have felt unique pressure as they discern calls to enter positions and spaces of worship that may not resemble what they did before the virus took hold.

Four students shared with Sojourners what their studies look like amid the pandemic and how this moment is shaping their call.

Yingjie Gu 3-26-2018

James Samuel Broady, a Baptist Christian, calls for a repeal of the Second Amendment. Image via Jenny Gu/Sojourners

“I went to the Million Man March — that was about gun violence,” Broady said. “Black Lives Matter, that’s about gun violence. And here’s another rally where gun violence is attacking school and everything — not just streets, it’s going into school. It has to stop, and it has to go back to the Second Amendment.”

Hillsborough County, where Sickles High School is located, serves about 260,000 students and is the eighth largest school system in the United States. (Stavros Agorakis)

Carlos Velazquez, 14, who attends Howard W. Blake High School in Hillsborough County, doesn’t read or write in English. But all of his courses, including physics, math, and literature, are taught by English-speaking teachers, while only one teacher is available to help Spanish-speaking students understand their coursework.

Jennifer Butler 3-14-2018

Students release white doves outside Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, Calif., as part of a National School Walkout to honor the victims of the shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Image via Reuters/Kyle Grillot

Scripture calls us to do the things that lead to peace. Why then do we choose the path of violence?

Jim Wallis 2-28-2018

Placards and letters signed by worshipers at Christ Church United Methodist Church in response to shootings in nearby Parkland, Florida. They will be sent to legislators and officials in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Image via Reuters/Joe Skipper

Our children are leading us, and our youth groups can help point the way forward. It’s time to listen and follow their lead.

Charles L. Howard 2-24-2017

We do not believe the same thing. We are Abrahamic siblings, yes, and deeply connected in important ways, but our faiths, theology, practice, histories, views on God are different. 

But love.

Peter Armstrong 9-02-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

The continued use of the language of reconciliation around this news obfuscates the need for real, full-fledged atonement.

At a moment like this, while the nation watches Georgetown takes this opportunity to correct the sins of its past, white Americans must not demand reconciliation. We must take the work of atonement upon our own shoulders. To do otherwise is to live as if Jesus’ life were not a gift, but something God owed to us from the beginning.

Colin Chan Redemer 4-25-2016

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

I love Saint Mark. I truly do. But if the apostles were in a line-up and we threw Mark in there with them, I wouldn’t be able to tell him from second Judas. Frankly I wouldn’t be able to identify half of them. At this point, some folks have likely paused to Google, “there were two Judases!?"

Lani Prunés 5-20-2015

An infographic illustrating mass incarceration 

the Web Editors 5-19-2015
Image via  f11photo/shutterstock.com

Image via f11photo/shutterstock.com

More than 60 Asian-American groups came together to file a federal complaint against Harvard University last week, saying Harvard and other Ivy League schools should stop using "racial quotas or racial balancing" in their admissions, according to the Associated Press.

The groups contend that Harvard is using racial quotas that deny admittance to qualified Asian-American students.

Tobias Winright 5-07-2015

THREE DECADES AGO I did a four-year stint behind bars. I wasn’t incarcerated—I worked as a correctional officer at the maximum security jail for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Clearwater, Fla. It wasn’t a career I planned on pursuing.

After high school, I couldn’t afford higher education. I earned an associate’s degree from the local community college, working initially at a video game arcade, then at a factory my dad owned. At the time, I was thinking about a career in law, so my mother and stepfather, both of whom were patrol deputies, suggested that I apply for a job at local law enforcement agencies in order to pay my way through school; the sheriff’s department where they worked ended up hiring me. That’s how I earned my bachelor’s degree while working full time as one of the youngest correctional officers at the jail.

During the semesters I worked the night shift at the jail, I took classes during the day; when I worked the day shift, I took night classes. The contrast between the classrooms and the battleship gray corridors lined with steel-barred cells was striking. At the time, I did not like the jail job; I couldn’t wait until I could “escape” to graduate school.

Lani Prunés 3-16-2015

While President Obama's "Student Aid Bill of Rights" is a prudent and necessary step towards aiding college students, his announcement comes late for the seven million borrowers already indentured to their education debt. In "Forgive Us Our Debts" (Sojourners, April 2015), Virginia Gilbert investigates the cause-and-effect battle of education debt and the way it is hindering a generation of college students. How big is the student debt burden? See below for the poor report card reveal. 

SARA WAS DESPERATE. She was fleeing an abusive husband, living with her mother in a mold-infested house, and she needed to rent an apartment. A recent college graduate, Sara had a job at a hospital that paid well and provided benefits. Apartment rent was within her means. But the background check came back to the landlord: “Do not rent.”

Sara (not her real name) was $22,000 in arrears on her student loans. The more she tried to pay the debt, the higher the interest rate climbed. Only after she filed for bankruptcy did she learn that none of her student loans were eligible for even the basic bankruptcy protection afforded other debts. At any time, the lender could garnish her wages—even to the point of making it difficult to pay basic living expenses, such as rent and utilities.

Sara is one of the new 21st century debtors, in financial bondage because they borrowed money for education. In 2014, the education debt in the United States totaled $1.2 trillion. More than 7 million borrowers are in default.

The Editors 8-06-2014

Memphis Teacher Residency believes that "urban education is the single greatest social justice and civil rights issue in America today."

Lisa Sharon Harper 6-03-2014

(Stepan Kapl / Shutterstock)

IN 2006, A MAJORITY of Michigan voters amended their state constitution to outlaw the use of race in college admissions. Supporters of affirmative action challenged that amendment in court; in April, the U.S. Supreme Court (in a case known as Schuette vs. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action) affirmed Michigan’s right to ban the use of affirmative action by public universities.

Justice Sonya Sotomayor issued a 58-page dissent with a blistering critique of the court’s ruling. Sotomayor pointed out the illogic of the majority opinion that the case was about the voters’ right to self-governance. “This case,” she wrote, “is about how the debate over the use of race-sensitive admissions policies may be resolved ... that is, it must be resolved in constitutionally permissible ways.”

Sotomayor explained in her dissent that “by permitting a majority of the voters in Michigan to do what our Constitution forbids, the Court ends the debate over race-sensitive admissions policies in Michigan in a manner that contravenes constitutional protections long recognized in our precedents.” In other words, if we allow the majority to rule without limits, then affirmative action is effectively dead.

Trevor Barton 5-26-2014
Sheet music, Franz Metelec / Shutterstock.com

Sheet music, Franz Metelec / Shutterstock.com

The French composer Claude Debussy once said, "Music is the space between the notes." His compositions were a part of Impressionism in music, a movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that focused on suggestion and atmosphere and favored short forms of music like nocturnes, arabesques, and preludes. This movement was a correction of the excesses of the Romantic period, where the focus was on strong emotion and the depiction of stories and the favor was toward long forms of music like symphonies and concertos.

Sarah Thebarge 12-10-2013
Ejwhite/Shutterstock

Ejwhite/Shutterstock

I flew to Houston over the weekend to speak at the Conspire Conference. I stood on a stage looking out over a few hundred students in grades 6-12, telling them my story of having breast cancer in my 20s.

I talked to them about what a dark season of life it was for me. The chemo and radiation were difficult, but on top of that I also lost a good friend to cancer, I was out of work for seven months, while in my apartment building’s parking lot, my car was hit by a truck, and my boyfriend broke up with me. After all of that, I ended up in the hospital with a raging lung infection and a good chance that I would die.

On the nights I spent in the hospital, I’d lie awake and stare at the ceiling and wonder where God was. “Do you see me? Do you love me? Do you care about what’s happening in my life?” I prayed. “And if you see me and love me and care about my life, why don’t you come down and make this all go away?” 

QR Blog Editor 7-18-2013

According to an aide connected to the Democratic Party, bipartisan senators reached a deal Wednesday that would offer undergraduate students a lower interest rate of 3.85 percent on student loans, up until the year 2015. Revealing this information to USA Today prior to the official vote, sources confirmed that both parties are working towards lowering students costs. USA Today reports:

The bipartisan agreement is likely to be the final in a string of efforts that have emerged from near constant work to undo a rate hike that took hold for subsidized Stafford loans on July 1. Rates for new subsidized Stafford loans doubled from 3.4% to 6.8%, adding roughly $2,600 to students' education costs.

Read more here.