Dear Monica,

It is great to hear your questions and that you were enthusiastic about the article. I appreciate your willingness and interest in discussion. I would love to answer all your questions. I am going to number them to ensure the clarity of my responses.

1. Where has life brought you?

Life has actually brought me to some strange,yet interesting places. Allow me to explain, also this may be a bit lengthy of a response for this one. After Trinity's incredible IB programme, and various informational college prep courses, I have found myself at a Liberal Arts College. I am triple majoring in Philosophy and History and Psychology. Philosophy has sparked my interest in not only meta, but quantum physics, after an amazing ancient philosophy course with Father Joenson at my school. My studies and intellectual engaging courses me brought me to my bed on the weekends to either rewatch The Office for the millionth time or indulge in researching, while eating pizza no doubt. Speaking of pizza, I have also been contemplating the morality behind eating dairy, along with the actual nutrition and whether or not it is necessary. I actually have a theory about out it if you ever want to hear it? Life has brought me to place where I am constantly pondering a ridiculous amount of various topics, such as the Double Split Theory. Although I am not well versed by any means in quantum mechanics, the topics are incredibly interesting. I am also always discussing political issues, along with social justice.

I am also now a published artist, who eats an ungodly amount bagels. There is a new coffee shop on campus and I just go crazy in there. Anyways, besides the point. I am Editor-in-Chief with such an absolutely incredible online new-source, as you can see. Odyssey has helped shape me as a writer, even though I have a long way to go, as I am challenged to develop concrete ideas while analyzing the content of my articles. I am always encouraged to create pieces of substance and am pushed to produce to the best of my abilities. I have used my platform to write letters to multiple governors, one of which actually resulted in a man on death row being given a retrial. Other articles include speaking out against genocide, animal rights, and our rigged political system.

"Your unfortunate hang up experience" I would like to also comment on this portion of your paragraph for a minute, just to clarify. I had a great experience in many areas and some poorly in others. I will explain each stance. My best experiences with Trinity include being a news anchor for WTHS and taking IB Film and art. Creating beautiful art pieces, while learning those skills from an incredibly informative and passionate teacher, Ms. Silunas, has allowed me to carry on my passion of studio art even to this day. I appreciated the rigor and no-nonsense of Ms. Black's IB Film course, where we were consistently challenged on the multitude of films watched. I do believe you were in the course, as well, if so, I am sure you will agree the challenge, analysis, and creativity encouraged by Ms. Black was quite amazing. After the IB program, I left Trinity with amazing experiences, skill, and even a strong portfolio. I also thoroughly enjoyed Christmas where we chose angels, the hallways flooded with holiday tunes, and piles of candy canes were stationed on each floor.

The experiences however that I did not appreciate, was the consistent coddling in my college prep courses, harassment of students that, although I did not have to face, I witnessed, as well as the unfortunate dismissal and isolation of students with a mental illness or disorder. I recall a time where a student was having a panic attack during her sit in lunch with Deborah Murphy. Murphy then told the student if she did not stop she would be given another detention. Another incident(es) was seeing multiple students being attacked by the administration for having a mental illness or disorder. Their callousness included academic dismissal, refusal of prom\homecoming entry, along with consistent verbal and legal attacks.

2. You were best friends with "The girl who pooped on the floor"

Lol.

Although I am no longer friends with "the girl who pooped on the floor" I would like to take a minute and discuss your belittlement of the student. As adults, I think it is necessary for us to remain focused on the topic at hand, without publicly humiliating and degrading past students. The woman you are condemning, although I will firmly agree with you is rather privileged, acted kind to everyone she encountered within Trinity's community. It is unfair and absolutely unnecessary to debase her due to your own emotion towards me. I will take whatever personal attacks you have towards me with open arms, I encourage your thoughts and questions, however, I would ask that you refrain from engaging in such dispensable, fretful behavior towards other students.

3. Why didn't you raise awareness during your time there?

First, I would like to encourage asking, Did you raise awareness, as your question is being stated in a way that you have knowledge rather than assumptions on these topics.

One of many things I did to raise awareness was trying to start a human rights club. I submitted a paper with my reasoning of wanting to start the club, while only to be given back a note in which was scribbled "denied". I then went to the office and scheduled a meeting with Deborah Murphy. During our meeting, she expressed that due to also supporting gay rights there could be no room for the organization within Trinity's community. I then scheduled a meeting with Dr. B to speak about this issue. I was told by Dr. B that she would not discuss anything about Deborah Murphy unless, she too, was present. I expressed my concern about the intimidation the tactic was clearly enacting on behalf of the administration but accepted the meeting anyways. About a week later, I met with them both to discuss the club's necessary's place within the Trinity community, as well as the unfortunate intimidation tactic used to derail my interest.

I actually had quite a few meetings with both Dr. B and Deborah Murphy about various social justice awareness and the mistreatment of students. This can be confirmed by not only the office workers who were confused by my consistent askings to schedule meetings with both the dean and principal, but both Dr. B and Deborah Murphy themselves.

I would also like to add I was often refused a meeting with the President Sister Michelle and only was given access to one meeting, where she did not answer my questions but offered what seemed to be a coked out response of confusion.

3. Why didn't you start a club about mental health issues?

I think that is a great idea and did not even think about developing an organized club dedicated to mental health, I do think you should share this idea with Trinity, as the community would benefit greatly. I did, however, on multiple accounts, discuss with the Counseling Center the lack of resources being offered, as I knew a few students who engaging in self-mutilation due to emotional distress. I encouraged offering actual counseling,as well as redesigning the offices to be more welcoming, as they are rather cold and purely driven towards academic and collegiate aid.

In regards to redesign, I encouraged designing offices solely for counseling, rather than being told to sit in a wooden chair next to a cluttered desk, in an overfilled, rather small office.

4. Why didn't you seek out your teachers and let them know you were being coddled?

I did in every single course where I felt I was being coddled. I even brought this issue up to Dr. B in one of our many meetings.

5. Why didn't you start a petition for administration and uniform reform?

I actually started a multitude of petitions, both of these being a couple of them. I first started my petition for administration reform Freshman year. The signatures lacked significantly, as students felt fear of the administration had they put their names down. The petition was not successful. I instead had a meeting with Dr. B about the adminstration. My other petition on uniform, though, got very many signatures, in which I submitted to the office of Dr. B. Obviously, the petition did not cause any major changes, but they loosened up greatly on enforcing knee highs (I do not really know if this was our signatures doing, or just their own personal reform to the dress code).

6. Anyone can condemn an institution they felt failed him\her

I would not say Trinity failed me, as I have gained much knowledge from IB and various college prep courses. I also felt very encouraged by multiple faculty members in areas of Italian, Media, Studio Art, and Psychology. I learned editing techniques, communication and research skills from Ms. Black in both her IB and college prep courses that have truly shaped my critical thinking skills today. Her encouragement to join WTHS left me with not only inspiration but immense confidence. Mr. Daly's psychology course sparked my interest in pursuing one of my bachelor's in that very area. His course did not rely on asking me to choose between solely A,B,C, but demanded my explanations be applicable to the world around me, forcing critical thinking of not only the validity, but the full understanding of the research being done. just as a side note, He also taught me to accept my failures and hold necessary responsibility for both my short comings and success. Ms. Capizanno and Ms. Sapanaro's Italian courses with forever resonant with me, as well; the courses sparked not my interest in culture, but in challenging myself to learn a new language. Their constant support and challenge allowed me to gain a new insight and love for not only the Italian language, but the history, culture, and people.

Also, although I did not always enjoy the consistent religion courses, the aspect of social justice that was a constant theme is why I am so vocal today. Trinity made it a mission to educate us on actual problems going on in the world and the gruesome reality that many face. I remember learning about deportation in the library and be absolutely horrified by our uncaring government.

I do, however, believe they have failed students in multiple areas, though.

In regards to multiple college prep courses, I often was able to get A's by either producing a melody of asinine linguistic garbage, or memorize the minute amount of information being tested on, 10 minutes before the period.Although not every course was like this, a majority were. I was not often required to engaged critically in college prep, as I was IB. However again, this is not to discredit the handful of college prep classes where I was intellectually challenged. I also found multiple classes to be teaching at the pace of the slowest child. For example, In algebra two, we often had to sit and wait for everyone to understand before we moved on to the next portion. Unfortunately, there were multiple students who were intellectually lacking, forcing copious amounts of time to be halted so the teacher could nurse her brain back to life.

Trinity also failed multiple students with their lack of mental health resources, as many students were suicidal, suffering from severe anxiety, and even targeted by administration. However, I have already touched on this topic.

Students were failed when they walked the halls with fear of the administration, were being coddled academically, and tossed into the cold when they sought help for mental health.

Thank you for your questions.

Love,

The Bitter High School Alumna