Pronouns: she/her Grade: 12 Years on staff: 4 Who is your favorite musician? Taylor Swift. What gets you up in the morning? Knowing that something I do today has the potential to not only shape my future, but also make an impact on the world around us. What’s an unpopular opinion that you have? Stanleys aren’t all that.

Pronouns: she/her Grade: 12 Years on staff: 4 What is your favorite piece of literature?“Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” is such a classic piece of literature that can still resonate with many people in the U.S. today. Cassie, the book’s protagonist was and is still refreshing to me: she’s a child, so the way that racism and discrimination impact her made it easy for me, also a child at the time, to understand some of the bigotry and prejudice that many of my ancestors faced, especially living in the South. Cassie’s a little spitfire, sure, but she’s also just a child, and at the end of the day, she embodies what America’s intrinsic racism can do to childish innocence like hers. Who is your hero? My hero is Ida B. Wells. She was an excellent journalist and was always dedicated to finding the truth, no matter the obstacles — and as a Black woman reporting in the South, she had a lot of obstacles. Although my journalistic career isn’t as nearly as dangerous as hers was, her work has paved the way for numerous other Black writers and journalists in the field, and it reminds me to always keep digging, even when the subjects are obscure or controversial in today’s overall political climate. If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? I’m not going to lie, I could probably shovel down buckets of those Welch’s fruit snacks.