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By Audrey Lutz

Ms. Switzer and her History of Nonviolence class made an outstanding art installation depicting a visual timeline of nonviolent movements in American history. The project is the culmination of many years of preparation, research, and development. 

After involving Ms. Story, an upper school art teacher, they decided to make a timeline following events through history. We were standing in front of the artwork when we spoke and she said,  “If I were to go back 20 years when I first started teaching about non-violence I would not have known half of what is up here.”

Each student made individual tiles that show non-violent activists and researched them to gain a better understanding of who they are and how they affected history. I was able to speak with Leah Cox about her involvement with this project. “I was a student in the class, so I helped with brainstorming and making the background,” she said. “If you look at the board, on the far right, there is a collage of non-violent organizations and above it there are doves. I made both of those.” 

Ms. Switzer said that the installation is a way “of visualizing all of the interconnected complexity of non-violence in American history.” Everything is connected one way or another, and this installment shows all of the historical branches. 

As we started the interview Ms. Switzer implied that “Non-violence isn’t just about creating peace and justice, it’s creating conditions where violence is less likely.” This art is meant to show that peace is possible and that people are willing to risk their lives to stand up and say, they want a better society. 

There are 14 different non-violent movements that are represented on the board, but the art piece starts with the Indigenous people in the United States. “What my students discovered is that from a very early point, Indigenous people in the United States had non-violent peacemaking kinds of cultural technologies, and a lot of the non-violence that evolved came from seeing the way the Indigenous people resolve conflict,” said Ms. Switzer. 

The Indigenous people are the true roots of America and the first people to teach non-violence. “Many people think that the Indigenous people were just bows and arrows, but they had such a complex life,” said Ms. Switzer. 

Next, we move on to the Quakers and Anabaptists. “The historic peace churches (the Quakers and Anabaptists) came to the United States to escape persecution.” The Quakers and Anabaptists lit the fire for the anti-slavery movement. “They believed that there is a god and somehow that god is present in all people, so then anytime you’re unjust or violent to another person, you’re being unjust and violent to god. So that sort of theological premise motivated them to confront slavery first.”

Everything is connected in history and this board is illustrating that. “So we have this early women’s movement that starts, and those same women became the leaders of the suffrage movement.” Ms. Switzer then shows me how the branches connect everything together. 

As we keep moving down the boards we are introduced to the pre-civil rights which of course leads us to the all mighty civil-rights movement. They tried to include as much as they could, but the board can only hold so much. The board includes the majority of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. 

Finally, we come to the final board with the Black Lives Matter movement “as the most recent manifestation,” with its focus on anti-racism. “We have anti-racism, kind of having these moments of surging and then receding and then surging over time, but always there.” 

People have always been fighting against racism in history. “A takeaway that one of my students realized is that since the 1600s, there have been people, white people standing against racism, all the way to the current time. And since 1730-1740 every year someone has been born in America who has fought against racism.”

At the end of the final board, there are many pieces of art. “We have this collage of doves and it sort of represents the future for hope and peace,” Ms. Switzer said. There is a collage of different activists, and then finally  a mirror “because we wanted people to get to the end of the installation and say, well what can I do to make a more peaceful future?” 

Under the mirror, it says “The Future of Nonviolence is You.”

This project was a semester-long idea, yet the idea mainly came to fruition right around thanksgiving. As Ms. Switzer usually has a much bigger class she doesn’t do big projects like this one. This year she only had 9 students in her History of Nonviolence class, so Ms. Switzer asked them if they wanted to do something more creative than they normally couldn’t do with a greater number of students. “We talked to Ms. Story and we started brainstorming options. My students wanted to work together so we developed this idea, which was much more complicated than we were expecting and I didn’t know if we were going to finish.”

They started making it right after fall break and only had until exams to finish. “Towards the end of the last 2 weeks of class, this project was all we did. The students came before school, after school, and during lunch. They spent so much time on this and it’s incredible.” Leah Cox, a student who worked on this project, said that “There were times when we would have to come during our free periods, and we would work together and collaborate throughout the whole process.”

As the artwork started to finish they brought in Ms. Story again to take a look. “Once Ms. Story saw the project coming together she said that we needed to get this in front of other audiences.” Then came talk of where this outstanding project could go. They are considering the  Hartfield Jackson airport, which has a section where they display student work; the Center for Civil and Human Rights; and even the history center of Atlanta. “Right now the chief of the marketing department – Janie Beck- is working on finding out if this could be a traveling exhibition.”

Ms. Switzer is so proud of this piece and it has only made her think of what she could do in the future. “I’ve been trying for years to know how to organize this incredibly complex history and the more I taught the more I realized that it’s not just the history of non-violence but the histories of non-violence, and I’ve always struggled to make sense of it all visually. And the fact that they were able to create a way of visualizing it is amazing, not only to me but to them and future students.”

This project was huge, not only for Lovett but for the future of Ms. Switzer’s class. This artwork alone holds so many important people, dates, and moments in history that are not talked about in the history books. 

The students had to work so incredibly hard to get this project completed and it brought them closer together. “I think that this bonded my class,” she said. “We would see one another so much during the day that our close proximity to each other almost forced us to get closer.”

This artwork will be displayed in the art gallery hall until the end of February. After that, no one is truly sure where it will end up but, hopefully, wherever it goes it will inspire people. “We’re trying to create a better world,” Leah said.

By Parvi Anand

The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has sparked debates in schools about their role in education. While some see them as valuable aids, others worry they undermine critical thinking and academic integrity.

Mrs. Jespersen, a history teacher and Honor Council advisor, is clear in her stance: “I think it hurts them for my class because I am working on developing thinking skills, and ChatGPT doesn’t help you develop those skills—it does the thinking for you.” 

She has noticed subtle changes in student work, describing AI-generated writing as “artificial, wordier, and filled with less knowledgeable filler words.” She believes that while AI has potential, educators need to better understand how to use it effectively.

The Honor Council has also seen an impact. “There was a lead time before the council started catching people because we weren’t sure what to look for,” Mrs. Jespersen explained. Now, cases involving ChatGPT are common. 

“It’s often a late-night moment of desperation,” she said, “students overtired with too much on their plate, thinking, ‘What’s the stupidest thing I could do? Let’s use ChatGPT.’” 

This shift has forced schools to clarify rules, drawing a line between tools like spell check, which helps refine work, and generative AI, which can replace student thought. While some teachers experiment with allowing ChatGPT in a controlled way, others remain cautious. “It’s like giving a little kid a cellphone—they can use it, but do they really understand what they’re doing?” she asked.

Mrs. Jespersen also emphasized the importance of originality and the student’s unique voice, warning against the risk of over-reliance on AI tools like ChatGPT. “It’s a dangerous thing—you have to talk about safe usage and how you can use this thing to help you but not replace you,” she explained. 

Comparing AI-generated text to different synthetic voices, she pointed out that while some may sound more natural than others, they still lack the authenticity of a human. “We want you to think and learn these skills so you are ready to go out and conquer the world,” she said, stressing that students should see ChatGPT as a tool for refinement rather than a substitute for their own ideas. 

To her, the key is fostering confidence in students’ evolving voices. “Their voice should always be changing because they’re growing and developing,” she said, “but they have to trust that it’s worthy of being heard.”

Though Mrs. Jespersen hasn’t personally used artificial intelligence in her teaching, she acknowledges its growing presence in education and the need to understand it better. “I have not used it—at least, not that I know of,” she said. 

Her primary interaction with AI has actually been the opposite: using tools like GPTZero to detect machine-generated content. She knows she needs to learn more about it. “But the same people who talk about it always get that wide-eyed expression and plastic smile, saying, ‘ChatGPT is the future’—and they’re the kind of people who try to sell you swampland in Florida,” she said.

To explore a different perspective, she pointed to Dr. Douglas, who actively encourages the use of AI in his classroom, offering a contrast to her stance.

“I think it depends on how it is used,” Dr. Douglas said. “I have encouraged students to use AI on problem sets for economics, which creates a bit of a problem—ChatGPT isn’t that good at economics yet. But in general, it’s a great way for students to have something explain an answer to them when I’m not there. [But] if they just input the problem set and get the answers, that distracts from their learning.”

While he sees AI as a helpful tool, he values honesty and fairness in academics. “I prevent misuse by making it very clear in my assignments that AI isn’t allowed and that anything they turn in has to be in their own words,” he explained. “If a student violates this, I have to send it to the honor council. But are the rules enough to stop it? Not always. Many teachers can detect AI writing well, but that’s not true universally. Some teachers will handle it individually, some report it, and some might not even notice. Given that reality, I’d say no, the rules aren’t enough.”

Dr. Douglas has noticed shifts in student behavior since AI became widely available. “There’s a reliance on it among many students—but not all. The bigger change is in how I assign things and check work,” he said. “Now, there’s a much greater emphasis on doing work in class instead.”

However, he also embraces AI for interactive learning. “We’re actually using AI today and Friday in AP gov,” he said. “Students are using AI-generated images and different platforms to make a children’s picture book, but they can’t plagiarize from any other sources—the text has to be their own. This gives them a chance to experiment and see what’s possible.”

Beyond student work, Dr. Douglas also integrates AI into his own lesson planning. “I use ChatGPT all the time when I’m planning activities,” he said. “If I need a lesson plan on something and want ideas to make it interactive, or if I have an idea and need to flesh it out—like a game where students compete to pass a bill—ChatGPT will create everything for me. Essentially, whenever I need grunt work done, things that don’t require deep thinking, I absolutely have AI handle that.”

Students, of course, have their own perspectives on  ChatGPT. Many find it helpful for subjects like physics and math. “It helps me figure out how to do the math and gives me the thought process,” said Shelby Morris, a junior. Others emphasize the difference between using AI for understanding versus relying on it for answers. “If you’re using it to understand, then it’s fine, but not if you’re just copying answers,” explained Lauren Smith, another junior.

Some students also recognize when peers rely too much on AI. “You can tell when it doesn’t sound like the person who wrote it,” said Sloan Balsey, a junior. Another student puts it simply: “If it looks like the four paragraphs in an Instagram caption, then you know.”

There is also concern about consequences. “I don’t even use it for a project because I’m worried about getting in trouble,” Sloan admitted. Others believe the school should trust students to use AI fairly, while acknowledging its misuse in essays and research papers. “People who write entire papers with it are stupid,” said junior, Megan Frisch.

Ultimately, AI is here to stay, and how schools adapt will determine whether it enhances or undermines learning. Mrs. Jespersen believes responsible AI use should be explicitly taught, just as students were once guided in using graphing calculators. “We need the same deliberate process. I’m looking forward to reading that manual.”

By Eliza Pieschel

“So, how long has this problem been going on?” I asked sophomore Heran Tesfaye.

“I wouldn’t call it a problem…” she responded.

“Well, how long has this…not…problem been going on?”

“Two years. Since the beginning of Freshman Year,” sophomore Heran Tesfaye told me. “When I first got access to the cafe is when it started to become…what it is today,” she elaborated.

I had sat down with Heran after noticing that something was off about her one day in AP World, one of the classes we have together. At first, I figured she was probably just a little under the weather from whatever had been going around, but when I asked her about it, there was a much more unexpected reason for her unusual shift in personality.

It was a well-acknowledged joke with Heran and her friends that she consumed an unusual amount of Red Powerade. More often than not, she would have one with her throughout the school day. But all of a sudden, the Powerade was gone.

“My doctor banned me from Powerade…,” Heran told me. At first, I was very surprised, bewildered, if you will. I asked her to elaborate on how her doctors decided that she needed to be cut off from Powerade. 

That’s when she began her sad story. 

Heran explained to me how she felt before going to the doctor. One day, my stomach started hurting. Not super bad, but my head hurt, too. Then it got worse, and it like hurt to eat, so we thought I must be sick. Anyway, we went to the doctor to figure out what the problem was,” she said. 

She mentioned to me that when she first got “sick,” she thought that she was supposed to drink more Powerade because usually when someone gets sick, they drink Gatorade or Powerade because of the electrolytes and other ingredients that are supposed to make them feel better.

“I drank it before track meets, before practice, in the morning to wake me up, to keep me up at night, like literally all the time,” Herman told me. I asked her how much Powerade, specifically red Powerade, she was consuming before getting banned. “Um, probably like 1-2 a day, so 10 ish a week…,” she said, laughing at the concerned look on my face. (Setting aside any health related concerns, that is 80 dollars a month on Powerade at the cafe. 2 a day x 5 days a week = 10. 10 bottles x 2 dollars a bottle = 20 a week. 20 x 4 = 80 dollars a month…)

“Maybe it is a problem,.” she admitted. 

“Maybe it is,” I said.

“I just know it has red-40, so now I can’t have anything with red-40, including spicy foods and stuff,” she said. 

So what exactly did the drink do to her stomach that made it so bad she had to be banned from drinking it completely? (Let this be a warning to everyone.) “The doctor said that the stomach acid started breaking down the walls of my stomach instead of food because I lost my appetite, so I was just drinking Powerade,” she said.

More questions arose.  

How long was she banned? How did she not get sick of the drink she was having that often? How did it mess up her stomach that badly? Would she ever stop drinking Powerade? What did the people around her (friends, family, etc) think? Should there be a superhero like Superman, but instead of kryptonite, it’s red-40, and it’s used as Whole Foods’s propaganda? All very important questions.

Some of these questions, neither of us knew the answers to. However, she told me that she was banned from Powerade until she got an X-ray done. With a Powerade in her hand, she said, “It hasn’t happened yet, but I gave up.” 

Surprised, I asked some follow-up questions. “So, are you eating spicy foods again?” She nodded sheepishly. “And obviously, you are back on Powerade. Are you having any less than you used to?” She laughed before responding, “Nope. My rates have gone back up to like 1-2 a day.” So I guess she just ignored the doctor!

Her friends have tried to step in. “They try to take the Poweradesshe said. “Like at lunch or if I walk away for some reason they take it and hide it.” My eyebrow rose, and I asked, “Does that work?” She responded with a quick “No”.

The moral of the story, according to Heran, is, “We’re gonna die anyway. I might as well enjoy the Powerade while I can.”

By Olivia Janis

To help reinforce our understanding of good journalism, Mr. Newman likes to share articles in class with us from sources like The New York Times. Recently, he shared a compelling story about schools using AI to monitor their students’ devices in order to intercept self-harm before it happens. 

The article features a story about a successful intervention with the help of AI. Neosho, Missouri student Madi Cholka texted her friend she was going to overdose on anxiety pills and was then intercepted by local enforcement.

According to the article Spying on Student Devices, Schools Aim to Intercept Self-Harm Before It Happens, many schools in America now have educational technologies such as GoGuardian, Gaggle, Lightspeed, Bark and Securely that offer tools that scan what students type and look for things like intention to self-harm. With the help of AI, keywords or phrases are flagged using algorithms or human review to determine which ones are a real threat. Then students can be called out of class and screened or even visited by local enforcement in their own homes. 

While a life was saved in Madi’s case, the system does require law enforcement to essentially spy on students and interfere with their lives outside of school. 

The article also illustrates the issues of false alarms and AI invading one’s privacy. For example, an entire health class was flagged because they were researching suicide, and a girl was visited by the local police in the middle of the night because language from a poem she wrote years ago was flagged by the system. 

After reading this article, our newspaper class wondered if Lovett has any tech system that flags “self-harm” words or phrases. 

I began my investigation at IT, where I spoke to Roberto Aguilar, Lovett’s senior support analyst. 

“The websites are based on our firewall system, which is Palo Alto, and they pretty much put certain websites under a category of games, malware, or different types like that,” he said after I asked about Lovett’s censorship. 

As we continued to talk he revealed that Lovett has no way of flagging certain searches regarding mental health. “What we search for is VPNs and things like that, but not specific text messages or anything or chats in Google,” he said. He is unsure if in the future these types of AI monitors will be implemented at Lovett. 

Greg Hamrick, Head of the IT department, explained that in the middle school they once used a product that was tied to Google that would search for references to self-harm and would flag the students. But there were issues with monitoring and figuring out which flags were accurate or simply just false alarms. For middle school, IT currently uses the software company Securely in order to see what students are doing on their laptops, but this software does not directly flag phrases or words that have to do with self-harm. 

Mr. Hamrick brought up a very important question: who would be monitoring the searches that got flagged? It is very essential that there are trusted adults who are able to differentiate the false alarms from the real alerts, and be able to follow up on that situation. 

So, how do students feel about the prospect of being monitored? “If a student were to search up something that’s really dangerous, I feel like it would make sense for them to try and do something that could help that student. But also a lot of students may feel like it’s a breach of privacy as well, so it’s really hard to say,” said sophomore Madison Robinson.

Senior Ryan Cain had a different perspective on the topic. He felt as though if students consented to the system it would not be a breach of privacy, but also that IT would not be able to correctly identify when someone was in need of real help or a false alarm. “I feel like they’d want to be safe and then they’d investigate every false alarm. It’d be a false alarm 95% of the time,” he said. He also was concerned with the program veering away from the original purpose–mental health– and it working towards overall surveillance of students’ laptops. 

Senior Davida Ohayon explained that because her mother works at Lovett, having her mental health information shared with the school would not be something she preferred. But in general, she does believe that the program could provide a sense of safety for Lovett students.  

The overall student consensus was that there were some concerns about potential false alarms and overstepping on students’ private information, but most students did think the idea of trying to keep an eye on students struggling was actually beneficial for the student body.  

I wondered what Dr. Wall, who knows a lot about student struggles given her role as Director of Counseling, would think about monitoring., so I made my way down to Dr. Wall’s office for a quick chat. 

When I explained the new AI system in the Times article, Dr. Wall’s initial reaction was concern for students’ privacy and confidentiality. 

But she could see the potential for good as well. “The more information we have about a student’s psychological space, the more information we have about where students are, the better we’re able to help them,” she said. “Now, the advantage that Lovett has is that there’s so many eyes on students. You’ve got your faculty, you’ve got the support staff, you’ve got the counselors, you have fellow students. So I think we do a pretty good job of identifying students who are hurting and are in pain.” 

Dr. Wall believes that technology can have a positive impact, and while she does not know a lot about AI programs she wouldn’t be opposed to looking into it. But she still believes that “we really need to rely on each other.”

By Megha Lakha and Maxine Smith

Last week, during one of the upper school’s most impactful community times to date, Angela O’Kelley, Armando Roche, and Mary Margaret Neil shared their stories about the dangers of drug experimentation in the fentanyl era. Many students were deeply moved by the information and perspectives that the trio had to offer, so The OnLion decided to send out a survey after the assembly.

Out of the 85 students who responded to the survey, 53 students said it resonated very deeply with them. Many students noted that when Ms. O’Kelley held up her son’s ashes, it put the impact of fentanyl into perspective.  Students also said how Mr. Roche’s presentation showed how unpredictable the incorporation of fentanyl in any drug could be; many noted how it was shocking that it only takes an amount the size of a grain of rice to be fatal.

After learning some key facts and statistics about the Fentanyl crisis, upper school students heard an emotional story from Ms. O’Kelley about the death of her son, Jack.. She told us that he was a straight-A student, a freshman at the University of Georgia, loved by many, and full of life. She then held up his ashes and said, “This is all I have left of him.” The room went quiet.

We spoke to Ms. O’Kelley two days after the assembly on the phone. We wondered how difficult it was for her to give this talk so often. 

As painful as it clearly was for her, she told us that speaking to young people “[is] something that I know I need to do. And I really feel like Jack is pushing me to do this.  He is not here, but I very much feel him kind of guiding this and saying, we’ve got to get out here and save lives and educate these kids and stop kids from doing this just to prevent just the tragedy and the heartache.”

Ms. O’Kelley explained during the assembly how her son took a Xanax, that was unknowingly laced with fentanyl and that he purchased from an unauthorized seller, The next morning, on Thanksgiving (his favorite holiday), the family found him unresponsive. Many students said on the survey how they realized it could be any of their family members after Ms. O’Kelley talked about Jack’s siblings’ heartache.

To prevent other families from experiencing a tragedy such as this, the O’Kelleys started the Jack O’Kelley Foundation last year. Ms. O’Kelley told us that “[she] had been talking and sharing Jack’s story with schools.” Some of their friends suggested that they “start a foundation to raise money to take this message nationally and travel to different colleges and schools.”

The O’Kelley Foundation’s “mission statement is to educate really students, high school, and college students about the dangers of fentanyl and raise awareness of drugs and what they can potentially do to families and to kids,” according to Ms. O’Kelley.

Ms. O’Kelly has spoken to over 10,000 people this year alone and hopes she is making a strong impact. The data from our students shows that she truly made one here on the riverbank. 

Aside from speaking at local high schools and churches, Ms. O’Kelley also has spoken to students at the University of Georgia and Auburn University. She also “just got a call the other day from a lady who has a foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona called Mothers Grace, and they help families and mothers who’ve lost children.” She said that the lady called and asked her “to come out and talk to about 400 moms, and they said we’ll fly you out here. So I’m going to go do that in April.”

In traveling the country and talking to so many diverse groups, Ms. O’Kelley has created connections with students. One in particular is a student at Auburn. “After our talk in Auburn, one of the students came up to us, actually to my husband, and said that he had a drug problem and that he needed help,” Ms. O’Kelley said. Her husband, Jack’s dad, looked into getting him help. The student is now doing much better.

For Ms. O’Kelley to share such a tragic story is very challenging, and every time she speaks about it to people, she is forced to relive what she experienced when Jack died. But she has found talking about it actually helps her. “It kind of forces me to deal with that grief. And I have to feel it to heal it. And so it’s part of that grieving process,” she said.  adding, “It’s really easy to get caught up day-to-day, staying busy and not really grieving. But for me, really going there and getting emotional and feeling those feelings and letting them flow through and release it creates more space to bring joy into my life as well.”

Ms. O’Kelley has “gotten calls from several moms that have experienced this and lost their children, and they can’t function. They just can’t even get out of bed.” She said while she understands that everyone is wired differently, her way of battling the grief is “turning [her] pain into purpose.”

The information presented by the O’Kelley Foundation has evolved over time. She said she has spoken alongside other DEA agents like Mr. Roche. She said she always started by giving some facts about the Fentanyl crisis and then going on to share Jack’s story.

“You can sit there and listen to facts and watch videos all day, but if you don’t have kind of story that you can relate to, I mean, I think everybody can relate to having a brother or sister or a close friend, and especially here in Atlanta since Jack’s from Atlanta,” she said. 

She also told us that they have added Mary Margaret Neil, who is on the board of the foundation. “I actually met her, I didn’t know her. She came to me after Jack died before I even started speaking and said, I just want you to know you’ve already saved a life.” 

Ms. Neil said her son came to her after Jack died and said that he needed help and that he didn’t want to possibly die from taking drugs. Ms. O’Kelley was in awe and said, “That’s really unbelievable that Jack has already saved a life.”

This new connection between Ms. Neil and Ms. O’Kelley led to Mary Margaret Neil joining their talks at the end. “It just kind of rounds it out and addresses the mental health component to this and sharing her story about her son,” Ms. O’Kelley said. “Kids are under so much pressure and anxiety these days, so her story helped us make a greater impact.”

Jack’s story took off after a friend of Ms. O’Kelley’s, who is in the Sandy Springs City Council, asked her to share his story. I wasn’t really thinking about it. It was so soon after Jack died that when something this traumatic and major happens in your life for a few months, you’re just kind, it’s so surreal,” she said. “I mean, it’s still so surreal now.”

But once she shared her story, she had moms coming up to her afterward and saying, “Gosh, could you share that story at my son’s school? Or would you be open to coming and speaking to these moms about Jack’s story? And that’s how that took off.” .” 

During the assembly, Ms. O’Kelley and Ms. Neil talked a lot about Narcan and the importance of having it around and kept at your house. There was no Narcan at the house where Jack died, nor did the family know about it. 

While the majority of Lovett’s students who took the survey said they are likely to have Narcan “readily available,” about a quarter said they were unlikely to. Ms. O’Kelly hopes to spread awareness of Narcan and its importance to see that more people are aware of the dangers of Fentanyl and the importance of keeping Narcan on hand. 

Ms. O’Kelly said that she wants to see conversations on this topic continue. She wants young people to look out for each other, “especially when you go off to college as you’re going to be exposed to all kinds of things and drugs and having that knowledge and information and getting Narcan.”

Ultimately, the message keeps coming back to the fact that “Jack could have been any of the kids at school. He lived right around the corner, football player, straight A’s, and all that good stuff.” She said that sharing his story “brings it home more.” 

We wondered how close to home this topic was for some students here. In our survey, we asked students whether they have someone in their lives they’re worried might make or is already making potentially harmful decisions. Thirty percent said they did.

We spoke to Ms. Stadler, the upper school counselor who introduced the speakers, and she wants the student body to know that “the whole reason we had the assembly is to empower students to not only help themselves but help each other.” Furthermore, “If you’re worried for whatever reason about yourself or a friend of yours, be brave like Angela or Mike- they are warrior parents.” 

Mr. Boswell has a similar message: “If you or someone you know is making potentially dangerous choices, please talk to a school counselor or other trusted adult about how to help.”

According to Ms. O’Kelley, the point of the O’Kelley Foundation is to educate. They hope “to educate through the facts that the DEA agent gives and share and Jack’s story to have something relatable.” We want to remind students “that it really could have been your brother or sister, your best friend, your neighbor.”

Kids need to know that today there is no more experimenting or doing something one time just for fun. Ms. O’Kelley told us, “You’re just playing roulette. You just can’t know now.”

The foundation has received lots of positive feedback from students, parents, and teachers. Ms. O’Kelley reflected and said, “This isn’t about me; this is bigger than me. This feels like a God thing getting out there to try to save lives.”

By Maiya Tomlin

This past spring break, Lovett students embarked on a trip to Italy that occurs every two years. They visited numerous cities and managed to eat gelato in each one.

Mr. Crowley was the primary chaperone on the trip, along with Ms. Mellican. Mr. Crowley did most of the itinerary planning. “She helped me run it, but I pre-made it all,” he said. 

Mr. Crowley told me that he used the itinerary from previous years, but made some changes. “I cut Sorento and added Pieto,” he told me. Additionally, he “added hiking in Mount Vesuvius.”

Many of the spots weren’t your typical ones. “I hadn’t heard of some of them,” Evvie Bresnahan (10) told me. The notable ones were Florence, Siena, Tuscany, Rome, and Pompei. The one I had never heard of looking through the itinerary was Solerno, but maybe geography just isn’t my strong suit.

I sat down with Quade Edwards (10) and Evvie and asked them a few questions about their experiences. Neither of them had ever been on a Lovett trip before, and neither of them had ever been to Italy before. My immediate question: “What motivated you to go?”

“I mainly went just because it sounded fun, to be honest,” she admitted. She also signed up for the trip without any close friends, which was very brave in my opinion. “I was pretty close with Quade already, but I didn’t go with any best friends,” she told me.

Evvie told me that there were only two other girls on the trip, Zoe Shields (10), and Sophia Hidalgo (9). “Since we were the only three girls, we shared every hotel room, so we got closer,” she said. 

They took two flights, the first to Paris (where we did not cross paths (I was there with my mom)) and then the second to Florence. “We spent time a lot of time in Florence, but went to Sienna as like a day trip,” Evvie told me. When I spoke to Devin Austin (10) he told me that Florence was his favorite city out of them all. 

While spending time in Florence, the group visited Piazza del Duomo and were able to climb Brunelleschi’s Dome and Giotto’s Bell Tower as well as visit the Baptistery, Museum, and Santa Reparata. 

“They got really good gelato in Florence but I couldn’t eat it cause it had nuts in it,” Evvie told me. “I’m at the bottom of the food chain,” she joked.

Quade recalled some of the souvenirs he bought in Florence. “I got a leather wallet and a funny leather hat,” he told me. I asked him what type of hat it was, and he told me, “It looks like one of those French ones, a beret.” Evvie quickly responded “No, no, like a Peaky Blinders hat,” which painted a better picture. 

Evvie also told me she got a scarf, a leather purse, and other “silly souvenirs.”

As a group, they powered through the entire first day in an attempt to avoid jet lag and sleep well the first and second night, which they told me was successful. 

After a few days in Florence, they visited a farm, which, according to the itinerary, produces “buffalo-milk mozzarella, ricotta & yogurt.” But in the words of Evvie and Quade, the farm “fed us a lot of weird food.” 

Quade told me that they ate cow intestines, tongues, and tails. “I tried the intestines before everyone else and told everyone that it was calamari, at least that’s what it tasted like to me, and it looked like pasta,” he said. Everyone, including Evvie, fell for Quade’s trick. “The tongue looked like tongue, though,” Evvie said. “And it was disgusting,” she added. 

When I talked to Devin, he told me that he expected to eat “a lot of good pizza and pasta.” I imagine he was slightly alarmed when cow tongue was put in front of him. “We did have some amazing pizza though, Margherita,” Evvie told me and Quade agreed.

After a bit of time exploring the farm and the surrounding area, the group went on a hike on Vesuvius, one of Italy’s volcanos. They also met with a local guide to explore the ruins of Pompeii. “My favorite memory was seeing Pompeii,” Devin told me. Evvie somewhat agreed, but did not hesitate to mention the 25,000 steps she achieved that day. 

They finished out the last few days in Rome, exploring places like the Pantheon, the Vatican, and the Colosseum. Evvie and Quade are both Latin students and have been learning the language since 7th grade. Coincidentally, Mr. Crowley is their current Latin teacher. “Technically, Latin is spoken in the Vatican,” Evvie told me. “All the walls too had Latin on them, so it was cool that I could kinda understand it.”

She also added, “There was a lot of ‘via’ everywhere, which just means road, so I understood that.”

Mr. Crowley told me that he has been to Italy many times and he can sort of understand Italian. He told me that he couldn’t speak it, but explained that “when you get to modern language, the basic vocabulary is, well it all just goes back to Latin, and the grammar is easier.”

He also clarified, “I can’t speak it if somebody’s speaking full speed, but if I can pick up a newspaper and be like, eh, something about this, something about that.”

I asked every student I spoke to if they would ever go to Italy again. All of them had the same answer as Zoe, “yes, 100%.” Evvie even told me that if she had the opportunity to study abroad in Italy in college, she’d take it. 

As I previously mentioned, the Italy trip occurs every 2 years. I asked Mr. Crowley what cities he plans on adding/taking away for 2027, to which he responded, “That’s a future me problem.” Although in seriousness, he told me that he will always keep Florence in there, which was the fan favorite, as well as Rome and maybe add Sorento back into the mix.

If you’re interested in going to Italy in 2027, pray he’ll consider removing cow tongue and intestines from the itinerary.