By Deborah Revere

Masks Degrade Your Identity
 
What part of your body most identifies yourself as you? The one true answer to this question should be obvious; it is your face.
 
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaims that “[a]ny law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
 
Does making a personal choice to cover one’s face degrade and damage one’s human personality? Not necessarily. In fact, making a personal choice to do so actually expresses and enriches one’s personality more.
 
But does forcing others by law to cover their faces damage and degrade their human personalities?  Certainly.
 
Think about your life since the pandemic occurred and the mask mandates were initiated; think about all the times you tried to smile at someone, but remembered with chagrin that they couldn’t see it.  What is a government achieving by enforcing such a dreadful law? Is it all really for safety, as most argue? Definitely not.
 
The real motive is control. It is for control over you and your relationships, and by proxy, your life. Thus, through wearing your mask, whether you’re healthy or sick, you are submitting to the government’s endless hunger for control over you. By wearing your mask, you are the pawn, and the government is king. 
 
Still not convinced of the tyranny? Think about this. The concept of “sick until proven healthy” sounds a lot like “guilty until proven innocent,” doesn’t it? Considering how similar the two phrases are, it’s surprising to see how only the latter is considered tyrannical while the former has been blindly accepted by the masses. By forcing others to comply with a mask mandate, you are submitting to legislation that has infringed upon your autonomy.
 
The Science
 
Some may argue that wearing a mask is essential to everyday life because the science says that it decreases the risk of otherwise healthy people transmitting COVID-19, and with that, the risk of people dying from or being permanently damaged by COVID-19. This is based on the theory that the virus can be transmitted if one is asymptomatic.
 
However, as we have all been taught in our science classes, science is a fluid, ever-changing field of study. Science does not have concrete borders or rules; even the theory of evolution still needed to be verified and tested repeatedly before being fully accepted as reality. And if one does their own research--particularly for newer issues such as masks and COVID-19--they will usually find that there are just as many doctors that say that one thing is true as opposed to another.
 
For example, this study conducted on ten million residents of Wuhan, China, suggests that transmission of COVID-19 from asymptomatic individuals does not occur.
 
There is also scientific evidence that suggests that masks could actually be harmful to people. For one, in 2008, Dr. Anthony Fauci published a study suggesting that the majority of the deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic were actually from bacterial pneumonia, not the flu virus itself.  Several parallels exist in both the 1918 and 2020 pandemics, as detailed here.
 
Interestingly, this response by a post-mortem examiner to a paper detailing the risks of wearing masks suggests that the same situation is apparent in the case of COVID-19, including the issue of bacterial growth on masks themselves.
 
The Future of Masks at Council Rock North
 
As of their meeting on May 20th and concurring with the gubernatorial decision to repeal the Pennsylvania mask mandate, the Council Rock School Board has resolved to make masks optional for the 2021-2022 school year. Members from the board such as Joseph Hidalgo and. Michael Thorwart are also leading a crusade to prevent discrimination between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals following this decision.
 
Regardless of your views on this issue, or mine, most people seem to agree that these are positive steps forward in the course of the pandemic. However, as you start going outside and enjoying your God-given mobility again, I strongly encourage you not to forget what happened in 2020. If I were to explain every instance of government overreach in the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d have to write a book.
 
First our overlords ordered us to wear no masks, then it was masks for the infected, then masks for everyone, then a face shield and a mask, then mask and pantyhose over your head, then two masks, then two masks and a mask frame.
 
First our overlords demanded that we wash our hands, then it turned to school closures, then it was statewide lockdowns and curfews.
 
First our overlords proclaimed it would be three weeks to flatten the curve, then three months, then a year and three months.
 
It’s time to stop this nationwide maskquerade.

By Anushka Rajmohan

In just a few short days, the life that I have known for my entire conscious existence will end. Not just with my time at North, but my whole childhood spent in Newtown: the days walking around town, the afternoons at Starbucks and Rita’s, the countless evenings spent at Tyler State Park and the nights in small restaurants in town--all of it coming to an end as I walk with my peers at graduation on June 10th. 
 
As I am awaiting this day, naturally I feel the need to reminisce on my time in this community, especially on those who have nurtured the minds of numerous students. Although this time in my youth could never be replaced, it is inevitable that I will find similar replacements in my future: new restaurants for dinners, bigger parks to spend my afternoons, and a brand new town to wander during the days. Life is like this, mere stages in which I will have to live and from which I will move on when it is time. 
 
Even so, one aspect of each stage that cannot be replaced is the people, each of them a unique formation of nucleotides. Because of this, I believe I can rightfully attribute all my confidence, accomplishments, and growth to the people of the North community, which encompasses my peers, my teachers, and everyone I have had the pleasure of interacting with in these past four years. 
 
As the name implies, teachers are meant to teach, to help kids learn information that will push them towards a brighter future. If they are able to accomplish just this, making sure that their students learn what they need to, the teachers have accomplished their jobs. However, the teachers I have encountered did not do this; these teachers went beyond their fixed jobs. These teachers not only taught both my peers and me the curriculum, but they also taught us the importance of thinking. 
 
Instead of teaching us how to think and what to think about it, my teachers showed us the freedom to think about matters and opinions that we want to rather than just what society wants us to believe. Though I do not remember every grammar rule in existence or the exact dates of war, I do have the ability to analyze a given article and offer my opinion on an important historical event. Thanks to my North teachers, I am more than just a robot reciting the curriculum but a real human being who can express her own thoughts and opinions. 
 
This North community is also made up of my peers, some of whom I have only encountered once throughout my time at North and others who have become cherished friends that hopefully will be with me even after we walk across the field, decked out in our blue and white attires. 
 
Since high school occurs during a time when we start to discover for ourselves and our own developing morals what the meanings of “good” and “bad” in the world are, the people around us are incredibly impactful in these years. Such an empathetic, open-minded and diverse group of people is a leading cause of the way I am today; my interests, my hopes and dreams, my outlook on the world, and much more have been influenced, positively too I believe,  by my friends.
 
When I was first introduced to the horrors of the world and sadness and grief that life is made of, the people around me revealed the other side of this: the joy in simple moments, the warmth from hugs and the love that bonds so many people together. For this, I am grateful because without knowing the duality of life, could I have been stuck in a constant state of misery, looking at our world as just something to live on rather than thrive and blossom in? I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know that the colorful lens with which I look at life, filled with greens, yellows, pinks and blues, greys and blacks, is a privilege that I am thankful to have.  
 
Reflecting on these people and my experiences at North, I obviously have mixed feelings. Because of my time at North, I feel prepared for the great beyond. More than prepared, I feel as though I can handle the challenges thrown at me because of the way I have been nurtured and taught in this community. However, there is a bittersweetness in this: although I have been waiting for the time when I could expand my horizons in college, it is sad to have to leave this place of familiarity, comfort and warmth. 
 
In a scary world full of strife and confusion, North has been a nurturing home that I am sad to leave. As prom and the senior trip have all come to an end, the conclusion of our four years here seems much more real now, especially with graduation quickly approaching. Even so, I am certain that as my peers and I all venture off to different colleges and futures, Council Rock North will be the root from which we have branched off and will nourish us well into our futures.