Vol. CXXXII · July 10, 2026
“Can we move the test?” As AP exams have continued to empty classrooms this past week, this question has grown increasingly common. Two members of the Senior Editorial Board saw their multivariable calculus assessments pushed back nearly two weeks because so many classmates were taking AP exams rather than sitting in class. Nonetheless, some students had forgotten about—or never even knew of—these exams.
On Tuesday, May 26, The Guardian ran the unanticipated headline, "Dog shoots woman with shotgun at Nebraska convenience store." We would likely not, however, encounter the headline "Man shoots dog." In many journalism classes, students will encounter a similar comparison: while "Dog bites man" rarely makes headlines, the extraordinary and unexpected "Man bites dog" will.
This Monday, former Head Monitors Pati Pogorzelska ‘26 and Nehemiah Sanon ‘26 announced the new Self-Governing Association (SGA). During the election process that began around three weeks ago, Day Monitor elections and Class I Representative elections each saw only one male candidate, while the Boarding Monitor election saw two. In contrast, two female candidates ran for Class I Representative, four for Day Monitor, and five for Boarding Monitor.
On March 30, The Milton Paper launched their “Wall of Rejection,” an annual tradition which aims to demonstrate our solidarity in the face of the obscure college process. One reason people attend a school like Milton is its elite college matriculations. Yet, every year, dozens of seniors are inevitably disappointed with their results. However, as of the writing of this editorial on Monday, April 13, only nine seniors had put their acceptances on the TMP’s Wall, and all except for three of them are planning to attend or have been accepted to one of the top fifteen colleges in the nation, as ranked by US News and World Report. We, the Senior Editorial Board, also acknowledge that our own participation, or perhaps lack thereof, mirrors the senior class. Out of ten seniors on this board, only two have added their rejections, five have chosen not to participate and the rest have none. Why, then, has this tradition seen such limited participation this year and become tied instead to so-called college success?
During Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime performance, Bad Bunny yelled “God Bless America” like a battle cry. But he wasn’t just talking about the United States of America; he was talking about all of America. Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico were some of the many lands mentioned in his blessing of most countries in America. Through music, the Puerto Rican artist stressed a central message: love born from unity. “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” Bad Bunny displayed on the stadium jumbotron. Implicitly, however, he demonstrated the potential of musical performances to combat social tensions and spread love.
On December 15, Milton’s last Upper School Meeting of 2025, community members mourned the killing of two students at Brown University just two days before, as well as the 15 killed in the attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. All announcements were subsequently cancelled, and the crowd left mostly in silence.
At the end of each year, we are confronted with the slippery idea of “holiday spirit.” In a temporal sense, the term refers to the culture of prioritizing gratitude, familial love, and introspection in November and December. Fall and Winter Break emphasize this expectation: the countdown to January 1 and its amalgamation of bitter and sweet, finality and hopefulness, is to be spent celebrating how the year has shaped you.
At Milton, “A is for average” is more than just a joke. In the 2022-23 School Profile (an academic overview sent to colleges which used to include junior students’ grade distribution in each course), 133 students in a class of 196 received a grade in the A-range for Junior English. For those enrolled in courses such as Cal Stats (Advanced Calculus & Mathematical Statistics), Spanish 5 (Honors), Multivariable Calculus, and Advanced Latin, no one received a grade below an A-range. Perhaps only the Science Department showed slightly more distribution, spanning from A+ to C. Nonetheless, even a B+, now considered “proficient,” was a rarity in this group of juniors.
“Would you rather have your phone fall out of your pocket at USP during a moment of silence or scream ‘six, seven’ in the Stu during lunch?”
On Monday morning this week, a glossy-paged, 5-by-3-inch copy of the US Constitution was handed out to all Upper School students in an effort to spark dialogue about protecting constitutional rights. On the third page, the First Amendment is introduced in big, Georgia-fonted letters: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
At 5 a.m, last Friday, our senior editorial board, along with about 120 members of Class I, rolled out of bed to attend the annual Senior Sunrise on Observatory Hill. There, we watched the sky lighten and contemplated our pasts and futures at Milton. Aside from the aureate sunrise and our ambivalent sentiments, we awed at the unexpectedly “high” attendance from the senior class. According to our class deans, historically, only a reported 30-40 seniors make the trek to campus in the early morning. The lack of engagement represents a larger problem on campus: Milton’s lack of school spirit and reluctance to participate in social events.
At 5 a.m, last Friday, our senior editorial board, along with about 120 members of Class I, rolled out of bed to attend the annual Senior Sunrise on Observatory Hill. There, we watched the sky lighten and contemplated our pasts and futures at Milton. Aside from the aureate sunrise and our ambivalent sentiments, we awed at the unexpectedly “high” attendance from the senior class. According to our class deans, historically, only a reported 30-40 seniors make the trek to campus in the early morning. The lack of engagement represents a larger problem on campus: Milton’s lack of school spirit and reluctance to participate in social events.