Dressed modestly in black, Sister Phillip Mary arranges her 68 students into two separate lines as they enter class for their first day of second grade at St. Margaret's Grade School in Bel-Air, Maryland. Once they are settled, the nun leads her students in prayer as their little voices chime together, heads bowed and palms crossed.
The Discovery Communications building's warmly lit main lobby smells of plastic, Windex and fresh paint. A cheerfully dinging mechanical contraption pushes and shakes rainbow-colored balls down a series of tracks. Outside, as a family passes by on the sidewalk, its wide-eyed toddler glances back five times at "Stan,” a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil replica that glares malevolently through the glass wall.
Combs in hand, two black girls work diligently and delicately to finish cornrowing their friends' hair amidst the bustle of 5A lunch. Next to them, three Latino boys are sprawled out among the benches talking, and a few feet away, two white students finish their lunches before the whole group rises and joins the student body of the most diverse school in Montgomery County—a school that 50 years ago accepted only white students.
With students across America spending hundreds of dollars on admissions and preparation classes for SAT tests and writing favorable college essays, it is comforting to know that colleges are spending even more than the students are in selling themselves.
"Do we have to go?” one of my classmates asked a few weeks ago. I begrudgingly got my books together and left class to attend yet another mandatory assembly dreamed up by Blair's administration, an event otherwise known as a pep rally.
The Safety Committee has begun patrolling hallways and stairwells during lunch, keeping out students without passes. Blair's administration is also more aggressively enforcing school policy in the hallways and might restrict students to the SAC during lunch.
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