Please note: This page is not reporting facts, but rather opinion pieces from our contributors.
At its core, The Catalyst Project believes in lifting students' voices regardless of what they might be. This page is a reflection of our contributors personal beliefs that do not represent The Catalyst Project as an organization. This is intended to be a space of respectful civil discourse.
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Read student perspectives:
By Selina Li
Founding father Samuel Adams once stated, “Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.” Because I agree with Adams, and because non-theistic systems are often predicated on theistic moral values, I believe moral systems rooted in theism are preferable to non-theistic moral systems.
Read MoreBy Selina Li
Renowned atheist and neuroscientist Sam Harris once stated, “The person who is truly ethical is the one who does what is good for goodness’ sake, not because they are constrained to do it by belief in a god or fear of punishment.”
Read MoreBy Sarah Taimoory
These past few weeks, theaters have been packed with students eager to see Scream 7, the newest installment in the long‑running slasher franchise. Released on Feb. 27, 2026, the film brings back the iconic Ghostface we have known since the beginning, but with a distinctly modern twist aimed at Gen Z audiences.
Read MoreBy Elizabeth Chen
As letters have been replaced by emails, newspapers by online newsletters, and test booklets by Bluebook, somewhere along the last 200 years, teaching cursive has been replaced by typing skills.
Read MoreBy: Kate Bevins
The world has dived headfirst into the sparkling age of technology, and there is one technological advancement that has drastically changed the dynamic between children and parents: the development of location monitoring apps, the most popular of course being life 360.
Read MoreBy Riya Dasgupta
In a world obsessed with productivity hacks, side hustles, and waking up at 5 AM to "seize the day," I would like to make a case for the underrated art of doing absolutely nothing. Yes, nothing — the sweet, guilt-free, blissful state of idleness. It seems we have collectively decided that being busy is a personality trait. We wear our packed schedules like badges of honor, swapping tales of our all-nighters and AP loaded courses as if they are heroic feats. But what if the real power move is, well, just stopping?
Read MoreWhen and why did Americans start the conversation of abortion as a public issue? It wasn’t always this way. According to the Organization of American Historians (OAH), up until 1840, a time when transportation was on foot or horses and 80+ percent of Americans were practicing Christians, American women were charged only with a misdemeanor for an abortion in the “post-quickening stage” (between four to six months, when the mother could feel the fetus moving.) The OAH says this misdemeanor was to protect the health of the woman, which was threatened by a late-stage abortion. In addition, only the women themselves could testify to fetal movement, a telling attribute of the privacy and respect a female and her family had at this time regarding pregnancy. According to the OAH’s recent article “Abolishing Abortion”: “Before 1840, abortion was a widespread, largely stigma-free experience for American women.” I do not understand how American women over 180 years ago had more reproductive choice than they do today. How did we go backward in kindness and privacy as we went forward in time and science?
Read MoreMy AP Language & Composition class just finished reading Beloved, by Toni Morrison. As a follow up, we watched her 2019 documentary, The Pieces I Am. While watching the film, it stuck out to me the most when Toni Morrison said (rough quote): “Parents have the right to decide what their children are allowed to read. But they do not have the right to decide what my children are and are not allowed to read.” This resonated with me, and I’m sure it did with everyone else in the room, because of how relevant the concept of “book-banning” has become today. Freshman year when we read Fahrenheit 451, that concept seemed possible only in an obviously dystopian world. But today, schools around us are banning books left and right, and sometimes it really does feel as though we are living in a dystopia described by Ray Bradbury.
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