March 8th marks the global celebration of women and female accomplishments. To honor this day OHS staff, lead by Ms. Narsipur, collaborated to hold a celebration in the library on March 31st.

 The Women’s day presentations began with a movie called In the Time of Butterflies, an inspiring true story based on the lives of the Mirabal sisters, who fought for independence in Dominican Republic under the Trujillo dictatorship, starring Salma Hayek and Marc Anthony.

 After the movie, classes were invited to partake in an open question discussion on violence against women, which was lead by Karina Priego, Darwin Arias, and Diana Kennedy. The discussion touched on sensitive topics like rape and domestic violence experienced in high school relationships. Unfortunately the audience proved to be very disinterested and only a few outspoken teens decided to contribute. Though not a complete dud, the discussion on feminist issues hopefully opened the eyes of many OHS students to the importance of International Women’s day and feminist issues.

  The discussion was followed by a book talk from Louis Gonzalez and Srinidhi Polkampolly. The books that were focused on in the book talk featured strong female leads and had  wide spread popularity among teen readers. Some of the books mentioned were The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and MockingJay.

  The Women’s Day presentations were concluded by a very well articulated poem written and presented by Mrs. Jacobson, one of our beloved library monitors.

  Being the first celebration of International Women’s day at OHS it was not a surprise that not much of the student body was unenthused, however, hopefully future audiences will show greater appreciation for the efforts put in by the female library staff to showcase the significance of feminism. Ms. Narsipur hopes to make this an annual event.