Madeline Van wagenen

  Living in the United States feels like reliving the same headline over and over again. Every new day comes with a breaking news story of another gun violence tragedy. The 2023 Utah Legislative Session has several bills regarding firearms regulations, including H.B. 89 and H.B. 219. H.B. 89, sponsored by Rep. Andrew Stoddard, creates...

In June 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned the original verdict of Roe v. Wade, citing that the U.S. Constitution makes no references to abortion, therefore making Roe’s original argument flawed. As a result, 13 states enacted their abortion trigger laws, including the state of Utah, whose law S.B. 174 is currently held...

I grew up in Utah’s Dual Language Immersion Program, a language-learning program for elementary school students. In this program, I spent half of each day learning in English and the other half in my program language: Spanish. Within this program, I was one of the few white students. While I was taught Spanish as...