Social Justice Week 2025 hit off from the week of March 10th through the 14th.
The theme this year was Criminal Justice System, where students could pick a prompt for their presentations.
One junior, Olive Brown, picked an interesting topic relating to her Junior Paper, How Mandatory Minimums Exacerbate Racial Disparities. Her topic focused on the federal mandatory minimum sentencing which requires minimum sentencing depending on the type of crime.
“Usually it’s low-level non-violent drug mules that are put in jail for a really long time,” Brown said.
While researching her topic, Brown found out that mandatory minimum sentencing was originally created to reduce crime rates. This is because people have to serve their time no matter their circumstances.
But what happens because of this, is overcrowding and “cuts funding for other government programs that do well,” Brown said.
This means that conditions become worse because of more people becoming incarcerated and having to serve time for low-level non-violent drug crimes.
On top of students getting to explore their way through understanding the Criminal Justice System, Jesuit’s Social Justice Week presentations are flexible with the way students want to present their topic.
Brown said that her presentation was successful and was even able to work around what she liked and didn’t like about presenting.
“I don’t really like talking for a really long period of time, so my main lesson was just through Kahoot,” Brown said.
Brown was able to make the presentation a Kahoot, letting students engage while also letting Brown give context throughout the game.
As we move into the end of the year Ms. Montez from DEI is already thinking about next year’s Social Justice Week themes.
Brown also touched on hoping to continue to see excellent student participation, having almost 50 students make presentations.
“Student participation is always excellent, so I’m really excited to share my ideas for next year’s topic with more engaged people,” Brown said.
