On April 13 the political website “The Outlook” launched. Created by junior Olivia Levine, and Latin School of Chicago sophomore Anna Wolf, the website’s homepage opened up with a slogan–“A Political Blog Fueled by Teens”–and articles like “What’s up With President Trump and Golfing?” and “The Case for Voluntary Taxation.” Levine and Wolf created the website to help achieve one goal, according to Levine–to stop political intolerance.

Upper School History teacher Andrew Bigelow, who also teaches a course on the elections, defines political intolerance as the inability to listen and hear other people’s political perspectives. When Levine started to notice political intolerance towards the right, she decided it was important to her to educate students on all political perspectives so as to help her peers develop an understanding of a myriad of views.

“I hold a strong belief that intolerance comes from a lack of understanding,” Levine said.  “If people on each side of the political spectrum were able to understand each other’s beliefs more, there would not be such a negative stigma surrounding a person’s political beliefs.  It is important to understand where one is coming from before fighting off an opposing belief.”

When coming to the issue of political intolerance, Wolf and Levine–both members of the Junior Economic Club of Chicago, a student-led nonprofit that provides students with exposure to the executive world–created a project that would help them participate in a Shark Tank competition. While listing ideas, the two keep coming back to the idea of political intolerance, which they had seen first-hand at their schools.

“Too often, adolescents are ridiculed and put down for their views–something we experience first hand,” Wolf said. “As a result, these teens stop advocating their opinions because they fear how others will perceive them.  Ultimately, ‘The Outlook’ was created in order for teens’ voices to be heard in a safe environment.”

Contrary to the appearance of the web URL, “The Outlook” is a website, not a blog.   Unable to buy the domain for theoutlook.com, Wolf and Levine instead settled for theoutlookblog.com.

The first step for “The Outlook” was creating the website. The two teens first tried using Wix, a free website builder, but they were unhappy with certain features. With extra Bat-Mitzvah money, Wolf and Levine were able to pay for a web developer at 1871, a hub for Chicago’s digital startup community. And while working a few times a week at 1871 using WordPress templates, they were able to finish “much faster and more efficiently,” according to Wolf.

One afternoon in March, upon creating the website, the two then went on to forming user testing groups from different schools beyond Latin and Parker, like Whitney Young and Jones College Prep. The user testing was generated through surveys and individual and group-based discussions.

The next step was outreach. Levine searched up schools in the Chicago area and outside of the city and looked for the social studies department chairs’ emails. From there, she emailed them about the website and asked them to share it with their students if possible.
If one such student were interested, that student could click “Menu” and then “Become a Contributor,” where they would be directed to a page with the requirements.

“Working on ‘The Outlook’ was a great experience,” contributor and junior Maya Sanghvi said. “It’s all teen-driven, so there was no adult oversight on what we were writing, which made everything seem more important.  I think it does give teens a good way to express opinions and thoughts in a forum that’s just for them.”

The site distinguishes between contributors, people who can post whenever they want, and authors, those who must write articles every week.  The website is looking for 45 people to become regular authors. People can  become an author by clicking on “Join Team,” and then filling out an application that asks the applicant’s political views, and a sample article.