Most Tuesdays during U-Lunch, tucked away in Upper School English teacher Cory Zeller’s room on the fourth floor, you can find members of “Scout” meeting to discuss their articles, photo spreads, and new ideas for the magazine. “Scout” is a new publication that was officially started this school year by sophomore Leila Sheridan and juniors Ava Stepan and Georgia Weed, with a goal of a Teen Vogue-like magazine that expands beyond the walls of Parker.

“The idea of ‘Scout’ came to me in middle school, and it is something that has stuck with me,” Weed said. “It wasn’t until high school, when I became close with Leila and Ava, that this idea really came to life.” Weed approached Sheridan and Stepan due to their interests in style and fashion. She also believed that their writing backgrounds on “The Weekly” would provide a good backbone to the magazine.

Sheridan, Stepan, and Weed starting meeting regularly with English teacher Cory Zeller, their chosen faculty advisor, in the spring of last year. These meetings included brainstorm sessions to organize a staff, a writing process, and a way to accumulate funds so they could publish multiple issues of their magazine throughout the 2018-2019 school year.

Sheridan hopes to publish up to three issues this school year, all dependent on how many submissions the editors receive. Currently, Sheridan, Stepan, and Weed have around 40 pieces being produced for their first issue, which they hope to publish in late November or early December. Of these forty pieces, there is a variety of photo spreads, opinion pieces on current trends and events, and features with a focus on members outside of the “Parker bubble.” According to Zeller, these pieces all have a goal of answering this question: what should teenagers know?

“We want to do a lot of mental health and positivity and our huge goal is politics and teenagers getting involved in politics,” Sheridan said. “And how to talk about real issues going on, not to say an internal Parker thing isn’t an issue.”

According to Stepan, “Scout” hopes to utilize connections brought to them by the Parker community, in addition to focusing on “real issues.” “Parker has a lot of good connections to the outside world,” Stepan said. “One we are using a lot is IKRAM because of her connections to the fashion world. Also, there is someone writing an article about a ten-year–old who has gone viral on the internet for makeup.”

According to Zeller, getting funds for this publication was the first step they took before finalizing all of their ideas. “Because it was going to be a publication,” Zeller said, “it was going to need funding and I wasn’t sure where it was going to come from.”  After meeting with Assistant Principal Ruth Jurgensen, “Scout” was able to secure proper funding.

Being a publication with a goal to avoid mentioning Parker in any of their articles, editors of “Scout” strongly feel that one benefit to their magazine is that they will not be censored as much as other publications, like “The Weekly.” “Because we are talking about things happening outside of Parker it doesn’t really shed a negative light on the school,” Sheridan said. “Therefore we shouldn’t have an issue with censorship.”

The staff of “Scout” is comprised of mostly female members of the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes. Out of the 33 total members, three of them are male. The editors realize that this is something worth looking into, as their goal for this magazine is to represent different views.   

Sophomore Griffin Kass is one of three male members of “Scout.” “I think that the guys that are interested in these things see it as unmasculine and are scared of expressing their interests,” Kass said. “They are scared of what other people will think and I understand that. But sometimes you have to go out of your comfort zone and not care what people think. I think that is what I am doing.”

Stepan hopes that once “Scout” publishes the first issue of the year, it will gain more attention from members of the Upper School, encouraging more people to write and feel comfortable sharing their view. Stepan said, “We are allowing a place for young people to be inspired by each other which is really important.”