There is a wide range of electives students can choose from here at the Home of the Raiders. From art courses such as Drawing to practical classes such as Basic Foods, there is a class for everyone. However, one class focuses on a more serious topic: Genocide and Holocaust.

Mainly a historical elective, this course explores the mass extermination of peoples throughout history. Taught by history teacher Christopher Brophy, the course is a semester long.

As the semester draws to a close, the class presented their final projects: Genocide & Human Rights Violations Exhibit. The exhibit of this final project took place in the library on Jan. 17, during periods nine and 10.

Despite the fact that it was a class-wide project, students were allowed to be highly creative with their responses to the prompt.

“I laid the general framework for the project,” Brophy said. “What they decided to do after that was up to them.”

Students knew about this project from the start of the year, and started working on it full time nearly a month ago.

Some topics presented included projects detailing the steps of genocide, prevention of genocide, and information on specific examples, such as the Myanmar and Rwandan genocides.

“This project was very time consuming,” senior Megan Hollasch said. “We’ve been working on it for over a month. We had to create a proposal, then make an action plan, and then we had a final exhibition.”  

Hollasch’s project, which she completed with fellow seniors Erica Volpe and Olivia Buckman, focused on gun violence in America.

“My favorite part was interviewing all of the police officers, because it was interesting to see what police officers had to say, especially one from towns different from Hillsborough, where they’ve experienced a lot of violence,” Hollasch said. “It was interesting to see how places so close to us are so different.”

Overall, the exhibit featured a wide range of presentation tactics on a variety of fascinating topics.