Author Spotlight
Christopher Long
The 93rd annual Plaza Art Fair — named one of the top 10 art festivals in the nation by Art Fair Sourcebook — will be taking place on Sept. 20 and is expected to bring in over 250,000 visitors locally and nationally according to the Plaza Art Fair.
The fair consumes the Country Club Plaza area, spanning eight blocks and housing 240 art booths. One of these booths will include painting tables made by local artist and East parent Alexis Burdick.
“People come every year to the Plaza Art Fair from all over the country to Kansas City,” said Burdick. “Getting to do my cute little art edition at this art fair is like, I am still pinching myself. It is such a huge representation of the art community.”
Every year, over 1500 artists apply nationally to take part in this local event, but only 240 applicants were selected this year, including the 25 returning artists from previous years.
Everyone comes to the art fair for a different reason; whether they are looking for the first piece of art they can afford or trying to add a new piece to a well-developed collection, Burdick explained. According to her, these aspects make the Plaza Art Fair a popular event for art enthusiasts all over the country.
National inflation is decreasing and is currently at 2.97%, according to the New York Times, in August compared to last year’s 5.5%. It’s almost to the point of lowering interest rates, according to a speech from the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, on Aug. 23.
At Goldman Sachs, a global bank economists believe that interest rates are ready to be dropped, Powell feels that with this, comes a risk of recession.
When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, banks pay the higher interest rates in order to take money from the Federal Reserve. Those rates are then passed on to people trying to borrow money, according to business teacher Kevin Wiesner.
By keeping rates high, the Federal Reserve decreases demand for borrowing money which causes a decrease in consumer spending and less money to be printed.
In this particular instance, Goldman Sachs economists believe that the reason the Federal Reserve hasn’t lowered interest rates yet is because the most recent business cycle was “weird.”
Wiesner explained coming out of the pandemic, the economy was weird because while inflation was high, consumer sentiment was high too.
“You would usually see if inflation is high, consumers aren’t out, feeling good about the economy,” Wiesner said.
According to the New York Times, controversy between economists and the Federal Reserve has existed forever, but with inflation descending, economists from Goldman Sachs believe interest rates will be lowered next quarter which begins on Oct. 1, when the Federal Reserve feels that the economy is solid enough for a rate drop.
The Supreme Court issued a ban over affirmative action in Oct. 2023, forcing colleges and universities to devise other methods to attain diverse student bodies.
According to a study done by Tufts on Sept. 2024, Tufts University saw a 6% decrease in diversity and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw a 10% decrease in diversity since 2023 potentially because they didn’t have a solid alternative to affirmative action.
In an Instagram poll of 200 people — the majority being students at East — 67% of voters said that affirmative action shouldn’t be banned since it leaves no alternative to maintaining diversity in schools. Affirmative action began when the Committee on Equal Opportunity was created. It stated that federal contractors must use various hiring methods to promote diversity which all fall under the umbrella term “affirmative action.” Most students today know it as a system used by schools to create diversity.
With affirmative action banned, colleges such as University California Los Angeles and Harvard University have shifted to using socioeconomic status aiming to try and keep their diverse environments, according to the New York Times.
“I think that schools had a really good idea by wanting to be more diverse,” Sophomore Jamie Wilborn said. “I think that they should have come up with something different to incentivize minority students.”
But identifying students’ cultural identities doesn’t stop at affirmative action, systems such as AP Classroom, the ACT and the SAT all have multiple choice questions at the beginning, asking students their race and ethnicity.
“There’s always that thought in the back of your head, that just because affirmative action was passed that I have a lower chance of getting accepted or a lower chance of my scores being viewed the same as someone else’s would,” Wilborn said.
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