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When it comes to having open conversations about political or social topics, society conditions teenagers to constantly tread a thin line, or tightrope, by feeling the pressure to concur with a herd mentality. Any deviating stance from the norm offends others, like a strong gust of wind, blowing our tightrope walker off their line.

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Gunn Middle Ground establishes a culture that breeds open discussion rather than censorship through holding discussions on various pressing, social and political topics. Each podcast, we send an announcement recruiting five interested Gunn High School students to partake in the podcast. In these podcasts, there are five to six prompts relating to podcast topic that each participant strongly disagrees with all the way to strongly agrees with. Then, they have an open conversation on each of the prompts where they are encouraged to share their personal experiences and unique perspectives to reach a middle ground on the prompt. After these podcasts, I, along with my team’s editors, write an article quoting notable moments and summarizing them. Our goal with Middle Ground is to elevate authentic opinions and perspectives and to foster a community culture of acceptance rather than passive-aggressive judgment, and we encroach on that goal with each new podcast released. Our past podcast topics include: Being Asian in America, Mental Health of Silicon Valley Teens, and Balancing Athletics with Silicon Valley Expectations.

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Silicon Valley teenagers aspire to be successful tightrope walkers, following a life laid out for them impeccably despite it not being what they want. It’s always more comfortable to be a tightrope walker, after all. But these tightrope walkers are missing an essential link. The role models that they base their aspirations on were not tightrope walkers — they were path navigators. The reason why many of them were able to find success was through the exact opposite of tightrope walking — by being eccentrically passionate and shamelessly authentic.