In the fall of 2012, the organization MoCo Student was founded by a group of six students. This year, the creators plan to expand.

For those who have never heard of it, MoCo Student is a student-run online paper who encourages students at CHS and other schools to submit their personal work.

“Inspired by our personal experiences with socio-political apathy, a group of six students, including myself, launched our project, the MoCo Student Newspaper, the first county-wide, student-run, non-partisan, free online weekly last autumn to raise awareness for local youth-relevant issues,” Editor-in-Chief Jessica Li said.

MoCo Student creates many different creative outlets for students that range from graphic arts to films to news stories. All of them help contribute to a great paper each week.

“With passionate writers, graphic artists, and researchers from diverse backgrounds, we publish three to four student-friendly articles per school week featuring important policies and/or events that could impact the quality of our education,” Li said.

The online component of their paper allows the articles to be easily accessible to students and lets the news to be current.

Around CHS, students support the idea of a student-run paper because it teaches the students new skill sets that might come in handy after school ends.

“It gives students the chance to experience real deadlines and officers/editors the chance to experience the real time crunch of putting the magazine/paper together,” Midnight Writer’s club President, Kim Rooney said. “It’s also a great way for students to share their artistic talents with their peers.”

Writing is a valuable skill set so expressing a passion for it at a young age never hurts. MoCo Student’s goal is to help students unlock this passion and to help them turn it into something great.

“We, the Montgomery County Student, want to cultivate a sense of civic efficacy and empower our peers,” Li said. “Only with awareness and knowledge can we speak out and do something, and only when we do something are we one step closer to being a responsible global citizen.”