Should the Shalhevet student newspaper win the National Scholastic Press Association’s Pacemaker award, the student-journalists attending the Fall National High School Journalism Convention in San Antonio will be able to accept the award in person, even though the ceremony is set to take place on Nov. 17, which is Shabbat.
Permission to attend the ceremony came from the rabbinical authorities at the Modern Orthodox private high school, whose newspaper, The Boiling Point, is one of nine finalists competing for nation’s most coveted award for a student newspaper.
“They're sending a Judaic Studies faculty member to help chaperone, and we'll be dressed for Shabbat,” Joelle Keene, The Boiling Point’s faculty adviser, wrote in an email to The Journal on Sept. 28.
The Boiling Point is competing in the category for broadsheets of 17 pages or more. Keene said the plans for the student-journalists that day include Shabbat morning prayers and a festive Sabbath lunch in advance of the award ceremony.
“It should be a day to remember,” Keene wrote.