Junior Issiah Amla said he felt very sad to hear the news of the Paris attack because of his family connection to the country.

“In my family, we have some relatives in France. Personally, my dad was worried about their safety,” Amla said. “One of the families we know said that they were at the place but then they left like an hour before the event occurred. It was very interesting, but good to know that they were safe.”

According to French teacher Kyle Sweeney, her International Baccalaureate (IB) French students talked about the situation in class. She said she decided to talk about it in class because the attacks created an elephant in the room.

“For me, this is what school is for. It’s like this forum where ideas can be shared. A lot of what we do in the IB class with the seniors is current events and current issues in France,” Sweeney said. “This was the thing on everyone’s mind.”

Amla said students should know ISIS does not only affect France.

“There’s a lot of other countries that go unnoticed because they’re not as popular,” Amla said.  “Like Nigeria, they barely covered it as much as they do with France.”

According to Sweeney, the situation has a strong presence in the school setting.

“I think it’s important to talk about, and it’s hard to talk about because we don’t even really know a lot yet,” Sweeney said. “There’s misinformation coming out and we don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think it’s on everybody’s mind.”

Sweeney said she doesn’t directly know anyone who was in or near the attacks, but feels personally connected.

“It kind of hits close to home,” Sweeney said. “It’s just shocking and terrible. I have a lot of grief.”

Sweeney said she believes that students should learn multiple perspectives on how to progress from the current situation.

“There’s a lot of different things that a lot of different people are saying about like ‘should we bomb Syria, shouldn’t we bomb Syria or should we accept refugees,’” Sweeney said. “If you only get your point of view from a (single) news source or one place, and then you’re voicing your opinion, it’s not really an opinion — you’re just repeating what someone else said.”

Sweeney said, in general, students feel obliged to help out in the face of crises through acts like giving blood or donating money. She told her students they can also simply show kindness and compassion.

“Don’t be a jerk in your regular life. If we’re all nice to everyone, regardless of where they come from, then our community will be strong,” Sweeney said.

When German teacher Shari Fox heard about the terrorist attack in Paris, she first thought of all the Syrian refugees living in France.

“When I heard about the Paris attacks I was really sad because I thought of the refugees,” Fox said. “I thought ‘oh no.’ (France) took in 600,000 people and they’re doing all this work to help the refugees and these attacks turn the people against the refugees.”

Fox said additional information she heard increased her concern for the refugees seeking asylum in Europe.  

“It made me sad because there is talk that one of the key players in the attacks slipped in with the refugees. So right away everyone is thinking ‘oh my god we’re letting in all these people in here that are potential terrorists’ and that’s just really sad because who is going to pay the price — the refugees,” Fox said.  “(The refugees) were desperate to get out of (Syria) and now I’m sure they’re living in the fear of being sent back.”

Fox said she believes it’s important to think about the effect this attack with have on other European countries and the people living there.

“Up till now you’ve only heard about Paris and France’s reaction, but Germany is right next door and the impact is going to be huge,” Fox said.

Fox said she has been staying up-to-date with the refugee crisis, especially because Germany is a key player in the debate.

“I’ve been following the refugee crisis in Europe very closely because Germany is basically the only country who will take anyone,” Fox said. They have already taken in almost 800,000 people, whereas most other countries are locked down, sending people away.”

However, Fox said she doesn’t believe it should be up to a single country to take in all the refugees.

“It can’t be up to one country, the size of Montana, with 83 million people to take in all the refugees around the world. It’s Europe — other people need to help too,” Fox said.

In light of the recent events, Fox said she will incorporate the refugee crisis in Germany into the curriculum for her senior class. Because of the vastness of German news outlets, she said there are plenty of resources for her to use.

“We have talked about it in our senior class. I am planning on working it into our curriculum because it is very current,” Fox said. “I’ve been getting magazines now where that is the topic — the refugee crisis. There is so much stuff out there and it’s driven towards a German audience, but it’s simple enough to understand it.”

Although Fox said she worries about how the Paris attacks will affect the lives of refugees in Europe and how it will alter people’s opinions, she is confident there are people who support the refugees.

“There are going to be xenophobes everywhere you go. No matter what country you live in, there will be people saying, ‘this is our country we earned our money, we paid our taxes, we shouldn’t have to pay for other people too,’” Fox said. “But they’ve been working to balance that out and there are a lot of people who are getting out and volunteering and helping these refugees.”

Senior Hodan Dubad instantly knew people would blame Muslims for the recent ISIS attacks when she saw mentions of both the attack on Paris and Muslims on Twitter.

“ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. They just use that religion as their excuse to do what they do,” Dubad said. “They don’t represent Islam at all.”

Dubad, a member of the African and Middle Eastern Student Group, said she wondered why the attack on Paris received more attention than other attacks. She said she thought people should think about all of the places.

Another member of the group, Salma Mohamed, said she agreed ISIS gives Islam a bad name. She said she was shocked to hear about the attacks.

“It makes me mad how they claim my religion and say that it’s in the Quran that you can kill anybody,” Mohamed said.

She said the media promotes the idea Muslims carried out the attacks, and thinks people need to learn the truth about her religion before drawing unfair conclusions.

“In class we talked about how the attacks happened and what they were. One of my classmates said something offensive and I explained my religion to them to correct them,” Mohamed said. “They need to ask someone Muslim and see from their point of view instead of making assumptions.”

Mohamed said getting news from unbiased sources helps tell the truth about what happened. She said she learned about the attacks from the news but also saw it all over social media.

“The media is focusing on certain countries. I think it’s horrible that they’re just focusing on Paris just because it’s Paris and not on other countries,” Mohamed said. “It makes it seem like they don’t care about the other countries.”

She said it frustrated her how these attacks promoted Islamophobia, which leads to attacks on Muslims and mosques.

Senior group member Sharon Moranga said the more people hear about attacks committed by ISIS, the quicker they will resort to blaming all Muslims.

“I feel like people are quick to blame it on Muslims. Not all Muslims are terrorists, just like not all white people are racists,” Moranga said. “There’s going to be bad people in certain groups and you can’t take one action from one group and base it on everybody else.”

Moranga said blame falls on Muslims when sources feature terrorists as Muslims, instead of just as terrorists. Muslims don’t carry out all attacks, but when they do, sources emphasize the fact that the attackers are Muslim, she said.

Dubad said Islam means peace, but ISIS doesn’t follow this. She said they don’t even follow the same practices as other Muslims.

“They’re using the name of Islam and the religion to do the things that they do. If they say ‘I’m doing this for God, for Allah’ people are going to think that everybody’s like that in the religion, but it’s only a few people,” Dubad said. “They pray in a different direction than we pray, and they kill Muslims themselves. If they’re blowing up mosques, then are they really representing Islam.”

She said despite the negative portrayal of her religion, she makes an effort to represent herself and her religion in a positive manner to show not all Muslims are like those in ISIS.

Adviser Chris Weaver said he questioned why people changed their Facebook profile picture to the French flag.

“There’s people who change their picture and don’t even know what happened, and meanwhile there are millions of people fleeing Syria. Where’s the flags for that,” Weaver said. “I don’t think people were more surprised that it happened in Paris; I think people cared more that it happened in Paris.”

He said he thought the news was tragic but was not surprised, as attacks like this occur all the time all over the world.

Moranga said she thinks people should care about the attacks all across the world because one life is not more important than another.

“I feel like it’s unfortunate that people don’t know about the other things that happened,” Moranga said. “There were so many other things that also happened that day and they just shed light on the Paris attack and didn’t really shed light on anything else.”

She said people show more support toward Paris because ISIS attacked white people and not people of color.

Weaver said he thinks a racist narrative exists in media, perpetuated by people who don’t believe it’s an issue.

“Our white media outlets feel the need to cover Paris more than they do Kenya, more than they do other places,” he said. “People don’t think it’s a problem. They don’t want to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, what that means in America is that white people don’t want to acknowledge it.”

Weaver said the media constantly portrays people of color in a negative light and rarely covers stories about positive young people of color. He said this is the reason Americans care more about Paris than other places that were attacked.

“What’s so important about Paris that isn’t important about Syrian refugees or isn’t important about Beirut or Lebanon or any of those places where tragic stuff is happening every day instead of just one day,” he said.