As St. Joseph once said, “We are born to love, we live to love, and we will die to love still more.” According to this quote, it is a human obligation to love someone in whatever stage they are in. The month of October is known as Respect Life Month, which Xavier High School chooses to honor the week of October 11. During the 2020 Respect Life Week, Xavier’s Instagram account posted a picture of students taking part in planting flags in the ground to represent the number of fetuses who die by abortion each day. The student population of Xavier and surrounding schools took to the comment section to let the school know their opinions. While some were genuinely trying to have a conversation on the topic, others were arguing with one another or adding in unrelated comments such as asking what was for lunch that day. Xavier’s principal, Ms. Angela Olson, and Xavier staff thought it was in the school’s best interest to turn off the comments. “We have learned a lot about how people react on social media instead of having real conversations with someone or taking the time to learn, ask questions and share opinions. As a result, we found ourselves talking about how to promote conversations and how we could reduce opportunities for people to use social media as a platform to comment without conversation,” Olson said. This year, instead of planting flags in the ground, the school displayed statistics on the topic of human life in front of the school and on bulletin boards. The members of the Respect Life Club were in charge of planning the week this year, which is different from previous years, and they worked to think of ideas that would help keep the focus of the week in mind. Kickstarting the week, the club focused on all human life, then vulnerable children on Tuesday, racial equality on Wednesday, differing abilities on Thursday and all human life on Friday. When asked about the new changes, Teresa Nguyen, a member of Respect Life Club, voiced her support for them. “This year is going to be different from last year because we are trying to redirect the focus to all life, from conception to natural death. People often just think Respect Life Week is just about the unborn, but Respect Life Week is really about all life. I think the changes being made this year are for the better,” Nguyen said. During the week, house leaders lead students in a prayer with these subjects in mind. Videos portraying real stories regarding these topics were available for viewing by students. The movie “Unplanned” played in the theater on Tuesday, October 12 to further educate and emotionally move the viewers. The screening of this movie has been one of the events that Xavier kept from last year’s Respect Life Week following the controversy around the unborn. For more resources about Respect Life Month, turn to RespectLife.org.