Breaking the ice

From left, Alexis Jew­ell and Emily Math­ias, both eighth-graders, enjoy activ­i­ties dur­ing lunch Tues­day at Dempsey Mid­dle School. The stu­dents par­tic­i­pated in ‘Mix It Up Day’ dur­ing lunch peri­ods as part of an effort to cross social bar­ri­ers and dis­cover com­mon­al­i­ties with oth­ers through activ­i­ties aimed at bet­ter under­stand­ing dif­fer­ences. Dempsey was one of 2,700 schools nation­wide that took part in the exer­cise and one of the final activ­i­ties that the school con­ducted dur­ing Bul­ly­ing Pre­ven­tion Aware­ness Month. (Gazette | Liz Robertson)