Whisper has recently been making a significant impact at Lambert High School. Established at LHS in 2019. This is a community of students that focus on having good conversations and being vulnerable. 

The founders of Whisper worry that pupils have been so engrossed in their phones and technology that they have walked away from the exciting adventure of having a good, deep conversation. 

Jason Eappen, a student active in the Lambert Whisper community talks about the impact that phones have on conversations.

“When was the last time that people weren’t looking at their phones,” Eappen states. “When is the last time somebody genuinely said hey how’s it going, how’s life going, how’s the family? Being able to just divulge and being able to really understand one another I think is key.” 

He emphasizes that the purpose of Whisper is to counter the lack of face-to-face socializing that teenagers face and organize events where students can be vulnerable and have deep conversations. 

Recently, many students have been worried that LHS Whisper is slowly losing its true purpose.

Sophia Zhao, a sophomore involved in Lambert Whisper, discusses how due to the pandemic, they were required to restart the club. Unfortunately, the journey to reopen the club has been difficult since students do not seem to know anything about the initiative. 

“The purpose of Whisper is to start vulnerable conversations, but it’s hard because you know we are trying to restart it, and not alot of people know what it is,” Zhao states. “It’s hard to find a time where Lambert students can [have conversations].” 

When going to one of the Whisper meetings, the environment is seemingly vivacious. The first 30 minutes were reserved for students to get comfortable and socialize. 

Unfortunately, the club seemed to lack age diversity. Most students seemed to be upperclassmen other than one sophomore, Vedant Naik. Naik mentions that he has only been to one meeting. He heard about this meeting on Instagram and came to check it out.

It seems that underclassmen tend to “check out” the meetings, but they do not truly join. Whisper group meetings seem to largely be clique hangouts and lack the diversity in friend groups that other students want to see.   

Once the meeting starts, it is evident that students have difficulty stepping out of their comfort zone and talking to people out of their friend group. Many people are seen changing their numbers so that they are seated at the same table as their friends. 

However, this situation does change when the group of people leading the meeting start asking questions. People are finally seen opening up and having insightful conversations with their table.

Griffin Collins, a senior at Central High School, mentions his experience with the Lambert Whisper meeting. He talks about how Central’s Whisper community has also just restarted after the pandemic, and how he was invited to sit in one of Lambert’s meetings. 

He mentioned that he found these meetings very insightful and interesting and seemed to be very happy with his experience.

Although students leading the Lambert Whisper meetings seem to be struggling to reintroduce this initiative, they seem to be doing a great job of reaching out to a select group of students and combating the influence that technology has on conversation.