![After placing second in their respective LDEs at the Capital District contest in early November, freshman Jesus Jaramillo-Gallegos and freshman Wyatt Pickett will compete at the Area XII LDE contest in Georgetown on Nov. 23. Jaramillo-Gallegos is competing in Greenhand Spanish Creed Speaking, while Pickett’s LDE is Greenhand Creed Speaking. “Honestly, [I’m excited for] just traveling around, maybe meeting more people,” Jaramillo-Gallegos said. “And [I’m] nervous about probably just not being able to define my weak areas. I feel like I did decent for my first time ever doing this. I just think it’s fun.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Navy-and-Yellow-Simple-Group-Project-Presentation-1200x675.png)
![Holding up T-wolves, the tour group poses for a picture in the Chinese classroom. Sophomore Lydia Ou, junior Phu Trung and senior Yushan Pan gave a tour to Taiwanese diplomat Andrea Yang on Nov. 8. “I was so excited when I heard I would get to give the tour because it’s a big deal,” Ou said. “She’s from the US embassy for Taiwan, so she’s really important. I’m so privileged [to get this opportunity] and I’m so excited.” Photo by Skyler King](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Main-Taiwan.jpg)
![Sitting at a desk past the rows of books laid out for the Book Fair, senior Kimberley Walters assists people in purchasing books and finding titles. The Book Fair is taking place Dec. 16 through Dec. 20, and is an annual event during which students and faculty have the opportunity to go and purchase books and other trinkets in the library. Kimberley said she encourages all to go to the Book Fair, even if they think they don’t like to read. “If you make reading something that is fun for you and you find the things that you like to read, it will never be a chore,” Walters said. “So [the Book Fair is] a good opportunity to find something that will respark your want to read [like] when you were a child and you went to the book fair and you loved the ‘I survived’ books. Maybe you'll find your ‘I survived’ books of your high school experience, and it'll re-spark that kind of love for reading that may have died out.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Addie-L-47-1200x800.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, sophomore Olivia Mahlmeister and seniors Samantha Jameson, Adhit Eswaramoorthi and Justin Khadavi celebrate completing first chamber in the Congress Meet. All four students advanced to the final chamber. “Out of the 20 kids in the final chamber, we had a seventh, ninth, 11th and 13th, and they took the top four to move on to state,” AP US History and Debate teacher Josh Marsh said. “[Even though] we didn't make state this year, all four of them moving on [and] placing is phenomenal.” Photo courtesy of Josh Marsh](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-Regional-Congress-Team.jpg)
![Standing in front of a small audience, senior Kimberley Walters shares a social criticism poem titled “Pity the Nation” by Lawrence Felinghetti. Every month, sponsored by the poetry club, the library hosts a poetry reading. “I never thought I would be interested in [poetry readings] because I’m not the biggest poetry fan,” Walters said. “I think poetry is a very succinct way to express feelings and get a story across. Whereas lots of books have a span of a whole story, but it’s put in a lot of words. The power of poetry is that you can be so succinct within, and there’s a lot of power within the words that are used.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KIM-1200x800.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, Author Ehigbor Okosun, members of Page Turners, and other students reflect on the author's visit. “I thought the visit was great,” Senior Amia De Leon said. “It was interesting talking to her and [getting to know] her process and her thoughts and books in general. But I think the reason it went well [was that] people got to ask questions. I'm glad that she said so much in response to the questions and it wasn't just one and done. [The author’s responses] felt very articulate.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Sebastian-5-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding the Grand Nationals trophies, drum majors Helashi Wijayawardhana, Abigail Pettey and Eddy Kim pose for a photo. The BOA Grand Nationals competition took place in Indianapolis on Nov. 14-17. “My favorite thing was just looking back at the field, and I was like, ‘Oh, crap. I know all of their names, I know who all of them are’,” Wijayawardahana said. “It's just insane to me that I was able to make so many connections. [Being a drum major] taught me how to build relationships with people who I’m not really that similar to, and how to juggle a ton of things all together.”
Photo courtesy of CPHS Band SmugMug](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AJC.GrandNatsFinals-169-1200x801.jpg)
![Delicately placing the string to form the shape of a cornucopia, seniors Haley Burton and Avery Nelson create the November arrangement for the Flower of the Month Club. This club is led by Advanced Floral Design Students and provides a monthly arrangement to community members who subscribe to receive them. “I think flower of the month club is a really impactful way to show your loved ones ‘hey I really care about you,’ or even if they’re just for yourself, they’re a little pick-me-up throughout the month that [say] ‘I’m doing ok, and these flowers make my day a little bit brighter,” Nelson said. “I like giving people flowers because people value the flowers more and they value themselves more.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ava-Holmes-3-edit.jpg)
![Standing in front of the field at a freshman football game, cheerleader freshman Jacob Gaudreau along with teammate freshman Bella Gibson pose for a photo during halftime of game. “[Cheer has] definitely given me a much more outgoing personality,” Gaudreau said. “I used to be very introverted, so it's definitely made me more extroverted towards people.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ingrid-204-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding a wooden pizza toy, senior Taylor Peterson plays with small children in Bucaramanga, Colombia. During the summer, Peterson traveled to Colombia to help build an elementary school that only had two classrooms but five or six grades with one teacher. “We add[ed] two more classrooms,” Peterson said. “It’s kind of hard when you have two or three grades in one classroom and you only have one teacher. It’s very hard to actually get some beneficial learning. [The extra classrooms will give the students] a better quality of education because they’ll actually have a place specific for their learning.” Photo by Taylor Peterson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Taylor-P.png)
![Sucking in a breath of air, freshman Lily Pope competes in the 200 yard individual medley. On Oct. 25, the swim team competed in the AISD Swim Invitational. Overall, the girls team took second place and the boys team came in eleventh. “My favorite stroke is butterfly because I do the best in that stroke,” Pope said. “I feel like [butterfly] can test how [your ability] to convince yourself to keep going. The hardest part of swimming is convincing yourself to stay strong and keep pushing during a hard race [when] everything is tired.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/POPE-1200x804.jpg)
![Swinging with his arm extended, senior Nolan Park hits the ball smoothly over the net and to the opponent’s side. Park is one of four varsity tennis captains and helped the team win district championships. “Winning district champs was a pretty awesome feeling,” Park said. “We had lost to Liberty Hill a couple of weeks before, but when we played them [again], we came out and really took care of business. We took them out and it was just a really awesome night.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kassidy-419.jpg)
I immensely dislike the TikTok shop. I don’t hate it, but I have a strong distaste for it. I don’t believe that a social media app should be advocating for dropshipping, fast fashion and poor quality. Here’s why:
Let’s start off with the first issue at play, dropshipping. For those who don’t know, dropshipping is a method of business where you don’t keep the product you are selling in stock, and you outsource production from another company. It’s essentially a middle-man operation. That isn’t my opinion, that is the direct definition of dropshipping Shopify describes on their website. Some call it business, I call it scummy. And I may even go on to say that these aren’t mutually exclusive.
The way it works is that you, the owner or employee of the business, start advertising a product that is cheap enough to be able to jack up the price on your website, app or commerce space, and make a profit. You can test the market on apps such as Temu, AliExpress, and of course, the TikTok Shop. By testing the market, you can find out how much demand there is for the specific product, whether it be a poorly made T-Shirt, threaded by the small ravioli sized fists of children overseas, or a heated hairbrush painstakingly wired by a different set of small ravioli sized fists from a child overseas. Depending on the amount of orders you get, you can then buy the product straight from the source, and then have the shipping address be theirs. Now this sounds like a standard business model where you have a manufacturing branch, except usually as a business owner you have to upkeep things like storage, the employees, and god forbid, legal applications. But this nifty and ever rising practice takes all of that off of your hands. If your manufacturer is known for using child labor practices, unhealthy working conditions or low quality products, you are not legally responsible as you are just a patron, and not a CEO. Now, corporations such as Amazon or Shopify say that this can be used so you as a business owner can focus on things like customer service and money management, but when is the last time you have ever gotten a message from a TikTok shop seller?
But let’s say that you aren’t dropshipping, and you just genuinely want to start a small business selling clay pots or some weird type of spoon that lets you eat twice as much in half the amount of time as a regular spoon. Even then, you will probably be thrown under the bus by the abundance of drop shipped products. What I find to be even more insane is that everything is always on sale. Constantly. It never stops.
Why is this? Well there are a couple theories. The first being that these are fake sales, and are never actually the price they say is being reduced. It isn’t a good deal, you are paying full price for a low quality product. Another reason is that this gives incentive to get people to buy the item quicker because the chances of the sale ending seem pretty high, despite it never happening. So while it might look like it’s half off for a limited time, it will never change. It’s things like this that make me not only hate the modern online shopping setting, but also shopping as a whole.
According to the Washington Post, this online marketing placebo affects thousands of people, and it has for many years on countless other sites. Look at Temu and Shien, two of the leading online stores known for their low prices. They have been at the forefront of fast fashion, dropshipping, and encouraging spending habits, and the TikTok shop is quickly rising the ranks.
From a business perspective, it makes sense to have a place for products on a media sharing website. Youtube has direct links to the top results to products or merchandise under videos, Instagram has advertisements every other Story you view, and Facebook has a whole community marketplace for you to view. Except TikTok has a built-in shop, similar to Temu, where people can directly purchase products without having to go to a secondary website, which sounds very convenient not only to consumers, but to entrepreneurs as well. This method can directly benefit TikTok, as outlets such as The Verge state they reportedly take 2% of profits, as well as a 30 cent transaction fee. This may not sound like a lot, but let’s look at the math.
I found a product ‘sold’ for $18, being sold at $9 , called the Unbrush Detangling Hair Brush. This product has 826,700 sales. That means that if the TikTok shop took 2%, they made a profit of $153,766 at minimum. This is only one of the thousands of items, and one of the cheaper options.
TikTok itself is making thousands of dollars off of stolen products, and it isn’t changing anytime soon. So, if you are actively buying from the TikTok shop, I don’t blame you to an extreme extent. Just know where your money is going, the true price and quality of these products, and the source they come from.
