You might assume that a boarding school in the idyllic Ojai mountains would be isolated from the concerns of the rest of the world, but my past weekend trip proves the opposite:  the school’s Amnesty International club organized a trip for a dozen students to downtown Los Angeles for Amnesty’s annual western regional conference. After three days of lectures, provocative panels (one in particular on torture juxtaposed a military interrogator and a torture victim), musical performances and documentaries, we joked that the “Thacher Bubble” had been popped. Often, it is easy to get stuck in the life of a small community, but great organizations like this one, and Thacher’s Current Events Club, Debate Society, and resources like the New York Times daily delivery to campus ensure that what we jokingly refer to as the Thacher Bubble remains a insignificant phenomenon.