Andrea Tyson Staff Writer Richard Williams has sued the United States’ school system. In a YouTube video that has now gone viral, Williams describes the flaws that he sees in America’s twenty-first century school system and gives his own suggestions on how we can fix them. The video was posted about a month ago and has already been viewed nearly two million times on his YouTube channel. Educators and students from all over the world have given their own input on what they think of the video, and the responses are surprising. Richard Williams is better known by his stage name Prince Ea on social media. He is best known for his spoken word performances that he posts on his YouTube Channel, and many of his videos discuss topics that spark interest in his audience. His word choice, emotion, and visual appeals captivate the audience and one cannot help but get lost in what he is saying. In response to Williams’s video, I appreciate the time he took to reflect on the issues in our school system. He brought up some points that I was not aware of before. My parents have always told my siblings and me that school is our full-time job, but is a seventy hour work-week reasonable? Where is my work-life balance? I am a good student in school, I have an outstanding GPA, and I love learning. I have no problem with getting up every day and going to school to learn because my education is a privilege. The problem that I have is the amount of work it takes to be successful and the choices I have to make every day. As a student I am told several things that I need to do: pay attention in class, make good grades, and follow the rules. Why is spending time with friends, exercising, and getting eight hours of sleep nowhere in those criteria? Madeline Rudd Staff Writer The Cleveland Indians were hoping to extend the Chicago Cubs losing-streak to 109 years without a World Series Championship title. With over forty million people watching at home and 35,000 people at the game including Bill Murray, LeBron James and Chance the Rapper, Progressive Field was the most exciting place to be on World Series night. The close game lasted four-plus hours and was extremely intense. On the fourth pitch of the game Dexter Fowler hit the first homer to get the Cubs a 1-0 lead. After a scoreless second inning, the Indians finally scored to tie, but right away in the fourth the Cubs pulled ahead to make the score 3-1. After batting in two more runs, the Cubs seemed to have a good enough lead. Pitcher Jon Lester was replaced by Kyle Hendricks, and both Carlos Santana and Jason Kipnis earned runs to cut the deficit to two, 5-3. This did not bring the Cubs down though. During the sixth inning only one run was scored; catcher David Ross, playing his last game of his career, had a beautiful homer to make the score 6-3. The pressure was on for the Indians. Meenakshi Sathish Features Editor Different schools have many different initiatives to get students to drive safely since it is not breaking news that teen drivers can be careless at times on the road. However, one school took it too far and is now under criticism. Brodhead High School in Wisconsin thought it was a bright idea to tell their students that four of their classmates died in a car accident to incite fear. The school told the four selected students to stay home one day and instructed them not to text their peers that they were okay. The next morning the announcement was made. The students were absolutely mortified, and some were even crying. Brodhead is a small town where everyone knows everyone, so hearing the death of their fellow students is personal. Ten minutes later, the announcers tell the students that it was just a drill and that the four students are safe. Nevertheless, the students were still hurt at the recklessness of their teachers and staff to be able to go through with such a malignant tactic to push safe driving. "It wasn't really effective. They were trying to teach using scare tactics, which doesn't teach. It just makes you not trust the teachers and any of the announcements you're going to get," said Sam Bolen, who attends Brodhead. Even parents found the announcement uncalled for. “I don’t feel that you need to go to those kinds of extremes to teach a lesson. It minimizes other people’s feelings who have actually gone through it,” explains mother of student Sam Bolen, whose uncle died in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. Jessica Stiehm
News Editor On the week of Sept. 10, Apex High School sophomore Matt Rice became the youngest presenter ever for the 41st National Weather Association convention. The annual meeting took place in Norfolk, Virginia, and lasted five days. This year’s convention theme was “Connecting Operational Meteorologists in Pursuit of Excellence in Weather Forecasting, Communication and Service”. Hundreds of “professionals in meteorology and the related sciences” attended the meeting for the five workshops offered. In addition, Rice met the association's president, David Freeman, for a photo including his presentation titled Social Meteorology & its Impact During Severe Weather. Rice was featured in the September/October President’s Message here. Congratulations Matt! Jessica Dorcelien
Editor-in-Chief The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution, the amendment that abolished slavery, was ratified in 1865. This is why is it so alarming that the American Correctional Association (ACA), the country’s largest trade organization for prison and jails, recently passed a resolution that urges the repeal of the amendment’s “exclusion clause”: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States.” This clause, according to the ACA, allows prisoners to work for little to no pay, which in some cases, crosses the limits of human decency amounting to modern-day servitude. Despite that many correctional officials claim that there is nothing punitive about withholding wages, the ACA has called upon Prison Work Programs to “aspire” to offer inmates productivity-based wages. Questions of a modern-day slavery come in addition to interrogations of whether racial discrimination and excessive force have become prominently used tactics within the correctional system. Jessica Stiehm Editor-In-Chief Long time critics of Obamacare will be happy to learn that the program is experiencing growing pains. Ironically praised for their universal affordability, premiums will be going up an average of 20% nationwide within the next year. Health insurance is hard to understand on a good day. Nevertheless, here are the basics: In the barest terms possible there are two choices: Obamacare or a private insurance plan. Obamacare benefits the previously uninsured and lower income class who cannot afford a more stylized, expensive plan. People employed in larger companies often have insurance offered through their employer. Jessica Dorcelien
News Editor On Oct. 27, the White House announced that President Barack Obama had commuted, or reduced, the sentencings of ninety-eight inmates, most of which were convicted of nonviolent drug charges. This comes as a direct attempt to bring old sentencings up to current standards. Prior conditions for sentencing included a strict implementation of “mandatory minimums”, a condition that has now been replaced. It has been a highly vocalized goal of Obama’s to combat the severe sentencing practices from more than twenty years ago that were presumably brought on by the “war on drugs”. Obama has taken large strides towards his goal by recognizing that many of these individuals “made mistakes at a young age” but have “diligently worked to rehabilitate themselves while incarcerated”. Amber Hancock-Burns Staff Writer On Sunday, Oct. 30, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 hit Norcia in Central Italy, about 170 km (105 miles) northeast of Rome. This earthquake came only a few days after tremors in Northern Italy caused minor damage. Italy is an area in which the African and Eurasian tectonic plates meet and cause high amounts of tension. This tension causes faults that run along the “spine of Italy” in the Apennine Mountains. When these plates rub against each other, the faults do as well which causes movement of the land or earthquakes. Ashton Baysden A&E Editor In a matter of minutes, 21-year-old Moise Morancy transitioned from an aspiring rapper to a life-altering hero on a bus in Queens, NY. On Oct. 25, Morancy was riding home from a recording session on the Q53 when an intoxicated man boarded the bus and began making lewd comments to the teenage girl next to Morancy. Morancy first took note of the 36-year-old named Pablo Levano’s inappropriate behavior when he began caressing the girl’s hand without her permission; after she retreated her hand in extreme discomfort, he forcibly began touching her inner thigh which caused Morancy to step in. “I was so upset that I kept to myself after because I didn’t want the problem to escalate. Out of nowhere, he had the audacity to start feeling on this girl’s leg,” Morancy recalls in a video he made after the incident. “And no one said anything.” The musician stood up and began yelling “so loud(ly) that the bus stopped and everyone stared.” Levano lunged at Morancy to which he responded by restraining the older man until the police arrived. |
Archives
March 2017
Categories
All
|