Page 13 No email use past 7 p.m.
SPORTS
Page 6 Students’ food allergies
OPINION
Page 3 Spirit Week review
F E AT U R E S
NEWS
November 16, 2015 Page 15 Injuries from head to toe
BLOT PHOTOS BY MEAGAN MCDOWELL
Halloween costume contestants, from left, senior Josh Ehling of Freehold, junior Sarah Lynch of Interlaken and seniors Jess Stansfield of Wall and Lauryn Masciana of Middletown.
Volume 15, Issue 2
Communications High School, Wall, New Jersey
www.THEINKBLOTNEWS.com
SGA revises info session approach By JUSTIN BOLDT The SGA held its first session on Saturday, Oct. 3, for prospective CHS students, combatting issues that have previously caused problems at student information sessions. SGA adviser and Chemistry teacher Erin Wheeler said that the main issues with the information sessions revolve around unknowns regarding the amount of people in attendance. Some students and parents were also unaware of where they should go for their tours. “It’s hard to know how many kids and people are coming,” Wheeler said. “The challenging part is right in the beginning when trying to get everyone into the room where they’re supposed to start in.” SGA President and senior Lauryn Masciana of Middletown also said that getting upperclassmen ambassadors was difficult for the first session, as the info session took place at the same time as the October SAT. “I was going crazy trying to recruit people for this date, because we had so few signups,” Masciana said. To solve this, SGA sought help from freshmen and sophomores. “I’m trying to get the underclassmen to help us, because they were confused as to how they can … help us get people where they need to be,” Wheeler said. Regardless, junior ambassador Julia Feigus of Brielle said she had positive feelings about how the info sessions went. “I’ve gotten to give kids information and hopefully they come to CHS. It’s been a lot of fun,” Feigus said. Senior ambassador Clay Paley of Howell said that even though there were issues with some info sessions in the past, a few tweaks helped everything go smoothly this year. “Because of the way the schedules for students working the info session were laid out, people got confused as to where they should take the kids after the opening presentations,” Paley said. By the end of the first session, all of the parents and students were together and almost everyone got to see every room in the rotation, Paley said.
BLOT ILLUSTRATION BY CAYLA HARRIS
Student spreads positivity that sticks By CAYLA HARRIS and ANNA ROBINSON As students arrived to school on Monday, Oct. 19, they were greeted with positive messages stuck to their lockers on Post-It notes.But this wasn’t the first time. An anonymous student posted similar messages last year and struck again last month with the intention of spreading positivity, they said. The student – who @DanNewsFeed coined a “locker hacker,” but perhaps could also be called a “positivity promoter” – spoke to the Inkblot earlier this month on condition of anonymity. “I want people to think about the act itself of doing something for others, and not the person who did it,” the poster said. “If people know it’s me, it loses some of its ‘magic.’” The student said they first had the idea to make the notes when their mom gave them a couple of unused packs of Post-Its last year. After a particularly bad day, the student said they wanted to pass on good vibes. “Somewhere in a school over 320 kids, there was probably someone else
feeling the same way, and … if I could make just one person feel better than I felt, [then] I should feel better,” the poster said.
SCREENSHOT TAKEN FROM @DANNEWSFEED
Senior Dan Mopsick of Manasquan has run the @DanNewsFeed Twitter account since March 2014 and now has over 300 followers. Mopsick said the mission statement for his Twitter ac-
counts is to “give the school something to smile about through putting a quirky and relatable spin on CHS news and events.”
This year, the poster decided to cotinue the tradition after another stressful day, because “I knew that my peers
needed something to lift them up.” While some messages are original, the poster used quotes that coaches, teachers and parents had impressed upon them. The notes were signed with a dash and a heart. It takes about seven hours to write out all 320 post-its but only about a half an hour to put them on all the lockers, the student said. They come to school early, before most students and teachers arrive, to post the notes. Junior Sydney Smith of Tinton Falls said she thought the messages were “really sweet.” “It was just nice to see a positive message in the morning when I’m all tired and groggy. It’s nice to find something positive to look at,” Smith said. But senior Clay Paley of Howell said students don’t always interpret the notes well. “I think a lot of the time people take it as a joke. One time, a person took the nice note off my locker and put one that said ‘I smell bad’ on it,” Paley said. [See POST-ITS, Page 2]
PSAT and SAT revisions alter students’ testing decisions By KYLIE LAMB Changes to the annual PSAT made their debut at CHS on Oct. 14, surprising students with longer sections and different formatting. The 2015 PSAT was modeled after the new version of the SAT, to give students an idea of what’s to come on March 5, 2016, according to the College Board. Many, including junior Becca Cleffi of Manasquan, were only aware of the optional essay and the score change – the test will be scored out of 1600 instead of 2400. But students were also tested with easier vocabulary and had no penalty for guessing.
Each question now only has four answer choices, rather than five, according to the College Board. These changes did not affect freshman Sebrina Gao of Freehold. “It really wasn’t that terrible – not as bad I as thought it would be. Only the noncalculator math section was hard for me,” she said. “But it’s only practice anyways.” But the juniors had more at stake. Their PSAT scores counted for the National Merit Scholarship, an award meant to “recognize and honor the academically talented,” according to their website. All scores are sent to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, or NMSC,
and the top 50,000 highest are considered for national awards. From there, about two-thirds receive a Letter of Commendation as recognition of their achievement on the state level, while the rest move forward to be semifinalists on a national level. Finally, half of those students are awarded scholarships. But this new information didn’t change Cleffi’s attitude going into the test. “I personally didn’t think I would qualify for the scholarship, so even though I still tried, I didn’t go into it with any extra pressure,” she said. As for the rest of the test, Cleffi said she found it challenging to finish within the
given time and is going to try the old and new SAT to be safe. Junior Tony Moore of Howell had a different stance. He packed on a little more pressure for this PSAT, due to the new modifications and the National Merit Scholarship. After taking it, Moore said he realized that the old SAT is better for him. “I found I was struggling a lot more with time during this PSAT, and I had to rush near the end of the sections, which made me feel more pressured,” Moore said. “I’m definitely taking the old SAT because it’s more established, I know more about it, and I feel I can better prepare for it than for the new version.”