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El Diablo Voice of the Students Durango High School
2390 Main Ave.
Durango CO 81301
Issue Five
Volume Sixty-one April 2018
DHS walkout honors Aztec, Parkland victims
Corbin Miller DHS sophomores Timmy Chamblee and Lily Sturm hold signs during DHS’s walkout.
CORBIN MILLER Reporter Almost every school has believed and stated, “It will never happen to us” in regards to being involved in a school shooting. But even small, innocent towns like Parkland, Florida- not to mention our neighbors in Aztec, New Mexico- can’t hide behind the terrifying inaccuracy of that saying. On March 14th, more than 300 students at Durango High School walked out of their classes onto the football field at 10:00am for 17 minutes, every minute paying respect to each life that was lost during the Parkland school shooting. The walkout was completely optional, but many students, like freshman Clarice Hise, believed it was important to participate. “I think it is wrong that in society today there is still this much violence, especially in schools where students are expecting to be safe,” said Hise. Students like Clarice partook to voice their concerns about gun violence and to show that they believe the government needs to do something to prevent more lives from being taken at schools.
On February 14th, 2018, Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida experienced one of the deadliest school massacres in history. During the shooting, 17 lives of students and teachers were taken by the use of an AR-15. Last year, Parkland was named the safest city in the state, making the shooting a huge and devastating surprise. Directly one month after the shooting occurred, on March 14th, students all around the nation were invited to participate in a school walkout to pay their respects to the 17 lost lives and to bring attention to the gun violence issues that have become the main topic on many people’s minds, whether they’re anti-gun or pro-gun. A lot of students who participated, such as Jr. Logan Van Lindt, are very passionate about this issue and were excited to see a great deal of the student body participate. “I care about this and I think it is important to address, I think there needs to be a lot of change,” said Van Lindt. While participating in the walkout, students were able to sign a giant paper banner that expressed their concerns about gun violence. The banner was sent
to congress to show how many students believe there needs to be change to gun violence issues and to show that they payed respect to those who lost their lives due to the recurring issue. The walkout was not advertised or promoted by the school. The majority of students learned about the walkout over social media. “I heard a lot about the walkout from many of my friends and saw an Instagram page promoting it,” said So. Rush Webster. The DHS Student Council heard about the walkout and worked with a few DHS staff members to help the students express their voice. The student body executive members knew how important it would be to work with the school in keeping this event safe. “Our principal was in support of us, as students, expressing our first amendment right of freedom of speech and to peacefully protest. The safety of the students was his main concern and wanted to ensure we could continue yet remain safe,” said So. Class President Kaylan Wait. The school did not encourage students to participate in the walkout, they instead made it safer by moving it from the front of the school to the football field, and required students to check back into the school, showing their student ID’s as they re-entered the building. While many students shared their voices at the walkout, other students remained inside the school. “I don’t think that walking out of the school is going to change anything. I mean the government hasn’t done anything yet to change the laws after the shooting, so why would they change them after some 17 minute school walkout. It just seems like a waste of time, and an excuse to get out of class,” said a student who would like to remain anonymous. A few students who stayed in their classes did not feel passionate about the issue and felt no use in walking out. Other students who did not participate knew the walkout was to pay respect to the 17 lives lost and liked that idea, but preferred to go to class instead of being
marked tardy. The March 14th walkout was only one of many that have been planned and are going to occur due to the Parkland Shooting. The devastation of the shooting has caused many students to rise up in walkouts and share their voice on this issue, in hopes of ending all school shootings forever.
Head Editors Debate: Society’s role in gender disparities
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Animas to DHSwhy are students transferring?
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This year’s must see shows on
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West Virginia teacher strike Dangerous bacteria found on DHS hall passes comes to an end MIA BOUDREAU Reporter
“Take the pass” is the typical response a student will hear from a teacher when they ask permission to leave the classroom. The start of the 2017-2018 school year brought many changes to DHS, including the addition of “clipboard hall passes.” Students are supposed to take the pass with them every time they leave the classroom for safety purposes, but have they really been beneficial? The passes provide a way to monitor who is out of the room, and if a student is stopped in the hallway, other teachers have a way to know where they are supposed to be. “The hall passes are useful in the sense that teachers and security can see who has gotten permission from their teacher to leave, and who is just ditching and wandering the halls,” said Fr. Savannah Bergman. Although the intended use for the hall passes is clear to both students and teachers alike, they are still proving to be ineffective. “Some kids don’t take them anyways, because everyone is so strongly against them, and when kids don’t take them it defeats the purpose,” said So. Clara Galbraith. Most students have never even been stopped in the hallway by a teacher or a security guard. Which raises questions about the effectiveness of the passes. “I don’t think that hall passes are all that effective because no one is really monitoring the hall to make sure people have passes. If anything, they are making things more complicated and spreading germs,” said Bergman. Another common concern raised about the hall passes is sanitation. The passes are taken to and from the bathroom and rarely, if ever, get disinfected. “They’re really disgusting, the fact that everyone uses them and takes them everywhere, you never know who had it last,” said Galbraith. DHS science teacher Eric Jackson said that most teachers never clean the passes because they don’t ever have to use them, so it never crosses their mind. As of now, there are mixed responses on whether the current hall passes
SHELBY FINNEGAN Reporter
Petri dishes containing bacteria samples found on different hall passes.
should be altered, eradicated, or just remain the same. “I would suggest that students should start using the hall passes in our planners to keep sanitary or just eliminate them completely and then have teachers take a second attendance to mark people who may have left,” said Bergman. While some students think that the hall passes need to go, there are some who are not as bothered. “I wouldn’t get rid of them at this point, although they are super unsanitary and kind of a hassle, I think it gives teachers a peace of mind as to who is out of the room,” said Sr. Emma Vogel. An alternate view is to alter the hall passes but keep the same concept. “If I had the choice I would keep the hall passes but switch them to something cleaner and more sanitary,” said Jr. Colson Parker. El Diablo conducted an experiment with the support of the DHS Science Department on the hall passes to find out how contaminated they really are. The test was done using a simple bacteria swab kit with agar plates. Nine passes were swabbed from different departments around the school. A control clipboard was also swabbed, which was used for academic purposes, but not as a hall pass. After swabbing the clipboards with a sterile cotton swab, the bacteria was then swiped on to agar plates and set up in an incubator for the bacteria to grow. After the incubation period, the agar
Mia Boudreau
plates showed substantial bacterial growth. “The plates that had the most widespread growth would be the worst because there is a greater amount of bacteria, followed by the plates with large clumps which indicates that the bacteria was reproducing quickly,” said Jackson. In comparison to the results from the control clipboard, the results from the hall pass clipboards had much more widespread bacterial growth, while the control clipboard had more concentrated bacterial growth. There is not a sure way to determine the type of bacteria with the resources we had, but Mr. Jackson was able to analyze the plates. “I would say based on the results, it is quite obvious that people handling the clipboards are not always washing their hands and/or teachers are not disinfecting their clipboards regularly. Because of this, the clipboards could be carriers for bacteria. As far as the type of bacteria… I would say it is Escherichia coli also known as e.coli which can make people sick,” said Jackson. The hall passes proved to be contaminated, and could potentially be getting people sick. Based on student feedback, they don’t seem to be keeping students especially safe, and they are not well regulated. These passes have shown evidence that they could possibly be more detrimental than beneficial to the students of Durango High School.
April 2018
After over a week of the community striking to get teachers the pay raise they deserve, the teacher strike in West Virginia has officially ended with agreement from Gov. Jim Justice that increases state employee pay by five percent. “I felt encouraged, supported, and strengthened by the outcome of the strike. As a member of the teachers union, AFT, I was part of democracy in action. The support of our Superintendent, Dr. Gibson, along with parents and students, was particularly inspiring,” said John Guiser, a teacher at Shepherdstown Middle School in Jefferson County, West Virginia. The strike began on February 22, when over 20,000 teachers walked out of schools demanding higher wages and improved benefits. Union leaders informed the public that teachers would not be going back to school unless all of their demands were met by the governor. “This strike has been months in the making. The teachers and state personnel have been told they were going to receive a pay raise over the past few years,” said Adrianne Uphold, the Managing Editor at the Daily Athenaeum, the student newspaper at West Virginia University. According to the National Educational Association, in 2016, the average salary for a teacher in West Virginia was $45,622. Ranking the state 48th in the nation, receiving an average of 31% less than any other state in the nation. “To pay them [the teachers] such a substandard wage is downright insulting when compared to the vitality of their jobs,” said Kameron Duncan, an opinion editor at the Daily Athenaeum. Having such low pay could lead qualified teachers to leave the state in search of a better salary, decreasing the quality of education in the state of West Virginia.
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