Nintendo Switch

Although times might be a little bit different than usual, there is still plenty of safe and fun activities, especially for summer 2020 (Content by Liv Engle)

Create a Workout Routine

Quarantine definitely puts a pause on the gym, so if you’re looking to get back to working out, make a routine for yourself and have a log or schedule to follow for yourself. Excersise is proven to decrease stress and helps keep you healthy.

Try Out a New Craft

Make some clothes in different DIY ways, cut, color, sew, use patches and design clothing of your own while we are stuck at home. Another DIY activity is to learn how to make your own

Go Exploring

Set up an adventure with your family members. Find a hiking trail that has some beautiful views. Take some photo’s or challenge your self by drawing the scene. If nature is not your thing, take a walk in the city and explore with your family.

Create a Clean Environment

If you are stuck in the house, clean out your room to feel so much better and less stressed when in your room. Or if there’s a project in your house that needs to be taken care of, take a day to finish it up.

Relax in the sun

Soak up that vitamin D. Take a blanket outside in the grass with a good book and read the day away. Some other calm activities include sketching, painting or a 02

GONE EVERYWHERE

With the world facing a pandemic, Nintendo is facing a shortage. Nintendo’s best selling product the Nintendo Switch has become increasingly popular over quarantine. Its latest game release Animal Crossing has helped the increase of sales as well as people being stuck inside because of quarantine.

“Everyone is kind of locked in their homes with nowhere to go and nothing to do and right now is an ideal time to bunker up and play with your video games,” sophomore Abbie Carpenter said. “So, you can spend most of your time focusing on something like Animal Crossing.”

COVID-19 originally comes from Wuhan, China which happens to manufacture software for the gaming company. China has shut down the country which means the manufacturing for Nintendo’s gaming consoles has had to be put on hold.

“The main sources are from China and that’s shut down and so are all the other places that do make them are also shut down because of quarantine, so they stopped making them,” sophomore Pater Pae said.

Retail stores across the globe are coming up empty handed when asked about this product and do not know when more consoles are coming in. This is creating a market of people buying and selling the console double or triple the price on third-party sites such as eBay or Amazon.

“Honestly I’m really not [looking for a switch], I kind of accepted my fate,” Carpenter said. “If I was looking I would just go online look around at different prices and see if anyone is selling theirs, because I’m pretty sure stores don’t have them right now.”(Brief by Macy Cronin) MORE INFO Find out more about the switch here: bit.ly/NSswitch

We can’t thank our business sponsors and patrons enough for their partnership this year. Their support could not have made this year possible for us, and we hope during this time you will consider supporting them.

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DATES ARE

MOVED Due to COVID-19, the voting day for Prop S and Board of Education was moved to June

by Justin Brewer justinbrewer15@gmail.com

Much like many other things in the world, the district voting that was supposed to take place on April 7 was postponed due to COVID-19. There were many important things on that ballot, such as school board member elections and Prop S, whose voting has been moved to June.

“Obviously they [candidates] started down that path [of making themselves known] but coronavirus did impact that and so they are going to have to do that again,” School Board President Rene Cope said. “In my opinion, it’s almost like starting over.”

This postponement will shift the board member elections as well as everything else on the ballot. The original voting day was April 7 but it has been postponed until June 2. While this hasn’t drastically changed many things on the ballot, it has proposed a couple of challenges, the first regarding the board candidates. Since the vote is later and people aren’t at school, the candidates have to find a new way to

The election sign sits in a yard used to promote Proposition S for the Francis Howell School District for the April 7 ballot. Last December, FHSD Board of Education voted to place a no tax rate increase bond to obtain funds to help the district. The date of the elections has been moved to June 2, due to the virus. (Photo by Anna Hollinger)

connect with their community. This affects the date they will be sworn in. This will also affect Proposition S. Without people in the schools that are being voted on to be fixed, that firsthand perspective is harder to come by.

“School is not in session, so I think it’s important for the candidates to figure out how to reach the community while school is not in session so that the voters understand who they are,” Cope said.

The other thing that proposes a challenge is the voting itself. Parents and other community members will be looked at to do most of the voting. This virus brings the possibility of discouraging voting within the community. There is also the issue regarding CDC guidelines, social distancing and other regulations that have the possibility of affecting the number of voters. Another option is applying for absentee voting. People can either mail their ballot in or vote six weeks in advance at St. Charles County Election Authority.

“I think the fact that we have social distancing and stay at home orders will potentially discourage

Junior Angela Cuccio smiles and poses in the dress she would have worn to prom this year. Many students had already bought their dresses and now won’t be able to wear them. “I’m sad that prom got canceled this year, but I’m glad that I still will be able to go to my senior prom next year,” Cuccio said. (Photo submitted)

PROM IS CANCELLED

After some uncertainty, the district made the decision to call off prom

by Evan Becker evanbecker64@gmail.com

Francis Howell administrators announced in an email on April 20 that prom across all three high schools would be cancelled for the 2020 school year, to protect the safety and health of the community during COVID-19.

For weeks, the status of prom was in limbo. The district had cancelled all after school events and extracurriculars for the remainder of the school year, which would include prom. There were some attempts behind the scenes to try and get prom moved to late summer, but it didn’t seem likely.

“We were trying to find a way to coordinate around it, but it doesn’t seem like we were able to at all,” junior Luke Coffman said. “There wasn’t much of an option to get that many people together, especially during these times.”

The news did not come as a complete surprise. St. Charles County has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases in Missouri, with over 458 confirmed cases and 15 deaths, only behind St. Louis City and County. Social distancing rules are especially necessary to ensure the curve is lessened.

“Initially we had an inkling that it would have been cancelled once they cancelled school for the rest of the school year,” Coffman said. “Even though there was a little bit of hope, I was expecting it to be cancelled after that.”

While both juniors and seniors attend prom, for the seniors this was their last chance to attend prom before graduating. Many seniors were disappointed at not being able to experience that final story within their high school journey.

“It has impacted some aspect of my high school experience, but I understand why, [which] makes it easier to sort of deal with the idea,” senior Uma Upamaka said. “It was for a good reason. I knew it was going to happen, it was just like waiting for bad news that I didn’t want to happen, kind of deal.”

At her desk, senior Riley Witherbee studies for her upcoming AP statistics exam. All AP exams have been moved online this year due to Covid-19. The exams have been altered to fit in a smaller time frame and cover only the units that should have been taught before spring break. (Photo by Avery Witherbee) AP GOES online

Due to COVID-19, students are now taking altered AP tests online

by Macy Cronin macy.cronin03@gmail.com

AP Testing is a rigorous exam for possible college credit students spend all year preparing for. This year COVID-19 caused some unforeseen problems, which forced the College Board to change the structure of the exam for this year’s AP students.

“No one’s ever really had to do this before, so we are kind of in uncharted waters and prepping for those uncharted waters is very daunting,” sophomore Carly Gordon said.

The exams will differ depending on which ones the students are taking, but all of them will be focused on free responses rather than multiple choice. By taking out all multiple choice questions the time for the test was drastically reduced to 45 mins rather than around three hours.

“It is a little more stressful that we no longer have the multiple choice part to help our score if our free response isn’t scoring [well],” junior Angela Cuccio said.

Due to students not being able to finish their year out in schools, the College Board also shortened the units their AP tests will cover. On their website they have a complete list of their exams and which topics are being covered for each exam.

“I don’t think [the altered exam] will give a very good representation of what the student really knows,” AP Chemistry teacher Donna Malkmus said. “I know they are trying to incorporate several different concepts within each problem to incorporate different units. So I’m not sure how successful they’re going to be able to design two questions that reflect the units the kids have learned.”

In order to ensure safe quarantine practices are happening, College Board has officially moved the test completely online. This will help hinder the spread of the virus as well as keep proctors, students and their families safe.

“I’m worried because we’re losing all that class time that we would have prepped for AP exams and prepping online obviously isn’t the same, so I’m worried about it, but I ultimately think it’s the right decision [to go online],” Gordon said.

Moving the test online causes some problems to be brought up like cheating. Cheating includes plagiarism, using someone else to write the students free response or use outside information while taking the exam. Doing any of those actions will result in notifying any colleges the student applies to that they cheated on exams even if they don’t submit that specific AP test score. One way College Board is combating cheating is for students, when finished with the test, to submit it to their teachers for a prior review. They make sure that is something the student would write and that it’s not someone else’s work.

Another concern that students face is relying on technology. During the test, students will not get extended time if their technology is acting up. It is recommended that students go to the place where the internet connection is strongest and use the device that has the best connection.

“Technology is not always reliable, sometimes there are issues connecting to wifi,” Cuccio said. “If a lot of people are on a certain thing at a certain time it lags really bad, so I just worry about technology problems that could affect my score or the amount of time that I have to complete the test.”

NEW GOALS FOR DRAMA CLUB

The closure of school caused by COVID-19 made FHN’s drama club quickly change up their plans. Their spring play scheduled for March 26-28 had to be cancelled after preparing for it for weeks. Finishing touches on the set was the last piece of production that needed to be placed before the closure changed everything.

“It’s just like any one of our other productions, actors were running lines, the crew was working on getting everything out,” senior Emilee Statzer said. “We were ignoring the pandemic like it wasn’t there.”

Drama teacher Kim Sulzner has extended the rights to the play and hopes to put on the show sometime in winter of the next school year. A goal of hers is to get some of the seniors of the 2019-20 school year who were working on the play to come back and perform one number.

“I’d never thought I’d say this but I miss the rehearsals,” Sulzner said. “They were stressful but we also had a lot of fun.”

Statzer recalled that everyone in the club expected the closure but were emotional nonetheless. Leading up to spring break the club continued preparation like normal.

“We had kind of seen it [school closure] coming but nobody really wanted to face it,” Statzer said. “I was really sad.”

This was Statzer’s senior year in drama club and she joined as a freshman. As an officer of the club she is trying her best to continue as normal and work with the other officers to schedule many activities for the club. They have Zoom meetings around once a week and do both games and educational experiences.

“So we are still electing our officers for next year, so like right now we’re taking nominations, they’ll do presentations, we’ll vote,” Sulzner said.

Leading out of the school year the club hopes to continue meeting over video calls and to use this time to learn and reflect.

“The old adage about the show must go on isn’t always true because we always have to take into account the bigger picture,” Sulzner said. “It is much more important for us to be safe and to protect our families and our communities than to produce the show.” (Brief by Sydney Ellison)