the
REVIEW
ottawa high school | ottawa, kan. | ohscyclonenews.com | december 2015
Many students are drowning in their own schoolwork and their health is suffering because of it. Read about it on page 4. photo by gavin wade and emma carriger
REVIEW | Opinion
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The newspaper’s primary obligation is to
December 2015
and community and of issues of national or
Don’t be a drama llama
international importance which directly or
Deedra Zolman | reporter
indirectly affect the school population.
A multitude of high school kids have drama in their lives. Not many people like drama, and people do what they can to avoid it, but it still finds a way to creep into their lives. Drama can make you shut down in class, not want to come to school, and it can also make students feel like everyone around them hates them. There are things everyone can do to avoid getting involved in drama. According to Temie Lehman [counselor], one strategy is to keep personal stuff personal. A second strategy is to not share everything about you to everyone around you. “That way, only you, or a trusted friend, knows what is going on in your life,” Lehman said. “Three: focus on the things you have going on in your life.” And the fourth strategy: “Don’t talk bad about others and be a good friend. Good
inform its readers about events in the school
The newspaper, while serving as a training ground for future journalists as part of the school curriculum, recognizes all rights and responsibilities under the First Amendment. Operating as a public forum, student editors will apply professional standards and ethics for decision making as they take on the responsibility for content and production of the newspaper. While the student staff encourages constructive criticism of any part of the newspaper, authority for content rests in the hands of the student members of the newspaper staff. Students will not publish material considered to be legally unprotected speech, or libel, obscenity, material disruption of the educational process, copyright infringement, or unwarranted invasion of privacy.
Gavin Wade Emma Carriger Reporters Anissa Ferioli Chloe Jones Audrey Moore Deedra Zolman Adviser Kara Lynch
Ottawa High School 1120 S. Ash St. Ottawa, Kan. 66067 ohscyclonenews.com
mind regarding friendship conflict,” Shelly Strickler [counselor] said, “is that a student should address the conflict one on one, not involve others that might create a ‘ganged up on’ feeling when trying to resolve the issue. Honesty is another crucial factor.” No matter what students do, they will always have drama. That’s why it’s important to learn what you can do to avoid it.
The
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The top ten holiday foods
Sleigh bells ringing 1 2 early is a good thing 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Audrey Moore | reporter
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friends should never share what they tell you with others,” Lehman said. Many kids go to the counselors for their drama and stress about it. But dealing with students’ personal challenges is only part of the counselors’ job description. The counselors are also there to work with kids to improve their grades by helping them get organized. Counselors are also available to help you find better ways to study, according to Lehman. “We change schedules; we listen to problems both here and at school and offer ways to improve those problems; we help kids plan for college.” Students often go to their friends for help with drama. In some situations that’s good, but at other times the situation isn’t good, and it shouldn’t involve you. Without meaning to, what you do or say as a friend can hurt somebody else. “The very first thing that came to my
Ho ho ho- wait, no? What do you mean it’s only December 10? There are still a few weeks until Christmas? Yes, I consider myself one of those people. While I, along with many others, am excited for the holly, jolly season, it seems others dread it like the plague. Whether they can’t stand the music, the decorations, the treats, or all of the above, I believe people should enjoy this time of year or at least appreciate its benefits. For one, Christmas is essential to the U.S. economy. According to Derek Thompson, writer for The Atlantic, Christmas sales account for $400 billion in economic activity. Holiday personnel hires raise employment and stimulate the economy. For many stores, the holiday season accounts for almost half of their annual revenue. If you cut December off of every shopping calender, the U.S. retail industry would be
in a permanent depression. Because of this, Christmas is practically being asked to be celebrated earlier each year. If it’s improving our economy, the plethora of Christmas music and decorations is forgivable, if not amazing. There’s also evidence that shows the holiday season vastly improves many people’s psychological state. “Overall utilization patterns by psychiatric patients in emergency rooms and in inpatient wards is lower as is the prevalence of self-harm behavior and suicide attempts/completions. Following the Christmas holiday, there appears to be a rebound phenomena with these latter behaviors,” according to The National Center for Biotechnology Information. Not only does Christmas improve our economy, it also reduces the amount of self-harm and suicide in patients. With that in mind, it’s a good thing to start the holiday season early, despite it being a while until the “actual” Christmas season.
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Pie Cookies Cranberry Sauce Green Bean Casserole
Stuffing Mashed Potatoes Candy Corn Corn Casserole Turkey Sparkling Grape Juice
Tied to technology: How much is too much? Chloe Jones | reporter Heading out into the world today, it is not uncommon to hear a ringing, dinging or chiming every couple of minutes due to the ubiquitous usage of technology. Imagine sitting with a group of people, maybe one or two are trying to talk while everyone else is looking at their phones. You’re so distracted by the funny video you’re watching that you’re only half listening to what your friend is saying. Then, you’re asked a question. What is there to say about what you did not hear? People seem more and more attached to cell phones, laptops, and basically every other piece of technology there is. These devices distract us, often times cutting off the emotional connection that humans can have. Instead of looking up and speaking to the person in front of them, people look down at their phones, having no face-toface interaction. Or they pretend to listen, nodding their head in agreement, while retaining very little of what the other person is trying to say.
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I’m guilty of this as well, and if I’m being honest, I do it quite often. In fact, a large chunk of my time is spent online, especially when in a group of people I don’t know. It just seems easier to explore the world I know online, with people I’ve never met in person, as opposed to facing the intimidation of meeting new people, or even sometimes just having a conversation. The Andrew Kukes Foundation for Social Anxiety, or AKFSA, stated in an article that, “researchers have suggested that individuals with these characteristics might be more likely to be isolated socially in offline environments and therefore might turn to online communication for social contact.” While scrolling through Instagram and Twitter, I’ve seen many posts of people talking about their social anxiety, depression, stress, et cetera. These people often have hundreds of followers who talk and interact with them everyday, and come to feel loved just by being online with those people. “Persons with social anxiety disorder often feel more comfortable using online
communication methods versus face-toface interactions, due to high levels of fear and anticipation of threat and negative evaluation associated with live interactions,” AKFSA stated. People without this issue - this inclination to get through life via technology rather than a real-life conversation - often don’t realize it even exists. Not necessarily the anxiety, because hopefully everyone knows that’s an issue. But not everyone online has anxiety, and not everyone with it is online. There are so many different kinds of stress relievers, and so many stress-free people who still can’t seem to get their nose out of their phones. For most of second semester last year, I logged off. My phone was shut off and stuck in a drawer, not to be touched until the end of the school year. My grades had been going downhill, I procrastinated way too much online, and I wanted to be able to focus on the more important things in life. My grandma gave me an old sliding phone to use (Galaxy T, whoo!), and that’s how I communicated.
Not using the internet for social media for months was definitely a strange experience, but honestly, it’s something I’ve been thinking of doing again. The internet may provide an escape from awkward social situations, keep me up to date on celebrities, and just make me happy, but there are many things that could do that for me instead. I can read books, ask friends what’s going on with them, and still keep that face-to-face interaction. Being without my phone made me feel closer with the people around me, which is something I didn’t really expect. My overall opinion on the subject of face-to-face versus online communication is kind of mixed. It’s rude to just play on your phone while someone is trying to have a conversation with you. Not only is it rude, but with how much is happening in today’s society, the people skills of humans have clearly decreased. Without the technology, people would talk to each other more, and grow stronger bonds with one another, which is what we really need.
interrupts our life and requires our attention. Distress, however, is probably a more accurate word for what many students are feeling. Distress is when the time and energy needed to complete and fulfill work and obligations exceeds the actual amount of time and energy possessed. Unlike stress, distress is something that isn’t omnipresent. Many days, we find the time to complete our work in school, or are given the time to do so; we just don’t utilize it. But there is always that one day, that one night where we’ve done all we can to complete our homework, but we are still kept up until the ungodly hours of the night trying to complete that English project or that confusing math assignment. Exhaustion comes and we give up even though it’s due the next day. This is distress. Distress can be caused by many things depending on the person. I know that many of the people I talk to get home and immediately start working on homework up until they go to bed, and they may or may not complete all that their teachers have assigned for them. However, there
are also students who heavily procrastinate getting their homework done, as I know I am sometimes guilty of. Consequently, they are led into the distressed state, where they have run out of both the time and energy needed to complete all of their obligations. Distress can be self inflicted. Stress helps us grow as people, helps our memory and motivates us to keep going. But we need to learn how to properly deal with it, as it isn’t going away any time soon. We’re only touching the tip of the iceberg in high school with our stress, since eventually we’ll have even more of life’s stressors on our shoulders, and we need to brace for impact. So, this stress is beneficial for us now as it helps prepare us for the world.
Finals Week Frenzy
Staff editorial: Existential crisis Emma Carriger | editor
Stress: a word many people carry with them every day, to every class, and to their homes where they sit working on their multiple hours’ long homework piles. Students walk from class to class, adding on to their already dauntingly large gathering of stress, blaming teachers for the mess, but we ourselves are to blame as well. Stress is ubiquitous throughout our lives, so why do people try to fight it? The human race is lazy most of the time; we do not like when our lives are made difficult or when we are given extra work. Stress requires work, but honestly, stress is a necessity. Think about what life would be like without it. Life would be great, simple and everything would be easy, just as we say we want. But in actuality, we would be weak, and that easy life we dream about is not really what we want; it is superficial. Stress is defined as “a reaction to a stimulus that disturbs our physical or mental equilibrium,” according to Psychology Today. In other words, it is something that
Wednesday - Friday: 7:45 - 8:15 Study Time 8:19 - 10:04 Testing 10:08 - 10:38 Study Time 10:42 - 12:30 Testing
A look at the finals schedule
Monday: Period 1: 7:45 - 8:15 Period 2: 8:19 - 8:49 Period 3: 8:53 - 9:23 Period 4: 9:27 - 9:57 Period 6: 10:01 - 10:31 Period 7: 10:35 - 11:05 Period 5: 11:09 - 12:30 Lunch 11:09 - 11:34 11:37 - 12:02 12:05 - 12:30 12:34 - 1:04: Study Time 1:08 - 2:53 Testing
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4 REVIEW | Feature Biology
STRESS STRESS STRESS December 2015
Chemistry
Family Issues Algebra Welding Spanish Physics Emma Carriger | editor Gavin Wade| editor
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itting in a desk after a test, you compose a list. Comp, Calculus, Economics, Government, and everything else that you have to study for in the next few days. The list is almost endless, one class after another, one activity after another. Instead of tackling this list, you decide to skip it all and go to bed. You know it won’t end well, but it is the only thing that feels possible at this point. This situation isn’t too hard to imagine, because everyone has done this at one point in time. The amount of stress that students encounter is becoming a huge problem, and many are becoming too overwhelmed. Between hours of homework, studying for tests, jobs to maintain, and activities to be involved in, there just isn’t any time in the day to actually live or have a break. After an eight hour school day, many students go home and face up to four more hours of homework they must complete for the next day, or suffer the consequences.
Triginometry
English Work
Calculus
History
Yearbook
Human Body Systems
Between school, family obligations, work, activities, and more, many students are becoming overwhelmed with stress. Learn about how it affects you, and how to overcome it. With a recommended eight hours of sleep - which many students can’t achieve - this leaves only four hours of time in the day for students to actually enjoy themselves. One observer and expert of the stress many students face is Kris Kornhaus [economics teacher], who claims our stress to often be caused by lack of control, our overload of distractions that we face, and most importantly, sleep deprivation. “A big part is that a lot of things that we see at school is related to sleep deprivation,” Kornhaus said. “It’s hard to concentrate if you’re chroni-
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cally sleep deprived.” Another large contributor to the immense load of stress we face has to do with over-involvement. Students pile on top of their schoolwork extracurricular activities that require so much extra time in their day. However, having a balanced amount of involvement can have benefits which include “consistent attendance, academic achievement, and aspirations for continuing education beyond high school,” according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Abagael Pruitt [12] is involved in sports, music, and a number of clubs and activities. With this involvement
I have to be in these clubs to get scholarships,” Pruitt said. “I wouldn’t want to drop any clubs.
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Government
Auto Shop Culinary Economics Agriculture on top of the schoolwork every senior has, comes a tsunami of stress that many students are familiar with. “I have to be in these clubs to get scholarships,” Pruitt said. “I wouldn’t want to drop any clubs.” With this heavy involvement, Pruitt loses a lot of sleep. The amount of stress that many students face can not only be an emotional tax on them, but also a physical tax. According to WebMD, long-term stress can cause multiple health complications such as heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, acne, eating disorders, and the list goes on and on. One way to solve the problem of over-involvement goes back to one of Kornhaus’ very own teachings in his Psychology class. To become a “hardy person”, that requires “facing the problem, sitting down and deciding priorities and goals,” according to Kornhaus. When there are too many things to deal with at a time, all hope is lost. Prioritizing can help with deciding what to get done first, and can help you to be more productive. Secondly, to lead a more unstressful
Student stress intensity
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The student body on
STRESS
In November, we sent out a survey asking students about their involvement in school, stress level, and how they cope with stress. These are the numbers.
Student Involvement Sports - 79 life, sometimes you have to sacrifice some things, and I don’t mean lambs. Giving up on some things or projects is okay, especially if it is helping to remove stress. If a club is more stressful than it’s worth, drop it. If a non-required class is bringing down your GPA, switch into something else that will bring you more happiness. If an extracurricular is sucking the life out of you, stop doing it. Getting rid of stress can only be helpful. Remember, you are in charge of how you feel. “Stress can be a good thing,” Kornhaus said. “You have to be willing to face the challenge, face the problem and not get emotional about it, certainly not get frustrated.”
How often students encounter stress in their lives
Clubs - 75 Play/ Musical
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Volunteering - 50
Jobs - 72 Other - 55 Data compiled by the Review Staff Charts made with Piktochart
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6 REVIEW | News Logging in to new technology December 2015
21.5” iMac
All-in-one computer High-Definition Display 2.7 Ghz Intel Core i5 8 GB Ram
Chloe Jones | reporter Technology can help with nearly everything, from curing cancer to finding directions to a doughnut shop. In this generation, we see it affecting people more and more, and especially in school. Classrooms have been taking advantage of the wide range of technology available in this tech-crazed world, using sites such as Google Classroom, Google Drive, and even having students upload their work to electronic portfolios. “People that are visual learners can take in more information from technology and audio readers have a very good advantage,” Jordan Surber [11] said. “The more handson children; I feel like they need to get help more often, because they don’t quite understand.” Ottawa has leaped into the technological world faster than most other schools in the area, leading the pack of schools starting to utilize devices, such as Chromebooks, iMacs and cameras, all for educational purposes. “I just recently got to meet with two other school districts that are thinking about going one-to-one,” Lori Hower [technology integration coach] said. “After talking with them, I realized that our students and our staff have learned much more in the last year and a half that puts us much farther ahead with our skillset and computer skills that our students have, as well as the communication
that we can have with our students.” The concept of one-to-one is where each student is given a device to work and learn on, creating a major technological environment. This is the second year that Ottawa has been using Chromebooks to educate students. However, not everyone rules in favor of it. Surber said she would prefer books to computers for school, especially due to a lack of internet at home. It can sometimes be challenging to keep up with the ever changing world of technology today. Integrating this into the public school system can result in many good things, but it has its downfalls as well. “I think… that we rely on it instead of communicating face-to-face with the kids,” Kelli Fischer [graphic design teacher] said. “Face-to-face, eye contact; people call it old school. Sometimes it’s just better than sending you an email.” Although technology may cause a lack of human interaction, it can have a wonderful impact on people’s lives. “It’s allowed us to do more, create more. It allows us to communicate not just during school hours,” Fischer said. Fischer runs a classroom that basically thrives off of technology, from designing models on iMacs to creating tangible items with a 3D printer. “The brand is MakerBot. The computer graphics students are using it to print some
MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer
100mu resolution 456in3 build volume PLA filament
of their own creations,” Fischer said about the new printer. A 3D printer can print a wide realm of possible objects, and has actually been used to print prosthetics for human (and cat) amputees. Students here have created items such as a mini sword, Cyclone ornaments, and tiny creatures. “Technology is always going to be a part of our lives now and it’s just a function of
finding out what works best for each person. That applies to teachers as well, what works best for each class, that’s what they’re gonna utilize,” Hower said. “The question is just what’s next.” There’s no denying how far technology has come in just the last ten years, so who knows; maybe ten years from now, we’ll be listening to a robot read us Romeo and Juliet while it feeds us pizza.
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Transformer blast, squirrel passed Audrey Moore | reporter
Imagine sitting in class, supposedly paying attention to whatever the teacher is saying, when the lights flicker off. Students awkwardly glance around, a bit surprised as the lights start to quickly flutter on and off. The teacher turns off the lights and tries to go on with his or her lesson. This scenario should sound familiar to students and staff at Ottawa High School. “When the lights go out, that’s an outage, [not a brownout]. That means you have no electricity whatsoever. And that’s pretty much what we’ve experienced the last couple of times that has taken place at the high school,” Dennis Tharp [City of Ottawa Director of Utilities] said. “The high school is on the city circuit, circuit nine, and quite honestly that circuit is a priority for the city not only because of the high school but because the hospital is on that same circuit.” According to Ryan Cobbs [principal], the outages were caused by a squirrel interfering with the power lines. “A squirrel touched a transformer. That’s it, a squirrel goes along the line, it
hits the transformer, it arcs the transformer and shuts us down. And in last two days or two weeks or whatever, we’ve had it twice, and there are two dead squirrels laying at the bottom of the power pole,” Cobbs said. Many students reported hearing an explosion-like sound before the power went out. The cause of the noise was most likely a line fuse blowing. “The line fuses that we use on the line to protect the system, when they blow they sound like a shotgun going off. That could very well have been one of the noises that was heard,” Tharp said. According to Tharp, when a transformer blows, it almost sounds like dynamite. Transformers are large and contain oil, so when they short, it sounds like an explosion that can be heard for several blocks. These outages could be prevented by setting up squirrel cages, but according to Tharp, these methods wouldn’t be costeffective. “They actually have squirrel cages that we have used in certain areas where squirrels are a little more populous than others. It is not cost effective to get them every place, though eventually we might get to
that point,” Tharp said. According to Cobbs, there was no permanent damage done due to the outages. “They just trip a breaker just like it would at your home, so instead of something as simple as being able to go over and flip the breaker, their fuse is this big long fuse that they have to replace. They’ve got to get a boom truck out, they’ve gotta take the old one out and put the new one in and once that happens and we reset everything we’re good to go,” Cobbs said. Teachers and their classes were affected as well. “We had just come back from our Halloween parade. The kids were eating a snack. Their parents were there and everything, so when the lights when out, they weren’t all that freaked out. They were just wondering what happened and when they’d come back on,” Stella Tharp [Early Childhood and Development teacher] said. There is no guarantee that there will or will not be any more outages
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this year, so be prepared. “It’s just a part of what we deal with, especially during this time of the year when squirrels are getting ready for winter. They go up and down those power lines and they trip the fuses,” Cobbs said.
Punching out the new policy Joshua Richards | student reporter The school policy that addresses fighting at OHS appears to be one of the least understood school policies among some students and parents. Everyone has an opinion, but we need to get down to the facts before we can make an accurate judgement. The new policy now works like this: anyone involved in a fight immediately receives a ten-day suspension. According to Dr. Ryan Cobbs [principal], the suspended student is able to come between 7:00 to 7:45 in the morning to get their work and go, and if they have a test, they can take it in the office, but they are not permitted to go to class. They can also come for FLEX after school from 3:15 to 4:00. “I have not personally had to deal with any students in fights,” Jennifer
Kane [English teacher] said. “I believe the policies we have support everyone’s best interests in a learning environment.” Once they find out exactly what the new fighting policy does and does not include, and what it fixes, most teachers and students are in favor of it, and believe that it is well designed and effective. “I think [the fighting policy] is good. It makes kids scared of starting and/or ending
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fights,” Ryan Keiter [freshman] said. “But I think [the policy] should be more disciplinary. There should be a better punishment.” This new policy is the result of years of changes and tweaks to get the approach to combating school fighting just right. “I’ve been here long enough to know the background of the policy,” said Dr. Ryan Cobbs, [principal]. “Over the years we’ve been making changes to it because
I believe the policies we have support everyone’s best interests in a learning environment.
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back then we were dealing with a lot of fights. And the fact that we’ve gotten through the first nine weeks without a fight is amazing.” According to Cobbs, the fighting policy used to include a three-day suspension that included taking zeroes for the three missed days. “So if you get into a fight,” Cobbs said, “we will contact your parents. They are usually not very happy but that’s the way it is. And for one reason or another the police will be contacted and someone will more likely go to the Juvenile Detention Center.” Cobbs also said that if a student gets into trouble for fighting, they also have a choice to do service hours to lessen their punishment if they so choose. By doing community service, the student can come back after five days instead of ten.
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8 REVIEW | School Life After School scrolls by Ottawa High Anissa Ferioli | reporter There are so many applications that parents and other adults frown upon. But one app, After School, was so looked down upon that it was, at one point in time, taken off of Apple’s App Store. The application’s inventors, Cory Levy and Michael Callahan, claim that they made it for teenagers to talk about their crushes, what is going on with them or others, or asking who wants to hang out. Due to the nature of an anonymous posting application, steps had to be taken to make sure that harmful and demeaning posts were filtered out. “Our job is to protect our users. … At this point we don’t have a 100 percent solution as to what that means. Our main goal is to remove the worst of the worst,” Callahan said in an interview to Re/code. The After School app was taken off the Apple Store on Dec. 11, 2014 because teenagers were posting violent threats towards others, but came back 24 hours later. “Honestly from what I’ve heard, from what I’ve seen, After School is not a good app,” said Taylor Seurer [English teacher]. “I don’t think that it’s used for good at all which it totally can be. I thinks it’s used for mean purposes to call out one another, to talk about people
December 2015
and to say inappropriate things and I don’t think it should be allowed.” Seurer would like to see the After School app change, but understands that it will most likely not. Some students have a more neutral position on the application. “I just think it’s people writing about themselves because it’s anonymous,” said Kale Payne [10]. “I feel like half of it is about people that are writing about their crush and then there’s people writing about themselves to get people to think that about them.” Other students believe that the application does more harm than good. “It’s okay,” Tiffany Young [9] said. “There are some downs and some ups about it; some people like to know who said this about them and some people like something to read. I think it causes more drama.”
What Goes On After School
Quick facts on the app that took OHS by storm
• School-based anonymous posts by students • Available on Apple’s App Store since Oct. 13, 2014 • More than 100,000 downloads on Google Play since the Android release this fall
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