Congratulations on a successful year Trojans! We hope that the 2022-23 year was successful for you and we’re excited for our graduating senors leaving West High.
Moving into the summer, we are excited to see what students are planning and what they are doing. You can flip to page 6 to find out more about what West’s students are planning.
With recent events we are also covering one of Iowa’s newest bills and what it might mean for the students who aren’t leaving West.
Our mind are also looking forward with a few very real and serious stories covering some other events at West. These will be covered in the Vegetable, a West Times staple.
Finally with Soccer season ending it’s a great time to look at our team that West has managed to build and cover on page 4.
We here at the West Times are looking forward to another year of publications, interns and reporting however, until than it’s an exciting summer and a great year to be a Trojan.
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HENRY TIMMERHACKERT (he/him) FRONT COVER DESIGN BY OLIVE UBEDA
BY: KEITH MOODY & GREGORY VAN AUKEN
The West High boys soccer team has had a long tradition of winning, and under head coach Brad Stiles this has only continued. Stiles has led the Trojans to 23 state tournament appearances, 9 state championships, in his 24 season tenure as head coach. Something is a little different this year, with a young team containing only three seniors in the usual starting 11 the team is young and exciting to watch.
The young core to watch contains names such as captain Nate Heenan ‘24, Ismail Mohamed ‘24 leading scorer, and new transfer Kaleab Wendy ‘24 This trio of guys along with the help of a strong sophomore core containing returning starters such as Liam Teghanemt ‘25, Daniel Fuentes ‘25, Christian Kim ‘25, and a great rotational boost in Azaam Guama ‘25 the future is bright for the Trojans.
“We are thinking about the future but the now is what is most important to this group as well is learning from the past.” Teghanemt describes last season “Last year we had so many leaders we would joke around so much but the difference is we locked in when we had to and I think that’s something we need to do more of this year.”
The Trojans have big games as the season winds down and will need to find that next level of focus if they want to make a deep run.
Heenan a newer face on the pitch as he describes his role last year as “A back up for a reserve. I started off the year well, but then an injury occurred and I was out for the rest of the year so I was more supporting my teammates on the bench than playing.”
Heenan has stepped into a captain’s role this year and will be a big part of any jumps they want to make with focus and intensity. He can be seen constantly commanding the right flank, and facilitating great attacking runs from his position at right back.
He tells us about his leadership style “I would say my leadership style is kind of aggressive, but I am also really
chill sometimes, ” Heenan said.
Wendy as new transfer from Regina has given the midfield life with great attacking skills and leadership a great
WE ARE THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE BUT THE NOW IS WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO THIS GROUP AS WELL IS LEARNING FROM THE PAST.
-LIAM TEGHANEMT ‘25,
contrast to Teghanemt’s defensive role in the midfield. Fuentes, a returning starter from the ‘25 class plays a key role in the attack as a winger.
He talks about the evolution of his role, “My role has only gotten bigger since last year. I feel like I have more of a responsibility to create and score goals. I’ve been put in many different positions that I didn’t play last year as a result of having more trust from Stiles.”
As a transfer Wendy had trouble learning the system at the beginning but he had already known many of the people on the team. Watching you can easily tell how close this team is especially with all of the goals and smiles they share a big part of the smiles is Guama. An individual who was called up to varsity in the second half of the season and this year has seen his role take leaps even starting games this season.
The culture on this team is clearly winning oriented but this team is very close and loves to have fun. Even though I have talked a lot about the future they still have plenty to overcome this season. Being the number one seed in their substate bracket they have high expectations for a deep run this season, but that’s not quite enough for them. Some Trojans still feel like they let some games get away from them this season.
“I feel like one game
I still think about a lot is Prairie they’re currently ranked 5th and we are 6th in 4A. That game had a lot go wrong down the stretch. Even though we feel as if we outplayed them, we didn’t get the result we wanted.” That’s Teghanemt’s take on what some people still use to fuel them. He feels like there’s no reason to be satisfied now they haven’t done anything worth remembering.
DESIGN BY: HENRY TIMMER-HACKERT
MY ROLE HAS ONLY GOTTEN BIGGER SINCE LAST YEAR. I FEEL LIKE I HAVE MORE OF A RESPONSIBILITY TO CREATE AND SCORE GOALS.
-DANIEL FUENTES ‘25
BY: KEITH MOODY
Daniel has a very important summer up ahead with his senior football season on the horizon. This is his last offseason to go to camps to be seen by coaches. Daniel says he plans to attend a camp for the University of Iowa and Iowa state University. While he has college camps he will also have high school football workouts starting at 7 AM every morning with a lift then on field skills and drills from 8-10 AM.
Coming off a successful track season Moostafa is going to continue to work and prepare himself for cross country. To train he will run long miles and build endurance for the 15-16 minute races. With his free time he plans to spend a lot of time with his friends whether he’s running with them or skateboarding. To relax this summer he will spend time at the pool and inside binging TV shows.
DESIGN BY: HENRY TIMMER-HACKERT
Layan’s summer will be loaded with extraordinary activities. She already works at the retirement home near west and will continue to do that during the summer. As the summer moves along she will begin her internship at MERGE, a business based in downtown Iowa City. On top of all of that she will start her nonprofit which will connect black youth with more leadership opportunities in the community like internships, volunteering or job shadowing.
Aidan was another huge part of the Trojans successful track season. Aidan does not plan on playing basketball again this year, so his summer will be more laid back athletic wise. He will do less intense workouts earlier in the summer but when August comes around he will begin to ramp up hurdle work once again. With his free time he plans to do his favorite things with his friends, being outside, swimming at the pool, and playing poker .
Aiden is finishing up his senior year as he prepares for college at the University of Iowa. Right now he says he will spend his summer doing his favorite things playing baseball with his best friends. While also spending time on the lake with family and friends. To prepare for college he says he’s going to go shopping, he will have orientation later in the summer, and he has to take a math placement test.
Iowa’s new bill 496 might change Iowa’s schools drastically and influence how students use school libraries.
On May 26th the state of Iowa had the House successfully pass a new law that could change West’s library in a major way. Iowa recently introduced a new law formally known as bill 496. Now that this bill is law it will radically change schools in every grade. The law contains sections governing students requesting accommodations for their gender and younger children receiving instruction regarding sexual orientation or STDS. Although the law contains large sections about several different topics some of the most controversial sections cover school libraries and curriculums.
The law states that school libraries may not contain books with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act”.
These same rules would also apply to classroom materials that teachers can teach. While this decision may seem ambiguous, if interpreted correctly it could apply to many different texts that appear in our school’s library. Recently, the law was passed by Kim Reynolds on May 26th after a long period of being stuck as a bill. This occurred after the law was passed by the Senate and House of Representatives on April 19th and 20th respectively. Now that it’s signed the law will go to the Department of Education for exact instructions on how to enforce the law. How the Department of Education chooses to enforce the law through policy will likely change a large amount of what the law means for teachers and school staff. These
NOW NEXT YEAR ENGLISH TEACHERS ARE GONNA BE WALKING EVEN MORE ON EGGSHELLS - TOM LINDSEY, ENGLISH TEACHER
instructions will finally be sent to schools and enforced by staff. This lack of exact details makes it difficult for schools to prepare for the upcoming changes.
Librarian Jill Hofmockel believes that one of the main issues with interpreting and preparing for the law is finding out how the Department of Education will interpret the law.
“The legislation has generated so many questions . . . that just aren’t addressed in the legislation,” Hofmockel said. “One of the things that we are waiting on is guidance from the state on what the day-to-day actual ramifications of the bill will be”.
This can create frustration with school staff who are heavily impacted by the law. They may not know what exactly they will have to take off their shelves or what the law deems too sexual for students to consume. Additionally, the law may make the staff decide what is banned if they cannot come to a common consensus over what books are allowed. This may mean teachers would have to check almost every book in their libraries. English teacher Ann Rocarek worries over what this new law may mean for both the school library and how books could be checked.
“No, I think [making a list of books to remove] will be put on us,” Rocarek said.
The act of having to check every book in the library for sexually explicit content could cripple the number of books that are allowed or added to the library. This is a serious problem in part because only a few books having to be removed could cause some legal trouble for the librarians at a school. Although this law may not change a
large amount for classrooms it could seriously affect libraries.
“It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of texts that I have my students currently read that would be in danger of violating the law,” Rocarek said. “I think more than anything it will affect the content in the library,”. The law mostly requires teachers to check their content, so lower grade English classes will not be affected much. It may affect what content students are allowed to bring in to read or restrict some stories, but most content like that already has alternative assignments that students can request. This is one of the systems that teachers have for students or students’ parents who don’t want their kids consuming specific content. Most assignments have alternative readings available.
“The irony, I think, is that one of the bills that is also being passed requires teachers to put all of their curriculum online, which I actually have no problem with,” Rocarek said. “If every story I read, every activity we do, has to be posted at the beginning of the trimester, beginning of the year so your families … can make the choice ‘Hey, I don’t want [my student] reading Romeo and Juliet’”
Existing processes also occur in the school libraries that this law mainly governs. The current district has a policy for dealing with books that students or parents think shouldn’t be in libraries. A member of the school district community can raise a book to the attention of the dis -
THE WHOLE GOAL WHEN YOU TEACH, NO MATTER WHAT YOU TEACH, IS CAUSE YOU WANT TO GIVE KIDS THE CHANCE TO BROADEN THEIR HORIZONS AND LEARN,
-ANN ROCAREK, ENGLISH TEACHER
trict. If they choose to continue their claim the district will create a reconsideration committee that has a set makeup. The committee contains librarians, teachers, staff, members of the community, and students. Committees like this show how a large part of the law creates requirements for items our school already carries.
“I am not closed to the idea that while I try to choose very carefully what goes in our library that there wouldn’t be books that are not appropriate or books that would be of concern,” Hofmockel said.
The concept of recording what happens in a school library is a large theme in parts of the law and items like having a list of all books available or having an option for members of the local community to report books they don’t think belong are already available at our library. A large amount of the law’s specifications are already met at our and many other high school libraries. Despite this fact, some of the stipulations might not change parts of our current system, critics point out how the law may change how difficult it is to remove a book from school shelves.
“I also think that sweeping legislation like this, that avoids differences in local communities is problematic,” Hofmockel said. “I think it’s difficult to generalize what is appropriate for a library collection in all of the various different contexts of communities we have in our state,”
The law creates a large field of age-appropriate content which both standardizes what is considered age-appropriate and excludes some writings that aren’t universally agreed as unacceptable. This is a large change from the past system where teachers or librarians would get to choose what content they allowed in their libraries. The bans can also feel like an insult to librarians who already have collections that they feel are acceptable.
This is also frustrating for teachers of higher-level classes that may already have a set curriculum. English teacher Tom Lindsey has past experiences with laws relating to books in his classroom.
“I think it’s ambiguous enough that they can argue [aganst books] and then my sense is that the district is not gonna push back,” Lindsey said. “Now next year English teachers are gonna be walking even more on eggshells,”
Kirkwood or AP classes may struggle to teach complex subjects when any book they bring in may be challenged. This could immediately put large amounts of the curriculum on hold. This would be especially harmful considering the set curriculums these classes demand. The law changes how content is challenged which may lead to some
“I THINK IT’S AMBIGUOUS ENOUGH THAT THEY CAN ARGUE THIS AND THEN MY SENSE IS THAT THE DISTRICT IS NOT GONNA PUSH BACK,”
-TOM LINDSEY, ENGLISH TEACHER
WELL I THINK EVERYTHING COULD BE CHALLENGED, THAT’S THE PROBLEM CAUSE A LOT OF BOOKS HAVE BEEN CHALLENGED IN THE PAST, BUT MOST OF THE TIME ITS WHATEVER,
-TOM LINDSEY, ENGLISH TEACHER
classes struggling to adapt.
“Well I think everything could be challenged, that’s the problem cause a lot of books have been challenged in the past, but most of the time its whatever,” Lind sey said.
This represents a large change to the existing system where teachers may have to remove any book a student or parent requests for an unspecified amount of time. This is is annoying for teachers who want a set curriculum for their classes. Additionally, it can change how teachers approach their classes. While normally teachers want to expose their students to many broad ideas, this puts a limit on what they can teach.
“The whole goal when you teach, no matter what you teach, is cause you want to give kids the chance to broaden their horizons and learn,” Rocarek said. “I think it’s different because there is a difference between requiring a text from a class and having a text available for someone to check out at their own free will,”
Warning: all material here contains high levels of satire. Newest Prom gone sends wrong threats of the guillotine and a switch to the metric system.
Ivy League colleges announce new policy over admission officers for their schools
West High has been having a prom for several years and although students knew this prom was going to be differ ent from last year almost no students expected what happened that night. The night started out normally with a standard dance, but things very quickly got stranger. Half an hour after the prom royalty were crowned the crowd seemed to be getting oddly agitated and excited. By halfway through the night most students seemed to be either getting ready for something or getting bored. Near the end of the dance, a call for a guillotine seemed to be getting popular with the students, which concerned world history teacher Anne Wacher.
“It reminded me of something from one of my classes,” Wacher said. “Not sure exactly what,”.
Louis Allard, prom king, left before the after party remarking how the night had gotten a tad strange. This seemed to excite some of the students as they claimed to have scared the monarchy off. Prom attendee and later
after-party attendee Robert Piere had something to say on the matter.
“You should have seen him slowly drive away in the traffic,” Piere said. “We took back the prom for the people,”.
The after-party appeared to be slowing down until the after-party started and students started to discuss ideas for how the school should change. Numerous students suggested ideas to become less British and more enlightened. This appears to have been partly encouraged by one of the staff members, a French teacher named Enco Ridge.
“It’s really just beautiful what our high school can come together to do,” Ridge said. “I really thought the students did a great job making a new community”
Although it is still unknown what happened that
A recent report shows that Yale is the next university to join Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth in letting their admission o cers accept tips.
ese colleges announced recently that their admission o cers would be allowed to take tips from those applying for their classes. ey assured students and sta that these tips would not be factored in when deciding who gets in, however, some community members disagree.
Canto Ford is a student who is concerned about whether he may be denied a position in one of these schools because of his nancial situation.
“I think that letting o cers take money from students might lead to some bias in who gets into these top schools,” Ford said. “I just think the fact that you can donate money doesn’t sit right with me”
Despite this pushback, some students support these colleges in their choice to allow tips for admission o cers. ey argue that it’s unfair to not allow students who want to pay these o cers to pay them. Richard Born argues that students who disagree with this policy are probably just bad tippers.
“I just think we should let them keep the money, you know?” Born said. “I mean they should get a right to know who wants to pay them money for their hard work” Even within these colleges, it appears that this decision may be controversial as many professors have outwardly spoken against it. A large number of professors created a public letter asking their schools to stop “Letting anyone join” their schools. One of them is a professor in mathematics named Jus Tidone.
“Almost half my kids act like they’ve never tak is appears to be a growing concern among at these schools, however in a recent meet ing administration from these colleges attempted to ese schools are still a measure of intelligence” and “Just because they know who gave them money, doesn’t mean they will do anything with that knowledge”. It seems like for many students around the country the biggest question is if other schools will follow their lead or if they can talk their parents into tipping their administration o cer more.
Water balloon fight
Lemonade stand
Read a book
Go fishing
Go backyard camping
Tie-dye T-shirts
Make smoothies
go stargazing
Family Game night
Watch fireworks
Make friendship bracelets
Design credit: Greg Van Auken
Draw w/ sidewalk chalk
