Alabama Capital
EAST ARTIST KYLE PERRIGO
Spark Election 2012
Nov. 2, 2012
www.lakotaeastspark.com
New exam schedule
Clay han
Spark
Website Contents
Stay updated on East news, check athletic results, read music, movie and book reviews all on Spark’s website.
www.lakotaeastspark.com
This month
10/31
Feature: Matt King
10/31
Cool Places: Stash
10/29
Matt King used to not be politically activated, but now he is very involved.
The Stash is local clothing store that features unique handmade products.
Review: Casual Vacancy 10/23 Onur Eroglu discusses the nuances of J.K Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy.”
Children of Men
10/17
Staff Playlist
10/14
Zach Fulciniti reflects on the nature of innocence and war in Syria.
Chris Bowling shares eight songs he thinks everyone should listen to.
10/23
10/29
STEAM2 Set Into Action 10/13 Although equipment is still needed, STEAM2 has students engaged.
Review: Taken 2
10/13
Nick Riddick shares his thoughts on the sequel to the Liam Neeson flick.
Feature: Mallory Webb 10/12 East senior Mallory Webb continues to remain deeply rooted in her faith
10/12
10/05
Lakota Optimist Run
10/05
The Lakota Optimist Run helps raise money for Lakota youth through a 5K.
Q&A with Gabi Mathews 10/03 Kaitlin Lange sits down with East senior and Bengals fan Gabi Mathews.
Fall TV Preview
10/01
Spark’s Entertainment editors present what shows will be hits and misses.
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 3
BPT COLOR AD
Spark Contents
On the Cover art and design jeff back jill monson
Volume XXI Issue CXLVI
Spark covers the importance of Ohio in the upcoming presidential election as well as the issues that most concern American voters.
This Issue
58
09
Quarterly Exam Change The Board has decided to change students’ quarterly exam schedule.
14 Reach Out Lakota
Shortages have affected Reach Out Lakota’s ability to help local families.
17 Special Report: Cancer
Spark continues its cancer coverage with a story on the McKenna family.
23 Leading the Fashion World Political leaders not only influence the government, but also today’s fashion.
26 Rigoart
East junior Kyle Perrigo has 14,000 followers on instagram for his art.
14
23
31 Ohio in the Election
As the 2012 election approaches, the candidates fight for Ohio’s votes.
56 Album Reviews
Editor Jeff Back reviews Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ The Heist.
58 Exclusive Interview
Spark spends time with Youtubesensation Nathan and Caleb Montgomery
70
26
60 Measuring Up
After three years as the football coach Rick Haynes has established his team.
70 Preseason Training
East varsity players explain how training affects the rest of the season.
74 Head to Head
Spark staffers go head to head on the issue of the electoral college.
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 5
opinion | letter to the editor
“Old teachers are just as qualified as younger teachers” While I don’t disagree that young teachers have a certain vibrancy and fresh perspective, as a twenty-eight year veteran of the teaching profession, I greatly object to being painted with the brush of complacency as implied in Irfan Ibrahim’s remarks in “Teacher Layoffs: Merit vs. Seniority.” I invite you, Irfan, to sit in my classroom and see if this old dog can’t teach you a literary trick or two. Clearly, you haven’t heard any of Mrs. Huddilston’s choirs sing lately or checked out her webpage, lakotaeastvoices.com. Mrs. Deak gets here every morning by 6:30. I know because I see her walking in when I arrive. Last spring she came to my room seeking advice because she wanted to teach a novel—in a science class. Mrs. Coats-Haan keeps a webpage for her classes and can teach us all about technology as well as physics.
Website Commentary
You must never have walked past Mrs. Lamb’s class. No sleeping on her watch—and you’d better live and breathe calculus. She certainly does. She gives up her lunch twice a week to tutor struggling math students. Ms. Reid and Mrs. Smardon meet several times a week to plan and craft new ideas for their sophomore classes. Mr. Lindeman assists nearly every group in this school, including the Spark, with any number of fundraisers in addition to his teaching duties. Mrs. Feltman and Mr. Hamilton are out jogging in the dark and even in the rain in order to be examples of the fitness they emphasize in their physical education classes. And last time I checked, your own Spark advisor was still climbing ladders and desks to inspire young journalists. You’re right—he can’t jump onto those desks anymore, but he’ll be receiving the Trailblazer Award at the National Journalism Convention in November, which is given to advisors who continue to push the envelope. -Bobbi Hume, East teacher
“East’s exam schedule change is detrimental to students” Over the course of two long and exhausting weeks, six exams suddenly turned into 12. The exams haven’t changed in scope since they are technically split into two parts, but the cons to this new schedule outweigh the pros. The biggest issue with this new schedule is the amount of homework students will have on top of studying. Rather than solely focusing on exams, which contribute to 20 percent of our semester grades, students will be trying to study for exams on top of completing homework and projects for every class each day. In addition, many teachers have privately stated to students their own disappointment in the new schedule. Some feel it is unnecessary to bombard students with homework while they prepare for exams, while others have had to
www.lakotaeastspark.com
Do you think employees and workers should be able to express their political opinions without the risk of getting fired?
Morgan Bain’s
Indifferent - 3%
Wow Morgan this is amazing! You are such a good writer! I always worry about this at work. But I’ve come to the point where I’ll speak my mind anyways, because a part-time teenage job isn’t that important to me. It must be really hard for your dad, though, because there’s a lot riding on his job. Thank you for writing so well about such an interesting topic! -Emily Baur
No, employees shouldn’t express their political opinions Yes, employees should 15% be able to express their political opinions without the risk of getting fired 81%
“Political Silence at the Workplace”
6 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
deal with fixing exam formats to satisfy the new 50-minute time limit for each exam portion. Some teachers have said that one main reason for the new schedule is the fact that a handful of teachers spend a few periods at East and then travel to the freshman campus or West. Apparently, these teachers will not be able to get to certain periods on time in order to proctor the exam in a timely manner as the original schedule consists of two or three exams daily, all of which are back-to-back and separated only by ten-minute bells. Instead of hiring substitutes, why not ask secretaries, teacher aides, interns, or PTSO members to proctor the exam? It does not take any special training to pass out scantrons and test booklets and watch the clock. I don’t want homework on top of studying for 12 exams. I don’t want to take final unit tests while studying for exams. I want to prepare for college and take exams over a few days rather than two weeks. Everyone needs a break. I want to exercise my freedom of petition and make a stand for what I believe in and earnestly want. And after writing this letter and spending time petitioning for signatures to fight this new exam schedule, on which I have already received 300, nothing may change. What is the worst thing that can happen? The administration listens to the student body’s opinion, considers it, and says ‘no.’ No harm is done; just opinions are expressed, and we hope our voices are heard. -Ashley Evans, East senior
To Share Your Thoughts or to Read More Stories and Comments Online, Visit Our Website at:
www.lakotaeastspark.com GOT SOMETHING
TO SAY?
The Spark, which provides an open forum for students, faculty, subscribers, and community members, encourages letters to the editor. Letters can be sent to the publication at the address on the following page, dropped off in the journalism classroom (room 118), comments on our online stories and tweets/comments to our social media accounts below. Letters must be signed and the staff reserves the right to edit letters for length, grammar, invasion of privacy, obscenity or potential libel. The opinion editors will contact letter writers for confirmation. email | letters@lakotaeastspark.com
opinion | letter from the editor
Spark
2012-13 Staff
c/o Lakota East High School 6840 Lakota Lane Liberty Township, OH 45044 Phone: (513) 759-8615 ext. 15118 Email: admin@lakotaeastspark.com
Editor-in-Chief Jeff Back Editor-in-Chief Sophia Li Editor-in-Chief Natasha Rausch Business Manager Graphics Manager Photo Manager Associate Photo Manager Webmaster Writing Coach News Managing Editor Lifestyle Managing Editor Package Managing Editor Entertainment Managing Editor Sports Managing Editor Opinion Managing Editor Art Managing Editor Public Relations Director Public Relations Director Technology Director Survey Coordinator Copy Director Copy Director News Editor News Editor News Editor Lifestyle Editor Lifestyle Editor Lifestyle Editor Package Editor Package Editor Package Editor Package Editor Entertainment Editor Entertainment Editor Entertainment Editor Sports Editor Sports Editor Sports Editor Opinion Editor
Hannah Lee Irfan Ibrahim Ellen Fleetwood Michael Tedesco Emily Chao Jasmine Tuazon Mohinee Mukherjee Kaitlin Lange Zach Fulciniti Dillon Mitchell John Grasty Nugeen Aftab Jack Dombrowski Amber Jagpal Maddie McGarvey Arvind Madhavan Sam Hauck Onur Eroglu Katie Masterson Lauren Fang Daphne Ocran Shervani Patel Marissa Alsip Halley Davidson Rachel Hartwick Morgan Bain Alexa Chryssovergis Angela Ferguson Claire Schomaker Chris Bowling Hannah Eads Josh Shi Sydney Aten Kyle Culp Claire Middleton Meeta Bhardwaj
News Photo Editor Renée Noe Package Photo Editor Kenzie Walters Sports Photo Editor Nick Kanaly Business/PR Associate Business/PR Associate Business/PR Associate Business/PR Associate Technology Associate Technology Associate
Madyson Alexander Jack Mangold Molly Myers Mansi Patel Rahul Mukherjee Dan Turner
Advisor Dean Hume Spark is a publication that is produced at Lakota East High School. The magazine is completely student-generated through the efforts of the Journalism I, Journalism II and Journalism III-Honors classes. The publication material may not always reflect the views of the Lakota Local School District or the publication as a whole. Content is controlled and edited by the staff editors. The staff will publish only legally protected speech adhering to the legal definitions of libel, obscenity and invasions of privacy. The publication is produced every five weeks on recycled paper. Production costs are covered through advertising, subscription sales and fundraisers. The purpose of Spark is to inform the students, faculty, and community members of news, information and issues that may influence or affect them.
Jeff
Back
From the Editor Michael Richard was the perfect presidential candidate. A senator from Massachusetts, he had it all: the smile, the voice, the suave black-rimmed glasses that added the perfect air of intelligence. His platform, carefully crafted by myself and 48 other rising high school seniors, was untouchable. His handshake was firm, yet inviting. Reassuring, even. The kind that said “I’m here to help.” Of the 97 other delegates to the 2012 American Legion Boys’ Nation program, he remembered each and every name. If there had been a baby, he would’ve kissed it. Richard could speak. He was trustworthy. He inspired others with his words. He made me feel comfortable. If ever there was a candidate in whom I had complete confidence, it was Richard. But he lost, 51-47, to Jonathan Hess, a senator from Alabama. Dumbfounded, I racked my brain for a reason, any reason, to explain how Richard had lost the presidential race at Boys’ Nation 2012 in Washington DC. Then it hit me. He’d been too nice. No candidate could be that nice during the debate and win. Richard had let Hess speak during Hess’ turn. Richard couldn’t have followed the rules and still come out on top. Or maybe it was his lack of a presence on social media sites. Yes, that was it. To win, he had needed to tweet about his campaign progress and planks. He had needed to post a picture of his visit to the Lincoln memorial on Facebook so that voters really knew he was a man of the people. No, it was his running mate.
Joe Aumuller. Chicago Joe. The kid wasn’t serious enough. It was obvious. They didn’t have a chance. It could have been the thirdparty members. But wait, it couldn’t have been the third-party members. This was Boys’ Nation. There were two parties. The presidential and vice presidential candidates weren’t together on a ticket; they ran separately. There was no social media coverage. And we were 98 high school seniors hand picked from across the nation to attend a weeklong leadership program in Washington DC—we had the discipline to follow the rules of a simple debate. So Richard didn’t lose for any of those reasons. Most likely, he lost at the hands of a party defector. While Boys’ Nation may have provided a great experience to partake in debates and elect a president, it was in no way comparable to the 2012 presidential race. The brevity of Boys’ Nation neglected the majority of the real determining factors in a race for the White House. This issue, Spark takes a look at the 2012 presidential election. But rather than simply chat about the candidates and predict a winner, Spark delves into what really decides our nation’s next president. Whether it be the effects of TV debates on undecided voters, the importance of the nine swing states, including Ohio, or even student involvement in political organizations, Spark is there to discuss not only the suspected result of the election, but why and how the result came to be.
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 7
news | online
Scan this QR Code to continue reading the stories below and other stories online at lakotaeastspark.com
National Honor Society Will Hold Fundraiser
Fish Fry Supports Local Firefighters
All registered bone marrow donors had their cheeks swabbed to see if they have a potential match.
story raika casey photo madi root
story madison shelton photo abbey russell
The East National Honor Society (NHS) held a meeting on Thurs. Oct. 18 to induct fall senior members and explain upcoming fundraisers to the group. The first fundraiser will be a Disney-themed Barnes and Noble Book Fair, which will be held on Nov. 24 from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. NHS co-advisor and East English teacher Erin Schneider said that the organization has maintained a good relationship with Barnes and Noble over the years and that is one of the main reasons they are doing this fundraiser again. Last year, in a two-day period, NHS made $700 from this fundraiser. NHS Sydney Aten has no fear this group... [continued...]
His shoes were on the wrong feet. Sirens blared as he stumbled to the truck, groggy from yet another late night on the job. He had to hurry. Four more minutes until the truck left the station. After 28 years, Lyn Walraven became used to the late nights. While on the Liberty Township Fire Department, Walraven described his career as exhilarating and exciting. Eventually, he was even able to put his boots on the right feet in no time at all. As Walraven became older, he knew that his time on the fire department was limited because of the physical strain on his body. He still wanted to do something that helped people. [continued...]
NHS officers and fundraising committee head Jasmine Tuazon discuss the fundraisers.
East senior Meghan Gibbons is one of six National Merit Semifinalists
Niederman Farm Holds Bone Marrow Drive story madison shelton l photo justin york She heard the news on Sept. 9, 2010. Her doctors told her that it was Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Her only chance to remain a healthy wife and mother was to undergo a bone marrow transplant. Erika Turner, one of the thousands of cancer patients referred to the National Bone Marrow Registry each year, did not have a DNA match in her family, but her doctors found a donor who matched. A few months later on Dec. 2, Turner was given Magoon’s bone marrow. The procedure saved Turner’s life. She successfully completed remission and went home cancer-free. As her life was returning to normal, she was contacted by Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts, who at the time was preparing to undergo a bone marrow transplant. [continued...]
Local firefighters head out from the annual Liberty Township Fish Fry after being called to an emergency.
Board of Education Gauges Progress with STEAM2 Using Student Demos story mohinee mukherjee In order to experience and view first hand the work of the new Science, Technology, Engineering, Applied Arts, Mathematics and Medical (STEAM2) class known as Design and Modeling, the Lakota Local School District Board of Education convened for its regularly scheduled meeting on Mon. Oct. 8 at Hopewell Junior High School.
8 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
The Design and Modeling class is a part of Project Lead The Way, an organization that develops the curriculum for STEAM2 classes. Doug Noxsel teaches Design and Modeling to seventh graders at Liberty Junior High School, and this is the first year the class is being taught. “I’d like to say how impressed I am that the Lakota and Butler Technology have forged
a path for these students to be competitive in STEAM2 fields,” Noxsel said. “I love the direction we’re going with it, and I love being a part of it.” During the meeting, the Board had the opportunity to work with junior high students who are in the STEAM2 class and engage in a competition. [continued...]
East senior Ashley Evans has another student sign her petition.
news | school
TEST CHANGES LEAD TO PROTEST Students complain after East and Lakota West High School administrators implemented a new quarterly exam schedule. story claire middleton | photo illustration michael tedesco
A
nticipating a three-day exam schedule of 60-90 minutes per assessment, East and Lakota West high school students and teachers alike were taken by surprise when the Lakota Local School District administration decided to implement a two-week schedule of 55 minute exams for the first quarter of the 2012-13 school year. According to East principal Suzanna Davis, there has been no consistency in the quarter assessment schedules over the last couple of years. The new schedule, however, vastly differs from last year’s modified block schedule, in which students had anywhere between one and three exams a day and an early release. The two week exam schedule will allow teachers to continue their lesson plans with more instructional time. “When we were working on these assessments, teachers were very concerned with losing instructional time,” Davis said. “[Before], students would often spend several days in a class reviewing or they’d take an assessment in that class, go back the next day and sit there. What we tried to do is see how we could use our current schedule and fit the assessments into that so teachers can continue instructing.” Students have become aware of the new assessment schedule, and opposition has grown to such an extent that East senior Ashley Evans has begun a petition at the start of first quarter exams, which currently has about 500 signatures, in order to revert back to the old schedule. “When I first heard about [the schedule
change,] my first reaction was ‘Why?’” Evans said. “To me, it was completely insane. During the two weeks we’re going to have six classes of exams, so it will really be like taking 12 exams.” Teachers such as Advanced Placement (AP) European history teacher Carolyn Smardon see both the pros and cons with the switch to the two-week
schedule. “[In the old exam schedule] it was hard to fit [the entire curriculum] in with the little amount of time given,” Smardon said. Despite the positive effects of the new
“When I first heard about [the schedule change,] my first reaction was ‘Why?’ To me, it was completely insane. During the two weeks we’re going to have six classes of exams, so it will really be like taking 12 exams.” schedule for her AP students, Smardon also said that the change may have some problems. “In social studies, we had to split our tests up, which I don’t like because kids get in the mode to take one test,” said Smardon, who also teaches U.S. History to sophomores. “Now we’re going to be doing half of [the exams] on one Friday and the other half on the next Friday.” Not all of the teachers at East, however, have a problem with the new exam schedule. One of 19 traveling teachers, Kathleen Foldy, who teaches English at the East main campus and freshman campus buildings, is comfortable
with the change. “[The new exam schedule] doesn’t bother me at all because were not adjusting the schedule,” Foldy said. “All the classes are the same, so it’s just going to be a normal day. In fact its nice to have a day to watch students take tests and do work that I normally can’t do.” While some teachers must travel between the buildings, every teacher has to adjust their exams to fit two 55 minute intervals per week. “Our job this year was to take the exams we had last year, which were supposed to take place in 60-90 minutes and make them take place in 55 minutes,” Foldy said. Although administrators and teachers hope that breaking up the exams over the course of two weeks will improve scores, many students such as East junior Poonam Desai feel that the new exam schedule is more stressful. “Teachers are going to keep giving us homework,” Desai said. “They’re not going to just stop teaching for two weeks. They’re going to be teaching us new things and we will have to study [for exams] as well. We have things going on [outside of school,] and now [the teachers and administrators are] dragging out exams.” Other administrators such as Lakota West principal Elgin Card understand how some students may not favor this new schedule. He said that having the test broken up should cause less stress for the students. “Students may not like it as much, and I think that’s because they like the early release days,” Card said. “However, I think that because the tests are in smaller portions, there will be less cramming for one big test, and students will prepare and do very well.” According to Card, after the first quarter assessments, the administrators will reevaluate the new schedule to see how the students did and then make any necessary changes. However many students, including Evans, think the exam schedule needs to be changed now. “If no one challenges it, then it’s probably going to stay [like this],” Evans said. “I’ve talked to a lot of underclassmen who have experienced the old schedule, and they want to change it back.” SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 9
news | district
C
ommunity
onversations After three levy failures over the past two-and-a-half years, the Lakota Local School District Board of Education decided against issuing a levy for the November ballot, for the purpose of gathering more input from the community about district matters. story madison shelton infographic marissa alsip jack mangold photo ellen fleetwood
F
or the past 13 years, Kelley Casper has worked adamantly to educate the public about Lakota Local School District’s financial situation. During her time as a prominent member of the Yes Committee, the district’s pro-levy group, she has served on the neighborhood network board and has organized rallies in support of the levy. Casper, a former teacher and the current East Parent Teacher Student Organization president, said she has always felt passionate about Lakota. One of the main reasons her family moved into the area was to ensure that their children would be placed in the best schools, but with the failure of three
10 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
consecutive levies, she feels that the district is struggling. During this past summer, the Lakota Board of Education had to decide whether it would place another levy on the November ballot. With having a presidential election this year, where more voters will be drawn to the polls, the Board was tempted to put another levy on the ballot. Casper has mixed feelings about Lakota’s decision to not have a levy on the ballot for the upcoming election. “We did think about the voter turnout for the presidential election,” Casper said. “At the same time, we still didn’t know what [dollar amount to make the levy so that] the
community would vote yes for it.” Ultimately, the Board decided to bypass the election because it would have new state mandates to uphold, a series of budget cuts to evaluate and a community to better understand before it placed another levy on the ballot. Reevaluating the community’s opinions about the district and past levies is very important to the Board. One way it hopes to begin discussions is through a program called “Community Conversations.” During these hour and a half discussions at various Lakota schools, citizens are free to voice their thoughts about the district. “The important piece is stepping back and really looking at our community,” Lakota
news | district superintendent Karen Mantia said. “We need to reach out to our community, talk with them and find out what their needs are to get a greater understanding of where we need to go.” By improving the dialogue within the community, the Board hopes to better understand residents’ needs so that when the time comes, Lakota will be able to pass a levy. “‘Community Conversations’ is designed to gather information,” said Casper, who has attended some of these discussions. “The Board can take this information and put a levy on the ballot that the community will hopefully pass.” Beyond conversing with the community, another important aspect of maintaining the district’s budget is the ability to look into the future and predict where the district will be years from now. Lakota treasurer Jenni Logan prepared the estimate of how the budget will look in the next few years so that the Board can decide when they will need a levy and can plan their finances accordingly. “I help the Board determine if there is a need for the levy,” Logan said. “If so, we determine the millage, or money amount, based on the five-year forecast.” Part of looking ahead into the next five years is analyzing the impact of new state laws
on the entire district. These laws often cost the district money, which is another reason the Board, did not want a levy on the ballot. For example, one law that the Board has to consider is the Third Grade Guarantee taking effect the 2013-2014 school year. This law states that all third graders in Ohio must read at a third grade reading level before they can move onto fourth grade. The Board has to take this mandate from the state and analyze the third grade reading test scores. If the scores are
REDUCTIONS MADE BY THE SCHOOL BOARD LAST SPRING $1.2 million - Preschool $1.9 million - Elementary $1.6 million - Junior High $2.7 million - High School $3.5 million - Administration information lakota board of education minutes
low, the Board may have to hire more reading specialists to boost the scores, increasing the district’s expenditures. “Sometimes these mandates look really good when they are done at state level,” Board president Ben Dibble said. “When it is translated down to the Board, we have to look at how it will impact our budget.”
On the other hand, Lakota has already made $10.5 million in cuts last year that have affected 141 teaching, classroom aid and staff positions as well as several electives. Because these cuts were made at the end of last year, the Board did not want to put another levy on the ballot before they knew how the cuts were going to affect the schools. The Little Miami School District also opted against voting on a tax levy on November. Last year, Little Miami finally passed a $13.95 million levy by just 72 votes, enough to help the schools with their financial issues. “Nine tries for a levy is enough,” Little Miami Communications Coordinator Melinda Briggs said. “Our electorate is tired. Because we were able to get out of the fiscal emergency with our last levy, we don’t want to try for another at the moment.” While neighboring school districts have passed levies, Lakota is still calculating the amount of money voters will support to financially match the new state mandates and recent budget cuts. The Board and the Yes Committee are determined that Lakota will pass a levy in the future. “Lakota continues to have a good reputation as a strong school district,” Casper said. “That doesn’t change the fact that we need to fix our funding issues. Passing a levy will do that.” SM
The Path to the Ballot August Lakota treasurer Jenni Logan gives a tive-year forecast of the Lakota budget. Vote
Nov. 6 Community members vote on the levy.
If rejected, the Board decides what cuts need to be made.
The Board decides to either put a levy on the ballot or to wait until the next year to decide
In order for the Board to vote on whether or not there will be a levy on the ballot, a member has to make a motion.
The PTSO holds forums where community members can express concerns with the levy.
The PTSO makes donations and advertises the levy, as board members must remain unbiased.
October The Board decides what programs they want to pay for that year.
ta
Lako
The community can voice opinions through signs in yards, T-shirts, etc. The next school year If passed, the Board’s plans are paid for and enacted.
The total amount of the levy is calculated and officially put on the ballot for that year’s election
PREVIOUS LEVIES March 2004 Nov. 2004 Feb. 2005 Nov. 2005 May 2010 Nov. 2010 Nov. 2011
9.3 Mills 5.5 Mills 5.5 Mills 5.6 Mills 11.8 Mills 7.1 Mills 4.75 Mills
FAILED FAILED FAILED PASSED FAILED FAILED FAILED
information jenni logan, karen mantia, ben dibble
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 11
news | school news | school
Lakota students sit in class studying. Attendance is one of the factors graded on the Ohio school district report card.
AWAITING THE GRADE
While some school districts in Ohio are being invesitgated for allegedly altering attendance records, districts like Lakota had to wait for the official report card to be released. In the preliminary report, however, the district did receive an excellent with distinction rank. story and infographic daphne ocran I photo illustration justin york
T
he Lakota Local School District is on a waiting list this year. The district is one of many across Ohio that will not receive a full school district report card for the 2011-12 school year until January. Originally, the data for the reports was expected to be available at the end of August. This delay is due to investigations into a possible scandal in which a few of Ohio’s public school districts have tampered with attendance records in order to improve their respective performance rankings. In early September, the Ohio Board of Education (OBE) voted unanimously not to release the preliminary data for the 2011-12 school year because of an ongoing investigation by state auditor David Yost into alleged irregularities in the reporting of attendance records in several school districts. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, these districts include Lockland Local School District, Columbus City Schools and Toledo Public Schools. The investigation is looking primarily into the practice of un-enrolling and then re-enrolling
12 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
students who are often absent and or who do not perform well on exams in order to boost performance rankings, because only students who are continuously enrolled in a school district are counted when evaluating records for district report cards. “We received anonymous tips that specific districts may have been inappropriately manipulating their attendance data,” Ohio Department of Education (ODE) superintendent Michael Sawyers told the Spark. “Our goal is that all districts will take the collection and reporting of data seriously and keep the best interest of students in mind. We are giving our full cooperation to the Auditor’s office, and we will continue to assist in this matter until it concludes.” OBE President Debe Terhar was concerned about the prospect of tampering in the formulation of data for district report cards. “It is incredibly important to remember the data used to make critical decisions that impact students across this state is accurate,” Terhar said. “Our overall goal is to ensure the data
released is accurate and meaningful to Ohio’s citizens.” Report releases were postponed in September after Yost’s report at the Sept. 10 OBE meeting regarding the issue. Although Lakota is not one of the schools under investigation by the auditor’s office, the district must wait for its results to be validated and released in January. “They have what they have to do,” Lakota assistant superintendent Rob Vogelmann said. “We have nothing to hide here in Lakota. I would hope that districts wouldn’t intentionally do things like that. I don’t know what the philosophy or standpoint may be in the districts that are in question, but nothing’s official at this point.” The ODE has stated that the information is not being withheld to punish all school districts. “We want to be clear that the delay in the release of report cards is not an attempt to blame all districts for the alleged bad actions of a few,” Sawyers said. “We want to commend the school districts who have accurately submitted
news | school their data in a timely manner year after year.” According to WKYC.com, five school districts have been determined to tamper with their attendance records as of Oct. 23, 2012. While the investigation continues, the ODE has released preliminary data for the report cards. “This release includes rating, performance index and attendance rate information,” Terhar said. “All of these remain subject to change pending the outcome of the investigation by the auditor of the state.” The auditor’s office has also issued an interim report regarding the investigation’s progress. “We are heartened that the interim report released by the Auditor of State in September shows that most Ohio schools or districts visited have been following the rules for reporting data to the state.” Sawyers said. “We remain committed to exploring additional safeguards that can be put in place to ensure that timely and accurate information is made available to the citizens of Ohio.” District report cards are issued by the ODE every school year, and consist of scoring divided by building and student grade level. The accountability system is made up of four different components, including State indicators, Performance Index Score, Value Added and Adequate Yearly Progress. Students from third to seventh grade are assessed on their reading and mathematics requirements, while eighth graders are evaluated on reading, writing, mathematics and science requirements.
GRADING
Ohio Graduation Test results are also included in the report card for the assessments of 10th and 11th grade students. ODE understands the importance of the release of report card data. “Our agency has a responsibility to ensure accuracy in the data we share with parents, students, and our communities at-large,” Sawyers said. “The report cards are intended to give an accurate picture of how well schools are doing and we do not believe that they
5
school districts so far have been found to use “questionable practices” regarding attendance records as of Oct. 23, 2012.
information wkyc.com
should be released with a cloud hanging over their reliability.” The lack of this information has been an adjustment for the administration in Lakota in terms of communication with residents of the district. “[The community] wants to know, ‘Where are you at?’” Vogelmann said. “We’re always used to knowing, and everybody wants to know as you head into the year where you finished.
EAST
It’s kind of tough because [our official status] is just kind of hanging out there.” Not only does the missing data make communicating results with district residents challenging, but the situation also makes it more difficult for the administration to evaluate where the district’s strengths and weaknesses lie. “[Because of the delay,] we’re not getting the information [to the public] at the same time that we’re used to,” Vogelmann said. “We take the information that comes from [the ODE] very seriously, and [the results] help us with direction setting and seeing if we have needs that need to be addressed. With the delay, it may put some of those needs a little behind.” In the 2010-11 school year, Lakota met 26 out of 26 state standards and was ranked “Excellent with Distinction” for the tenth year in a row. According to the preliminary records released on Oct. 17, Lakota is on track to receive the “Excellence with Distinction” ranking yet again. As for the full report, Lakota anticipates the same, if not better, results from two years ago. “I think we’ve continued to meet kid’s needs and improve in some of those areas that we’ve focused on,” Vogelmann said. “It’ll be nice to see what those official scores are, and we hope to see some improvement. We anticipate good things. We’ve got our fingers crossed.” SM Read Mohinee Mukherjee’s story on district policies at
lakotaeastspark.com
A breakdown of Lakota East’s scores on the 2011-12 school district report card, based on Ohio Graduation Tests (OGT).
OGT Averages for 10-11 grade students Reading - 97.15% Mathematics - 94.3% Writing - 97.65% Science - 91.6% Social Studies - 95% Total Average - 95.14%
Attendance and Graduation Rates In the 2010-2011 school year, East’s attendance rate was 98.7% The graduation rate from the previous school year was 94.3%
State Indicators Met and Designation
12/12
East met Ohio state indicators and was designated “Excellent” by the state
Adequate Yearly Progess East did not meet Ohio’s Adequate Yearly Prgress (AYP) Standards in reading and mathematics in the “students with disablities” subgroup information www.lakotaonline.com
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 13
news | community
OUT
REACHING Each year, Reach Out Lakota strives to help community members in need, but due to shortages, difficulties arise. story madison shelton | photo renee noe
A
team of volunteers sorts food by brand and expiration date. Trucks pull up with more donations. Clothes hang on overcrowded racks by size and type. Young children run around while their parents try to shop. To an outsider, this scene would look overwhelming, but to the staff at the Reach Out Lakota food pantry, working in this environment has become a Monday routine. Reach Out Lakota has been serving people once a week for the past 19 years. However, the six hours spent weekly to help clients in need has become slightly more hectic. According to Reach Out Lakota executive director Lourdes Ward, a 10-15 percent increase in new families takes place each year. “It’s a sardine can in here,” Ward said. “When people come, we don’t have time to talk slow. We just have to take care of them, so we can move on to helping the next family.” Relying solely on the donations from community members, the staff currently has to meet the food and clothing needs of 500 active families, who are of different ages and come from different backgrounds. As the number of clients increases year after year, Reach Out Lakota is having a difficult time providing for more families, and the organization is always in need of donations. According to Ward, one barrel or shopping cart of items is approximately the amount of supplies one family of four takes home in a visit. “The big misconception is that we just have poor people who come here,” Ward said. “That’s not true. It’s just the working poor. The majority of our families are people who don’t have anything past a high school degree or specialized training.” Clients, who are allowed three visits per year, are registered and given a food and clothing card specific to their needs. These cards help to ration the donated items, so that everyone is given an equal share. To keep track of the clients, the staff creates a file for each family. The files are also used to refer the families to other food banks if necessary. “We stress responsibility,” Ward said. “Every three months, clients have to bring in proof of income and their address. After spending a year or two with us, everyone is required to attend free budgeting classes in either English or Spanish.”
14 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
In the past year, 660 adults, 284 teenagers and 679 children have been served. About half of the Reach Out Lakota families only participate in the seasonal programs, such as the back to school program, where each child receives a new backpack filled with school supplies. This school year, donations helped fill 620 backpacks for students in the Lakota district. Similarly, Thanksgiving and Christmas programs are offered to provide clients with food and gifts to give to their families. “Helping people is very rewarding,” fouryear volunteer John Bollinger said. “It’s enjoyable to meet new people and serve them at the same time.” During the summer months, Reach Out Lakota sees a steep drop in donations. One area often in need of supplies is the teenage clothing department. For example, jeans are especially needed as well as other basic clothing items. “We are always in need of new socks and underwear,” Ward said. “We ask people to buy
The staff at Reach Out Lakota currently has to meet the clothing and food needs of 500 active families. information reach out lakota
them so we can divide them up and try to give everybody at least a couple new pairs.” The clothing staff is very selective about the types of items they allow to be on display. The volunteers’ philosophy is that if they do not want to wear the clothes, neither will the clients. “Sometimes we have bags [of clothing donations] that are really good,” clothing department volunteer Brenda Daniels said. “Other times we don’t. It all just depends.” The variation in the quality of donations and the lack of supplies is not only noted by the Reach Out Lakota volunteers, but also by East student government advisor John Lindeman. “Times have changed,” Lindeman said. “We
Volunteer Brenda Daniels shows off shoes donated to Reach Out Lakota.
used to do a massive food drive [for Reach Out Lakota at the main campus], but now only the [East] Freshman building does a pretty successful food drive.” In the past, Reach Out Lakota has had many productive food drives. One was executed through a scavenger hunt at Adena Elementary, which resulted in three trucks of donations. Additionally, the collections at last year’s East vs. Lakota West football game filled two storage pods. Despite these results, the staff still wants to see more food drives in the area. “The phone is going to start ringing off the hook with everyone trying to do their fifteen hours of community service,” Ward said. “Because we are only open one evening, we cannot take a lot of kids. We suggest the food drive alternative because that’s an easy way to fit community service around your busy schedule.” With the constant need for food and clothing donations, Reach Out Lakota is looking for ways to make it easier for anyone to set up their own food drive. “You can either call us or go to our website where there is a link to set up a food drive,” food inventory system head Tim Harmon said. Reach Out Lakota is trying to give individuals the opportunity to start a food drive because, similar to many food banks across the country, the food pantry is having trouble meeting the needs of more clients with limited donations. Even with these challenges, the Reach Out Lakota staff works hard to ensure that their clients’ needs are kept private. “We are very protective of our families,” Ward said. “Everything is confidential. We try to be discreet and respect people’s dignity. Sometimes we just have to be there to offer a kind smile.” SM
news | school
In order to combat plagiarism, teachers are utilizing new technology to gauge students and encourage them to
TURNITIN story shervani patel photo ellen fleetwood graphic maggie schaller, irfan ibrahim
E
Students are taking advantage of being able to turn in their papers the night they are due at Turnitin.com
ast has implemented the use of turnitin. com, a plagiarism prevention website, in order to assist English teachers by reducing the the time it takes to grade one paper. The website also gives teachers an originality report informing them of whether a student has plagiarized or not. Turnitin.com was created by four University of California Berkley graduate students and is designed to detect plagiarism in students' written work. The parent company of turnitin, iParadigms, is also included in the website. Turnitin also provides WriteCheck, which allows students to individually check their papers for plagiarism and citation problems before submitting them. "[The four students] noticed a lot of plagiarism in papers at their college and people trying to pass other peoples' words off as their own," Turnitin vice president of Marketing Chris Harrick said. "[The students] created the website 12 years ago and originally meant for the website to only be for peer review, but over time they added more features to the website." East's English department is the first to use turnitin.com in the school, because of problems with plagiarism in past years. "We have heard that there has been a rise in the number of students plagiarizing," East counselor Jill Kelechi said. "Teachers have been complaining much more than usual. [Hopefully the use of Turnitin] will help decrease those numbers." Students plagiarize for many reasons, including not having time to complete assignments or not understanding them. "Sometimes the students don't know how to cite sources properly," turnitin.com's Vice President of Marketing Chris Harrick said. "That's the main reason plagiarism happens. Or, students don't care, and they won't pay attention to their citations." Despite having to pay two dollars per
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 15
news | school student each year, many of the teachers have become very fond of the website for various reasons. Instead of collecting the students' papers during class time, teachers are able to have students submit their papers directly to the website. "Right now, [Turnitin] has only been rolled out to the English department, so all of the English department should be using it," Schneider said. "[Turnitin] gives teachers a chance to grade online and have electronic comments. There is also a voice feature section where teachers can leave voice comments to students." Turnitin utilizes three different records in order to check students’ citations. "Turnitin uses information from three main databases when checking for originality," Harrick said. "We use web pages from the internet, academic content and school textbooks and older papers from past students. Web pages are very helpful because, unfortunately, plagiarism is on the rise because of the internet." Many students have been using turnitin. com and are liking what they see.
"I like Turnitin because I don't have to worry about printer problems," East junior Carlin Marsh said. "Also, I can submit [my paper] after school instead of remembering to bring it to school [the day it is due]." However, not all of the students are completely fond of using it. "I prefer physically turning [a paper] in because technology fails sometimes," East junior Regan Donnell said. "You also never know if it fails to save on Turnitin.com, and your teacher would just think that you didn't [write the paper.]" Turnitin2 was also released recently. It has more updated features such as originality checking, online grading and peer review. However, not all of the students are using the features the website offers. "I just use the spelling and grammar check on Microsoft Word," Donnell said. Turnitin will also help teachers grade papers at a faster rate than when they grade by hand. Currently, Schneider has not seen an improvement in her grading time, but believes that the website will soon shorten the time. "Right now it takes about the same amount
of time [to grade papers as when I did it by hand]," Schneider said, "but I think [the time] will reduce once we get the hang of [using the website]. I have talked to others teachers whose grade time has been reduced because of Turnitin." Several of the teachers at East are finding Turnitin easy to use. "[Turnitin] is a new way to learn," East English teacher Lisa Schmaltz said. "The website is also a new way to approach grading. Once we get more practice at it, we'll become more proficient." SM
Read Alyssa Roehm’s story on East’s National Merit Semifinalists
at lakotaeastspark.com
TOOLS BEHIND TURNITIN HOW TURNITIN CHECKS FOR PLAGIARISM
10 Types of plagiarism The Clone: Submitting another person’s work, word for word, and passing it off as one’s own. The CTRL-C: Containing noteworthy portions of text from one source without any alterations. The Find-Replace: Changing key words but maintaining the essential content of the source in the paper. The Remix: Paraphrasing words from other sources and making the context fit together. The Recycle: Borrowing from one’s own previous work without citations. The Hybrid: Perfectly combining cited sources and copied passages without citing sources. The Mashup: Representing a mix of copied material without citations. The 404 Error: Including citation to non-existent or inaccurate information. The Aggregator: Including proper citation, but not including original work. The Re-Tweet: including proper citation, but relying too much on the text’s original wording. information turnitin.com
16 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
+
1) The paper is turned into its original format. 2) Turnitin finds the total percentage of borrowed material in the paper. 3) The website then finds the percentage of the paper from the schools the previous paper was turned into. 4) Sentences are highlighted if they are used in other papers, the database of papers is 220+ million.
QUICK FACTS: 20+million number of papers graded through Turnitin.com
150, 000 number of papers turnitin grows by each day
bookface.com
33
percent of papers that steal materal from a Social or Contact-Sharing Site
20 billion 220 million
Number of web pages and student papers that turnitin.com checks every paper against, respectively.
special report | cancer
fifty gallons of tea After losing his father to lung cancer, East alumnus Tim McKenna leaned on the support of his friends and family to deal with the loss. In an effort to help their friend iduring a tough time, McKenna’s friends bought him more than 200 cans of Arizona Iced Tea—his favorite drink. story amanda weisbrod | photo michael tedesco Friday, March 30, 2012, 8:00 P.M. Laurie and Pat McKenna sit in rocking chairs on their front porch. They watch lightning and listen to thunder approaching quickly. Pat hasn’t felt this well in weeks. Laurie comments on the beautiful lightning that’s casting pink and orange streaks across the sky. The children playing in the cul-de-sac notice the lightning too—they run into their homes. But Laurie and Pat just sit and wait. And listen. Then, Pat coughs, and spits over the white wooden railing. Spits blood. January, 2012 Pat’s son, Tim McKenna, pulls books and books off of the wooden shelf in his basement. Moby Dick. War and Peace. Gulliver’s
Travels. These were read once each year by Pat. The spines are worn, the covers torn and faded. And a month before “it” happened, Tim’s reading Candide by Voltaire. The novel describes optimism—asks whether happiness is worth it or not. Tim doesn’t realize it, but optimism will be one of his saving graces in the next few months. Optimism. Friendship. Family. And over 200 Arizona Iced Teas. Easter Sunday, 2012, 10:00 A.M. Tim’s asleep, and finally able to shut all thoughts of his dad out of his mind. Another distraction. The door to his room opens. “You need to wake up. Frank’s on his way over here with something for you,” Laurie says.
Each issue of Spark this year will feature a story about the effects of cancer in the community. Tim groans. What does he want? He rolls out of bed. Confusion and curiosity hit him. He peeks outside from behind the window blinds, and his eyebrows furrow even further. He sees big, dark brown curly hair. Frank Debevec’s curly hair. They’ve been friends for ten years—since they were eight. Two other good friends, Josh
After the death of his father, East alumnus Tim McKenna was given more than 200 cans of Arizona Iced Tea by his friends.
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 17
special report | cancer East alumnus Tim McKenna stands in front of the board games that his dad loved playing with the family.
Curran, and John Schroeder, help Frank carry boxes from the ‘92 Buick, grey Infiniti and silver mini SUV to the McKenna’s porch. Laurie watches from the patio door by the garage, and Tim watches from the dining room window. Then the door bell rings, and Tim answers the door. There’s no need for an explanation. Tim knows these 50 gallons of Arizona Tea are from his friends—to show their respects. Friends who write their names on the tops of the cans. To show Tim who cares for him. Ronnie Russo. Brendan Todahl. Chad
18 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
Whaley, who writes, “We are here for you” and “Stay Strong.” And many others. Why the cans? Frank had wanted to do something special. Something that Tim would remember forever. He knew Tim would hear a thousand “I’m-sorry’s” and “If-there’sanything-you-need-me-to-do-just-ask’s.” But what could possibly express 10 years of friendship? Arizona Iced Tea. Just like the kind Frank and Tim always bought from gas stations whenever they went to concerts or were just
hanging out. After “it” happened, Frank wanted to do anything he could to cheer Tim up. He came up with the idea late at night while surfing the web. More than 475 friends were added to a secret group titled, “Pat McKenna Memorial” on Facebook, and only one week later, over 200 cans of tea sat on Tim’s porch that Sunday morning. Every flavor you could imagine, but mostly Arnold Palmer—Tim’s favorite. *** Chemotherapy. MRI’s. CAT scans. Pat’s weekly routine. Today, it’s radiation. Tim drives his red Nissan truck with Pat by his side, talking about NPR and the news. They don’t talk about the treatments. Then it’s 10 minutes of Tim sitting in a waiting room. 10 minutes of reading. 10 minutes of radiation that exhausts Pat. Tim reads Walden by Thoreau, a series of essays about spiritual discovery, selfindependence, and self-reliance. Essays that keep Tim thinking of someone else’s life. 10 minutes of distraction. Pat stumbles into the waiting room, and Tim helps him into the truck. They don’t talk about the “real issue,” especially after the treatments. Pat’s too tired on the way home to talk. January 27, 2012 Pain shoots up Pat’s arm, but he doesn’t think it’s anything too serious. After two weeks pass, it’s excruciating. Pat can hardly use his right hand. Laurie sets up an appointment with an oncologist, who immediately sends him to get an MRI. They find a tumor the size of a golf ball on his spine. And a mass on his lung. Later that night, a few hours before Tim leaves for the annual East-West basketball game, he and his parents sit around the dinner table, enjoying one of Laurie’s home-cooked meals. That’s when they tell Tim. Pat has a tumor on his spine. A tumor. Tim just sits. Eats his dinner. Later, shock settles in, but fear is far from reaching him as he watches the basketball players tip-off. His dad can’t have cancer— he’s invincible, after all. Dad will be fine, the doctors aren’t positive about anything—they just need to run more tests. Wednesday—It could be cancer. They said it could be cancer. Tim struggles through the school and work day. What if it’s cancer? Thursday—Two days later. Tim doesn’t know what to think. Dad built the swing set, the baseball field on the side of the house, and the sand box. Dad. He’s a wealth of knowledge, a boardgame fanatic, and a calm, quiet, book-loving genius. Dad. He stays at home while Mom is at
special report | cancer work. He cooks, cleans, and does laundry. He loves his boys more than life itself. They say it’s cancer. Stage four lung cancer. A few weeks later, Tim sits on his twin-sized bed. After dinner, he sits, and reads and thinks. He reads an entry on CaringBridge.org—a blog that not only helps friends understand what Pat’s going through, but also helps the family cope with the stress of sickness. Through Caring Bridge, friends from China, Africa and all over the U.S. send “Flat-Pat” pictures to the family that they photoshop Pat into. Pictures that keep the family happy. Keep them laughing. The most recent journal entry makes Tim feel better. Less frightened, less unsure. Because Pat doesn’t usually talk about the “nitty-gritty.” No, Tim never talks about the treatments with his dad. Instead, he reads CaringBridge. It’s easier that way. Usually, Laurie posts updates about the treatments and how Pat’s feeling. But today is different. Today, Pat wrote an entry himself. “I know that I should be angry with God for what has happened,” Pat writes, “but to the question ‘Why me?’ there can only be one response. ‘Why not me?’” Laurie isn’t shocked either that he was diagnosed with cancer after smoking Marlboro Reds for 35 years. She’s just surprised how far along it is. Stage four lung cancer.Kevin and Tim drive home. Why didn’t they find it sooner? Friday, March 30, 2012, 8:00 P.M. Work is just as it has been on every Friday night for two years. Tim stands behind the cash register in the small ACE hardware store where Pat normally worked with him until the treatments started. Now, Pat is often too exhausted to work. But this has been one of his better weeks: he gathered the strength to clock in three days. But then the store phone rings. “You need to come home,” says Kevin, Tim’s older brother. “Dad’s coughing up blood.” Tim hangs up the phone. “Terry! I have to go!” he yells to his manager. Walking. Faster. Rain begins to fall just as Tim gets outside. Faster. Running. He jumps into the car; can’t hear music, can’t hear anything. Five minutes pass. He’s home. Laurie and Kevin scream as Tim pulls into the garage. “BACK OUT! BACK OUT!” Tim does and sees his father. Unconscious. The ambulance isn’t fast enough. Where are they? Ambulances are never fast enough. Tim holds onto Pat’s feet, Laurie and Kevin hold his arms. Pat is limp and drenched in blood. His jeans stained, his shirt ruined. They lay Pat in the front seat of the truck. Tim’s truck. Dad’s old truck. Maybe they can
get him to the hospital in time. Kevin hops in the driver’s seat. Tim gets in the back. Two hundred yards. At the corner of Kilkenny and Birkdale Drive, they meet the ambulance. Laurie and Pat ride in the ambulance. Kevin and Tim drive home. “I’m going to clean up,” Kevin says. “Go with Mom to the hospital. She needs someone with her right now.” Clean up. What does he mean, “clean up?” Then Tim sees it. An image that will burn in his mind forever. Blood. Pat’s blood. Dad’s blood. Everywhere, coating the first floor bathroom. Tim jumps into the truck and speeds to West Chester Hospital. He beats the ambulance there and waits. Five minutes pass. Five minutes of anxiety. Five minutes of questions. The sirens get louder and louder, closer and closer until finally, they arrive. Finally. Fifteen people wait anxiously for the news in an eight-by-eight room. One couch. One chair. One small coffee table. Then the doctor walks in, 30 eyes and 30 ears focusing on him. “There’s not much else we can do. I’m sorry.” Later that night, friends and family gather around the kitchen counter, unsure of what to do. Disbelief. Loss. Sadness. It begins to settle. Pat’s favorite drink, Jameson, is shared amongst everyone. And the bathroom is clean. Clean. “If our friends wouldn’t have left the hospital early to clean up the house, it would have been much worse,” Tim says. “It’s the best thing anyone could’ve done for us.” Everyone moves to the living room and begins to talk about life, about Pat. The boardgame loving, book-reading, philosophical man who would do anything for his family.
The boys understand. But Pat’s favorite dark green, fluffy chair still sits in the study. Pat’s collection of books still resides on the bookshelves in the basement. The many board games he loved to play with his family are still stored in the seven foot-tall cabinets. And the Arizona Iced Tea still sits in the basement laundry room. Two months of tea with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they still haven’t made a dent in “the stash.” Sunday, June 17, 2012 At 8:00 a.m., the skies are clear and the sun is shining. Father’s Day.
Eventually everyone moves to the living room and begins to talk about life, about Pat. The board-game loving, book-reading, philosophical man who would do anything for his family.
Two months later Two pairs of Laurie’s size-seven flip-flops lay by the garage door next to Tim’s red and white Adidas tennis shoes. On the new hardwood floor, in the new kitchen, by the new first-floor bathroom. “Why do we need a new toilet?” the boys ask Laurie. “That one’s fine, Mom.” She doesn’t realize why she feels the need to re-do the bathroom. She doesn’t know why, until they ask her. “I need to get rid of that memory!”
It’s harder than they thought. Tough to go to church that morning, tough to hear the pastor give his blessings to all the dads. Tough to plan and cook a dinner for friends. Later, Tim drives to the cemetery alone in his ACE hardware uniform. He notices the people golfing nearby, having a nice day. He also notices people at the cemetery for the same reason he is. Dad. Tim McKenna sees his father’s headstone for the first time. He thought there would be no rush to learn from Pat. That there would always be enough time. That Pat would be there for him through all of the important events in his life. That Pat was invincible. But it’s different this year. There are no Father’s Day cards. No last-minute worrying about Barnes and Noble gift certificates. No cooking a special dinner for Pat. Still, at the end of the day, the McKennas realize that they’re blessed. Blessed because Pat was such a wonderful dad. Laurie smiles and thinks to herself, how many men would have been that good at staying home? And Pat didn’t just “stay home” with the boys for ten years. He cooked, cleaned, mowed, volunteered at school and church, coached and played countless board games. He built sandcastles, a swing set and a baseball diamond. And at the end of the day, he still had time to play catch. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 19
lifestyle | fashion feature
Keeping it Classy For East junior Gannon Joyner, dressing up for school is the norm. Working two jobs during the school year, he doesn’t rely on his parents to pay for his style. story kyle culp | photo justin york
Joyner stands by his closet, holding his collection of clothes, showing his taste and love for classy style.
e strides to the cash register holding a Brooks Brothers shirt, grey with a dark blue lamb emblem on its chest. An employee rings him up, striking up a conversation about the Fossil watch on his wrist. The price appears on the screen, retail $40, price paid $13. The register closes, and he begins to walk to the door. He had searched four stores for just the right shirt. From the metallic clink of the hanger as it’s put back on a rack, to the rustling of paper as the shoe box opens, to the sound of the cash register as it closes after a big purchase, shopping is what many people look forward to. And to East junior Gannon Joyner a paycheck is not necessarily a dollar amount. It’s a new outfit. Joyner puts a good portion of the money he makes from his jobs into buying clothing. And while being able to dress nice may be the main objective of his shopping, hunting for that best deal only makes every purchase sweeter. “You don’t have to be rich to wear nice clothes. You just need to know where to look,” Joyner says. “People just don’t know how to shop [for good deals]. That is the root of the problem. Say I want a sweater, I go around to all the stores I know have nice sweaters, like J. Crew and Polo, and see which ones are running the best sales that day.” No store at the Cincinnati Premium Outlets is left unturned when Joyner is searching for his next favorite outfit. Spending up to 30 minutes deliberating on a possible blazer purchase is not out of the ordinary. But for Joyner, the results are worth it. “A lot of people wonder why I dress the
way I do,” Joyner says. “It’s for a feeling of respect—respect for myself and from my peers and adults. If I’m bumming it every day, how can anyone take me seriously?” Joyner’s style has changed drastically since his freshman year. He used to wear brands like Hurley, Volcom and Air Jordan, and he had the classic Justin Bieber haircut swooped across his face. As sophomore year ran its course, however, he became more engrossed in his outer appearance. Hurley became J. Crew, Volcom changed to Polo, Air Jordans turned into Clarks dress shoes, and his Bieber haircut transformed into a classy James Dean inspired slick-back. Gannon’s mom, Shelly Joyner, sees the changes in the way he dresses as positive. “He's gone from ‘skater dude’ to preppy,” Shelly says. “I like his style now. It’s unexpected for his age. He is well dressed and professionallooking. We don’t have to worry about what he’s wearing when he walks out the door.” Gannon’s professional look caught the attention of his most recent employer, Clarks, a store that sells British-style dress shoes. Clarks manager Sara Bradley noticed him as he came into the store dressed in his usual attire—a silk tie, sweater, dress shoes and chinos. “The first time he came in he just presented himself so well,” Bradley says. “He has style. He was a really good customer for us before and I wondered why he wasn’t working for us. Now it’s clear he is full of confidence and our customers don’t see him as a kid because of the way he handles himself.” Gannon impresses not only strangers, but
H
also his classmates. His best friend, East junior Scott Harris, knows how tight his friend’s schedule is, and admires that he still has time to spend an extra 20 minutes every morning to get ready. “[Gannon] balances two jobs between school and marching band while maintaining a 3.5 GPA,” Harris says. “But he still has the time to [dress up] almost every day. He inspires me to look my best whenever I go to school.” While Harris and other people admire Gannon’s style, some don’t understand his reasoning behind trying to dress more like a businessman than the typical high schooler. Even though Gannon works 35 hours a week during the school year at Fossil and Clarks to earn his spending money, calls of “spoiled” and the idea that his parents pay for everything are still common. “I get a lot of people who call me ‘rich,’ and that really offends me,” Gannon says. “It's like telling me I don't work for what I have. Working gives me a sense of individuality. [My parents] got me my first car when I turned 16 and I got my first job the same day. Since then, pretty much everything has been on me, and that’s how I like it.” Even if he has to go through the hassle of working long hours, extending his morning routine, and listening to people who may not appreciate his fashion choices, Gannon isn’t troubled by what others say regarding his style. “I’m not worried about what others think [about the outfits I wear],” Gannon says. “Nothing beats the rush you feel when you look in the mirror and love what you see.” SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 21
lifestyle | 6 things
Evans TRENDING East Senior paige
What’s
Tells East...
as told to rachel hartwick | photo ellen fleetwood
1.
L’Oreal Double Extend Mascara I love how full and long Double Extend makes my lashes. Compared to other mascaras it makes them longer, thicker, and less clumpy.
2. 3.
Peppermint Altoids
4.
Prismacolor Art Supplies
5. 6. 22 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
I always have Altoids with me. They are stronger than most mints. They’re cheap and they’re addictive.
Riding Boots These boots from b * tru clothing in Martha’s Vineyard are my favorite because they are hand-made and one of a kind. Sometimes I will get riding boots for $3, but sometimes I will splurge and buy a pair for $50.
Prismacolor art supplies are really nice quality. Their rich colors make my artwork turn out fantastic no matter what I am making.
Conair Pro YellowBird Hair Dryers
YellowBird hairdryers have high power and high heat. It takes five minutes to blow-dry my hair and it’s easy to put the diffuser on to make my hair really curly.
John Green Novels John Green’s writing is so funny and full of wisdom. I spent my whole summer reading his books. After I read his first book, I was hooked and ended up reading everything he’s written.
lifestyle | photoshoot
Leader
OF THE
FASHION world
Models Molly Biederman and Clay Han imitate styles worn by the Romneys and Obamas.
With the upcoming presidential election in November, Americans are paying more attention to the style choices of First Lady Michelle Obama and Ann Romney, who both sport different tastes in first-lady fashion. story kaitlin lange | photos michael tedesco models clay han and molly biederman
F
our years ago America was ready for a change. Americans were ready to put an end to the soaring unemployment rates and financial struggles of families across the nation. They demanded a stop to the foreclosures and failing businesses. As the 2008 presidential election approached, Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama ran on this idea of “change.” He vowed things would be different. And on election day, America voted for change. But what voters weren’t expecting when they went to the polls was a change in political fashion. As Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama emerged at the Inaugural Ball, Michelle’s clothing was noticeably different than previous first ladies’ fashion choices. She wore an ivory silk chiffon dress with only one strap embellishing her arms, something that would become a norm for Michelle. She quickly became a fashion icon for American women says Joyce Heckman, a University
of Minnesota PhD Candidate in the Design, Housing, and Apparel department. According to Heckman, previous first ladies usually opted for business-like looks. Generally, the outfits consisted of a dressy jacket paired with a skirt or dress pants. They also frequently chose traditionally bland colors, not often experimenting with different styles, and wore longer sleeves. Their apparel generally did not compliment any particular body part. “First ladies have traditionally had fairly conservative styles,” Heckman says. “When looking back on our recent first ladies, many people think of Barbara Bush’s pearls, Hilary Clinton’s headbands and pant suits, and Laura Bush’s conservative short haircut and singlecolored skirt suits.” Michelle Obama, on the other hand, has shifted away from this traditional mold. She chooses form-fitting clothes with very little sleeve length and almost always can be found in
a dress. In addition, she wears a wide range of solid colors, including bright pinks and purples. She also chooses clothing made by designers who aren’t well known, instead of the typical names first ladies often wear such as Oscar De La Renta. Through this, Michelle has brought fame to upcoming fashion designers like Jason Wu and Tracy Reese. “She is willing to take fashion risks,” Heckman says. “She is younger than our recent first ladies, and possesses a sense of style that led her to make very different wardrobe choices from her predecessors.” Michelle’s style has earned her a great deal of publicity during the past four years. She was the cover model for Vogue magazine in March 2009. Additionally, a blog called “Mrs. O” was dedicated entirely to what Michelle wore whenever she was in the public eye. “People sometimes try to argue that appearances shouldn’t matter when deciding
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 23
lifestyle | photoshoot
Left: Molly models a dress similar in style to Michelle Obama’s clothes. Middle: Clay models a typical male politician style while Molly wears an outfit similar to one Ann Romney would wear. Right: Clay wears a button down dress shirt, which is something Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would typically wear.
whom to elect into office,” Heckman says. “They argue that we should simply pay attention to what the politicians are saying and where they stand on issues that are important to us. We know, however, this is not going to happen, especially not in the era of 24/7 news and cameras following every step, and misstep, of politicians and their families.” As the competition between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election heats up, spectators have begun comparing the style choices of Ann Romney and Michelle Obama. Ann’s look is more like previous first ladies, but with a bit of an upscale suburban housewife touch. According to Lauren Rothman, founder of the fashion consulting firm Styleauteur, Ann’s style has not yet been really established. “[Ann’s] look is lacking a little bit of a signature style,” says Rothman, who has appeared on Entertainment Tonight and in Glamour magazine for her knowledge of fashion. “She is just starting to come into her own right now when it comes to dressing for the masses. The Oscar De La Renta dress that she wore to the Republican Convention was great, and if she could dress more like that, she probably would get more rave reviews from the media about her style. But not all of her outfits are quite as put together as that.” Although the dress received positive attention for its looks, Ann’s choice of clothing was criticized by Rothman and many others for the cost. The dress was priced at
24 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
On Clay: Blue shirt from H&M--$29.95 Blue and red tie from Kohls-$21.60 each White dress shirt from Kohls-$13.50 Sweater vest from Kohls-$29.99 On Molly: Pink dress from H&M-- $34.95 Black skirt from H&M--$17.95 Red cami from Kohls--$6.99 White jacket from Maurices--$49.00 more than $2,000, according to the Financial Times Fashion Editor Vanessa Friedman. On the other hand, at the Democratic National Convention, Rothman says Michelle’s dress cost around $500. Rothman does not see the expensive price of Ann’s clothes as a major flaw and does not think it will distance voters. Heckman, on the other hand, says it could have a slightly negative impact. Recent publicity has begun to show a change in her traditionally expensive purchases.
“[Ann] was recently photographed pushing a shopping cart around Costco, which is probably not something she would have done prior to campaigning with her husband,” Heckman says. “I do think she is aware that always wearing designer clothing may lead to a perception that she is a member of a very elite class and out of touch with the common voter.” While Michelle has been seen in expensive clothes like Isabel Toledo, she also shops at J. Crew and White House Black Market, stores with a middle class target audience. Because of this, J. Crew has experienced an increase in sales of styles worn by Michelle. “We have this heart sweater and I remember [Michelle] bought it [at J. Crew] maybe a year or two ago,” employee My Nguyen says. “It’s been selling out pretty well.” Rothman thinks that Michelle shopping at stores such as J. Crew helps people better relate to her. “Michelle mixes high-end and low-end designers a lot more often than previous ladies did,” Rothman says. “She is much more of a real woman in that way.” When Rothman helps individuals pick a style, she first tries to determine what the person is comfortable in so that they look more confident. She then considers how much contact that person will have with public speaking, cameras or television. According to Rothman, it’s often best to stay away from patterns when appearing on
“
lifestyle | photoshoot
Some first ladies dress . . . like there is a first lady uniform. [Michelle Obama] is redefining what it means to dress like the first lady. -Lauren Rothman, founder of Styleauteur as seen in Glamour Magazine
television. Ann rarely adheres to this rule and has frequently worn patterned tops on the campaign trail. One of her most infamous fashion moments was when she wore a bird print shirt costing $990 on a morning show. Even if the shirt had been cheap, Rothman still would have advised against wearing it. “Wearing patterns on camera can be very dizzying,” Rothman says. “It doesn’t photograph well. You really have to be careful when you are on the campaign trail because the way most voters are really relating to you is through your picture. They aren’t there at the town hall meeting you. They aren’t in the auditorium listening to your speech. They are seeing your picture.” Although style has been at the forefront of voters’ minds when discussing potential first ladies, people often pay little attention to the fashion of the presidential candidates themselves. “Fashion choices are easier for male politicians,” Heckman says. “There is basically a uniform for them: dark, conservative suits paired with a white shirt and a solid-color tie” Both Barack and Mitt are considered stylish men. Only minor details separate the two. For instance, at the Oct. 3 debate, the only noticeable difference between the two men was the different styles of ties. This slight difference in uniform was overshadowed by the actual conversation during the debate. “The hope is to remain ‘neutral-looking’ so that people will not look at the politician’s wardrobe and instead pay attention to what they have to say,” Heckman says. “However, as a society we will always pay attention to appearances, and this will continue to shade our perceptions of the politicians when we are deciding how to cast our ballots.” Regardless of who wins the upcoming November election, the next first lady will continue to be a fashion icon for American women, just as Michelle has been in her four years in the White house. “I love all the molds [Michelle] has broken,” Rothman says. “I love that she is being herself and is expressing her own style. I think some of these first ladies feel like they have to dress like a first lady and there is a first lady uniform. She isn’t wearing [the uniform]. She is redefining what it means to dress like the first lady.” SM
Clay and Molly’s business-like styles, a traditional fashion, are often worn by many politicians for a more modest tone.
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 25
lifestyle | student feature
East junior Kyle Perrigo created these artistic pieces after discovering his talent.
East junior Kyle Perrigo found a knack for art. He has a large following on Instagram and has received three silver keys for his outof-the-ordinary artwork. rom a melted mass of unwanted Hot Wheels cars, to a pair of spray-painted Adidas shoes, to paint-coated CDs wedged into a splattered styrofoam board, East junior Kyle Perrigo’s artwork is anything but typical. Yet Kyle’s passion for art began his sophomore year, when he enrolled in Drawing and Painting I solely because he needed to get his art credit for graduation. Now, he humbly sports 14,000 followers on his Instagram page “rigoart,” three silver keys from the Scholastic Art Awards and grades beyond the point system in Drawing and Painting II. “He just started getting more interested in art, then he became very passionate about it,” Lynn Perrigo, Kyle’s mom, says. “Now he’s all about [art], and he does it all the time.”
26 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
story rachel hartwick | photos michael tedesco infographic irfan irbahim Kyle’s passion for art seemed to come out of nowhere. As far as his dad, Doug Perrigo, can recall, no one in their extended family has the same talent at the ends of their fingertips that Kyle has. “It’s all new to us. He’s helping us learn about [art],” Doug says. “We want him to pursue it if it’s something he really loves to do and is passionate for.” Kyle prefers abstract painting to using a pencil. He describes most of his pieces as having a common theme of “incorporating color and inspiration into more run-down areas.” One three-dimensional piece Kyle created includes a plastic gun, shattered glass bottles of paint and crumbled paper mounted onto a four-foot long board, depicting an eruption of colors onto the background of a city.
“[The piece] is about taking violent images and making something more meaningful out of it,” Kyle says. “That’s why the buildings [in the piece] are colorful.” Kyle’s paintings aren’t still, dull pictures, but they aren’t paint splatters thrown onto a page and deemed as “art” either. He combines just the right amount of both realistic and abstract components to create visually appealing pieces. “My artwork is more out there,” Kyle says. “It’s not like all the regular stuff where people just look at something to draw it. I try to make up something.” Kyle’s Drawing and Painting II teacher, Linda Augutis, says that in addition to his unique style, he is more driven than many of her other students to create finished pieces. Every week, Drawing and Painting II students
“
lifestyle | student feature
He treats his sketchbook like finished artwork. You can see wheels turning in his head.
Getting Out There There are many ways artists can promote their work using social media.
-Linda Augutis, Drawing and Painting II teacher
have a “sketchbook assignment” which is designed to work out ideas. “He treats his sketchbook like finished artwork. Once he gets an idea, he’s very driven to work it out completely,” Augutis says. “You can see wheels turning in his head. He’s reserved and I know he has a lot of ideas in his mind that come out in his artwork. That’s why art is a good expression for him.” For Kyle, art is more than just a good expression. He spends ten hours per week at home working on art—not just for class, but for himself. He broke out his colored pencils and spent more than four hours in one sitting coloring one of his favorite pieces, a rainbowstreaked shark. “If I don’t finish a piece, I feel like I’ve failed,” Kyle says. “I keep going until I finish it. It consumes a lot of my time because there’s something I always see [that] I want to change.” Kyle’s artistic process generally follows the same pattern: he thinks of an idea, sketches out a rough copy onto a piece of paper, then begins to paint. Additionally, he has experimented with some three-dimensional work specifically in cars, including making a prototype car out of clay and a piece of artwork out of melted Hot Wheel cars. “I had a few Hot Wheels that I had smashed. I wondered if the metal would melt, so I just put the hot wheels in a can and put that in a fire and they melted.” Kyle says. “I [kept doing] that with the Hot Wheels I didn’t use anymore. I was just messing around, I didn’t plan on it being anything, but then it turned into something.” But to him, cars aren’t just for melting. “He’s always drawn cars,” Lynn says. “For a long time, even before he was a freshman, he would draw variations on cars so we thought he’d go into designing them. But then as he got into art more, he started developing an [interest] for different aspects of it.” Aside from working on art for his own enjoyment, Kyle has used his talent to benefit his church. He was the first student in his youth group at Center Pointe Christian Church (CPCC) to create a visual for a “series”—a three to six week discussion among the youth group on a general idea. The series, which often contains some sort of visual, focused on
guardrails and teaching students about putting boundaries in their life. Kyle painted a sign saying “GUARDRAILS” on a three-by-eight foot sheet of plywood using yellow and black spray paint and stencils, which was displayed for the duration of the series and exposed to at least 300 people. Student Administrative Assistant of CPCC, Karen Reed, says that students in the youth group were shocked that the sign was made by Kyle and were eager to learn about the series because of it. “The kids were really inspired by it; there were a lot of ‘wow’’s when they first saw it,” Reed says. “Anytime there’s a big scale art project like that, the kids get really into the topic. They see [the visual] and it gives them a picture of what we’re going to be talking about.” But Kyle wanted to share his artwork with larger numbers of people. Last summer, Kyle applied for a job at ArtWorks, a public art program that employs 14 to 21 year olds to work side-by-side with professional artists and paint murals in Cincinnati. Even though he didn’t get the job because his vacation plans were in the middle of the project, Kyle plans to apply again next summer. “I’ve never done a mural, but I really want to,” says Kyle. “I’d like to make one on the side of a building where lots of people can see it.” Kyle’s out-of-the-ordinary pieces have received praise from potential buyers, but he refuses to sell his artwork. “I’m just too attached to [the pieces] to let them go,” Kyle says. “I may eventually [sell them], but since they take me so long, I don’t want to give them up.” Kyle’s dedication reflects both the long hours he puts into his artwork and his personality. “As you get to know Kyle, you realize he’s very true to who he is,” Reed says. “He is a deep thinker with a mysterious personality. He has strong beliefs and convictions and that shows through his artwork.” Maybe someday, those spray painted shoes and that melted mass of Hot Wheels will be available for his admirers to purchase. But for now, he is content displaying his work for free on “rigoart.” SM
Instagram Shouts Outs Whenever a person uses Instagram, the photo goes onto a shoutout page, which people may circulate around. Perrigo attained 15,000 followers using shout-outs.
featured videos Youtube video uploaders can pay the site a certain amount of money for a certain amount of views. The site then promotes the video proportionately for that number of viewers.
40% of global industries use Instagram
info www.mediavataarme.com,youtube.com
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 27
lifestyle | feature
East alumna Summer Lippert chose to enroll in beauty school while fellow alumna enrolled in the University of Kentucky. Lippert now works at a hair salon while Chapin is still still in college. The two have
sp ENDS it story morgan bain photo ellen fleetwood and with permission from kelsey chapin
E
ast alumna Summer Lippert does not need to go to college. Because of her “dispiriting” performance in high school, Lippert decided to attend a vocational school rather than college. Following her enrollment at Aveda Fredric’s Institute (AFI) in Aug. 2011, Lippert was the first to graduate in her class after 10 months with a license in Cosmetology. During her time at AFI she had handson learning experiences daily, made great connections with her teachers, and already had a job in line even before her vocational school graduation. “I was kind of bad at high school,” Lippert says. “I tried really hard and my mom knew that, so she always put the opportunity out there for me to go to [beauty] school.” Lippert was inspired by her dance coach, who was also a successful hair stylist, to pursue cosmetology. So during her junior year in high school, Lippert worked as a receptionist for Bajon Salon through the Career Based Intervention Program after hearing about the opportunity from a friend. Following her experience, she was certain she wanted to attend a vocational school. With full support from her mother, Suzy Lippert, Summer felt
28 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
Here: Summer Lippert colors a customer’s hair at the hair salon she now works at. Right: Kelsey Chapin poses with her University of Kentucky dance team.
confident in her choice to attend AFI. “She wanted to do something that she knew she would like and would be good at,” Suzy says. “There were not any fields in a traditional college that interested her and she wanted to be done with her education as fast as possible so she could enter the work force and begin her career.” Many students graduating from high school, however, choose a different route for education. According to a study conducted in 2007 by the National Center for Educational Statistics, 447,000 students were enrolled in non-degree institutions like AFI while 18.2 million were enrolled in college. University of Kentucky (UK) sophomore Kelsey Chapin also graduated from East in 2011, but unlike Lippert, she is part of the college-going majority. Currently studying for a degree in Marketing, Chapin says that attending college has helped her learn new skills and become more independent. “[In college], I’m forced to be on my own and meet new people,” Chapin says. “A bigger school teaches you how to interact with other people. It’s just a better experience.” Although Summer did not attend a big university like Chapin, she says that she still had some college experiences. Because of her
friends in Clifton that attend the University of Cincinnati (UC), she was able to go to football games and have other college experiences. But regardless, both Summer and her mother agree that the lack of the full college experience has been a disadvantage. Despite this, Suzy believes it to be the only drawback of Summer’s vocational school education. “That was the only thing that bothered me [about her experience at a vocational school],” Suzy says. “She didn’t get to move out and have the dorm life experience. But, she will get to start her career sooner, become financially independent and move out while she is still very young.” Although Summer will be able to get a head start in the work force, she did not have the comfort of scheduling her own courses. Summer’s strict schedule at AFI consisted of classes from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and 8:15 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays, keeping her busy throughout the week. In contrast with college leniency toward attendance, AFI requires a demanding schedule of 38 hours per week and students face direct consequences if they miss class. “We had a really strict hour program where we couldn’t miss more than 100 hours or we’d
“
lifestyle | feature
[Summer] didn’t get to move out and have the dorm life experience. But, she will get to start her career sooner, become financially independent and move out while she is still very young. -Suzy Lippert, Summer’s mother
get kicked out,” Summer says. “If we were late, we would get deducted four hours.” After completing all of her hours, Summer graduated from AFI in June 2012. Chapin, however, is still working towards her degree, but says that her next three years in college will be worth the time. “Even beyond the [educational] aspect, I’ll have four years to prepare for the real world,” Chapin says. “But I feel like if I was in a situation where I [wasn’t well-suited] for college, or if I didn’t have good grades in high school, I would have utilized vocational schools.” For Chapin, tuition is approximately $30,000 per year. For Summer, however, her entire education at AFI cost her $20,000, including her supplies to cut hair. Regardless of the high price of Chapin’s college tuition, her mother Susan Chapin supported her decision to attend UK, and says that she believes the burden the cost presents for her will be beneficial in the long run. “College is very expensive but there are
many opportunities for scholarships, grants and loans and she’ll get a chance to grow up and live on her own in a safe environment,” Susan says. “[College] also provides her with the ability to do more than one job. In the end, I think the high price of college is worth the investment in her future.” In regards to money, Associate Professor of Sociology at Miami University Stephen Lippmann says that while vocational school tends to be a more affordable option, college is a better long-term choice. “College is very expensive, but has a higher return on investment,” Lippmann says. Despite the long-standing benefits of college, Lippmann says that currently, the majority of available jobs in the country should be filled with vocational school graduates. According to a 2011 survey conducted by Deloitte and Manufacturing Institute, there are 600,000 manufacturing jobs currently not filled because employers cannot find individuals with the right skills to complete the job. “[The lack of filled positions] is ironic with unemployment being so high,” Lippmann says. “Right now the economic environment is better for people with vocational school degrees than for those with bachelor’s degrees.” In terms of annual salary, however, a bachelor’s degree earned in college can often be more beneficial than a certificate earned in vocational schools. According to a study conducted in 2010 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median earnings for an individual with a vocational certificate in cosmetology was $22,500 per year while the earnings of someone with a bachelor’s degree in marketing was $108,260 per year. Although the median earnings of both occupations differ, the Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the employment rate for jobs in cosmetology and marketing should grow 14 percent from 2010 to 2020. Following her graduation in 2012, with the help of a former East alumnus and fellow AFI student, Summer already had a job waiting at Beaux Mondes Salon after graduating, where she currently works as a hairdresser. “It was easy for me to find a job after graduating, and that’s because of my school,” Summer says. “We have career placement classes, interview question classes, resume building classes, and we go on salon tours.
Vocational schools [like AFI] stress exactly what you want to do, so it’s easier for [someone] to find a job.” According to Suzy, the shift from studying at AFI to working a full-time job went smoothly for Summer. “Aveda was a very intense program that was like a full-time job and it prepared Summer for the demands of a career,” Suzy says. “She was already used to working full-time when she started her job so it was an easy transition.” In addition to the simplicity of finding a job, Summer says that the hands-on experiences she had at AFI thoroughly prepared her for her career. “We actually went in-depth with [a topic],” Summer says. “We even got to practice [doing hair] on a mannequin or on a client.” Although Kelsey sees the benefit of vocational schools, she is very thankful for the opportunities that she has been presented because of her college. “People are contacting my sorority to find girls who want to do internships and [the employers] present opportunities to work for different companies,” Kelsey says. “I think that’s a benefit of going to a big school and I probably wouldn’t have had that opportunity at a vocational school.” Aside from the struggles and benefits that Summer and Kelsey experienced, Lippmann says that both forms of education have their own advantages and teach skills and information that prepare students for the rest of their lives. “Some [college] majors have more direct connections to types of jobs like computer science or accounting,” Lippmann says. “However, the hard skills that are taught at vocational schools have a much more direct relationship to the labor market, and that is useful too.” SM
Read Madyson Alexander’s story on The Stash online at www.lakotaeastspark.com www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 29
30 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
Election 2012
T
he Romney campaign claims that there are 11 ways to win the 2012 presidential election without Ohio, says founder of government advocacy firm LNE Group Lee Weingart. “Don’t believe it. Ohio really is the end all, be all of the election. Whoever wins Ohio, wins the election.” According to Weingart, also a Channel 5 Republican analyst, Ohio is “a good barometer for the national mood on presidential politics.” The state is one of 17 others to have one U.S. senator from each party and is a rare blend of North and South. It is home to both rural and industrial sectors that, together, create an economic diversity microcosmic of the whole country. “Ohio is a traditional swing state in every sense of the word,” Weingart says. “Ohio backed [Democrat] Bill Clinton twice. It backed [Republican] George W. Bush, and its [vote has often aligned] with the winners of presidential campaigns. In fact, the last person to win Ohio and not win the presidency was Richard Nixon [in 1960].” As of 2010, 37 percent of registered Ohio voters are Republicans, 36
art judy nguyen
percent are Democrats, and the remaining 27 percent are Independents. Votes from the latter group are often times split one of two ways, as noted by West Chester Trustee Catherine Stoker. While they are sometimes divided along party lines to reflect the particular area’s ratio of Republicans to Democrats, the majority of Independents split their ticket to vote for candidates representing different parties at each level of government. “Some political analysts call them ‘the mush in the middle,’ people who don’t have strong allegiance one way or the other,” Butler County Teenage Republicans adviser Susan McLaughlin says. “People are voting their beliefs, not their party. I think they’re looking back and saying, ‘Wow, I’ve been a Democrat all my life, but I’m getting hurt [because of it].’” Ever since she landed a summer job working as an assistant for Gerald Cardinale, who was running for Governor in New Jersey in 1984, locallyregistered Independent and swing voter Laura Preede likes to check the facts. Every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Preede went to either the State House or the library to make prints of political records off a microfiche, an archaic copy machine. By the end of the summer, after many “long and
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 31
Election 2012 tedious days,” Preede had successfully put together an entire summary report of the political statements and actions of Cardinale’s opponents. According to Preede, her job experience as a fact-checker helped her develop a unique perspective on politics. She voted for the first time in 1988, and since then, has acquired a 2:2:2 record, having voted for two Democrats, two Republicans and two third-party candidates. During presidential election years, Preede adopts her fact-checking mentality by listening to neither political advertisements nor commercial radio. “I hang up when campaign people call my phone,” Preede says. “I’m really not looking at what the candidates are saying.” Instead, Preede investigates the candidates’ records for herself. “The candidates can tell me they’re going to do anything,” Preede says. “[For example], they can tell me that they’re going to make every dog in the United States behave, but [that’s not going to sway my vote]. It’s more about what they have done in the past and whether they will [follow] through or not.” Due to relatively equal numbers of northern Democratic voters and southern Republican voters, Romney and Obama campaign all across Ohio to rally support from voters like Preede and to secure the state’s 18 electoral votes. “Ohio has a lot of mid-to-large size cities compared to other states that have one main city,” Weingart says. “It has major cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus [in addition to] fairly large minor cities like Dayton, Youngstown and Toledo. It’s a tough place to campaign because there are a lot of votes in these cities.” There is reason to believe, however, that Ohio is a swing state not because there is an equal division of Democrats and Republicans, but
infographic emily chao
information cnn, pew forum, washington post
OHIO’S DEMOGRAPHIC AVERAGE INCOME: $46,752 according to the Kaiser Family Foundation AVERAGE UNEMPLOYMENT: 7.4% in June 2012 RACE: 83.6% white, 12.4% black, 3.2% hispanic, .8% other URBANIZATION: 78% of Ohioans live in urban areas RELIGION: 26% Evangelical Protestant, 22% other Protestant, 21% Catholic, 17% non-religious, 14% other BLUE COLLAR: 64% of Ohio workers are classified as “blue collar”
7,722,180 Registered Voters in Ohio
32 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
because changing voter demographics are making it difficult to predict a particular area’s vote. The traditionally Republican Cincinnati area is no longer in the Republican fold because of this. In the 2008 election, Obama became the first Democrat since 1964 to carry Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, because of a stronger African-American turnout. “People who never turned out to vote, turned out to vote for Obama because of the whole ‘he’s historic’ thing,” McLaughlin says. “The black population in the country voted 90 some percent for Obama, and if you look at the black percentage in Hamilton County, that solid group of voters helped Obama carry Hamilton County.” According to Miami University political science professor Christopher Kelley, the outcome of the 2012 election will depend largely on the votes of other immigrant groups rather than those of the African American population.
Romney and Obama can tell me they’re going to make every dog in the united states behave, but that’s not going to sway my vote. “Any kind of [voting] change largely comes from immigration, so one of the things that has helped the Democrats in Ohio is the influx of Hispanics,” Kelley says. “Hispanics so far seem to be breaking towards the Democrats over the Republicans.” McLaughlin, however, says that a third demographic will decide the vote. “People in the public sector aren’t necessarily going to stay with Obama, even though he’s put a lot of money into public sector unions,” McLaughlin says. “But I think the female independent vote will have the greatest impact in this election.” In the 2008 election, the majority of female voters accordingly backed Obama, believing that he would successfully address America’s most prominent concern—the economy. But due to consistently high unemployment and what many see as excessive government spending, McLaughlin says that women are going to turn away from Obama for their own self-interest. “Mothers and women budget, they go to the grocery story, fill up their gas tanks, do all of those family kinds of things,” McLaughlin says. “Women know how bad this economy is, and people act in what’s best for their families. I think the females are going to turn away from Obama and give Ohio to Romney.” While the economy is always at the forefront of elections, other issues can still be the deciding factor this time around. “[For me], the deciding issues are education and healthcare, particularly because I have children,” Preede says. “That wasn’t so much the case when I didn’t have any.” Stoker, a Democrat, does not believe education plays strongly enough in the national election because people will not advocate for more educational funding at the expense of economic stability. “Somebody who is worried about [his or her] educational support and is also worried about deficit spending is kind of in the arms of the dilemma,” Stoker says. “There is no education fairy that will provide support for education. That has to come from taxes.” The wide variety of issues represented by the scope of demographics in Ohio is why the state has been swinging its vote for decades. And this election year will undoubtedly be no different. “No candidate has a lock on Ohio,” Kelley says. “A candidate cannot run a campaign dismissing [the state] because as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.” —Lauren Fang
highlighting the issues: then and now
The 2012 presidential election sees some issues rise to people’s attention while others drop from the radar. story claire schomaker
E
ast senior Claire Casper and her family know how important the economy is in the upcoming presidential election. Not too long ago, her father, Darrin Casper, along with 70 other East parents, was one of the 12 million Americans who are currently unemployed. It was Jan. 2009 when Darrin lost his job at Finn Corporation, an equipment manufacturing company. After five months of filling out job applications and working with recruiters, Darrin found an ad for a job at Smurfit-Stone Inc. Unfortunately for Darrin, as noted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010 yielded the greatest unemployment rate the United States had seen since 1982. It was during this year that the worsening economy took its toll on Darrin yet again. In Oct. 2010, Smurfit-Stone Inc. was facing bankruptcy. The company prepared to be sold and numerous employees were let go—including Darrin. “I had to get a part time job,” Claire’s mom, Kelley Casper, says, “and the kids weren’t able to do as many activities.” Claire recalls feeling bad when she had to ask her parents for money, while her friends could still go shopping or out to eat whenever they wanted. A phone poll administered by CNN in 2008 noted that 57 percent of Americans believed the economy to be the most important issue in the presidential election. The same poll was conducted again for the 2012 election. With 46 percent of people surveyed choosing the economy over healthcare, education and the conflict in Afghanistan, it is still as Bill Clinton said in his 1992 presidential campaign, “the economy, stupid.” Dr. Christopher Kelley, who received his PhD in Political Science from Miami University in 2003, says that the economy is one of the most important issues during an election because it affects everyone.
infographic emily chao art lauren mazella
AT EAST, OUT OF 254 STUDENTS SURVEYED
32.68% BARACK OBAMA 50.39% Mitt Romney
16.92% OTHER
“The economy is the kind of issue that you don’t have to be knowledgeable about political campaigns to understand if it’s good or bad,” Dr. Kelley says. “People know when the economy is bad. When the economy turns bad, it generally motivates people to want a change.” Although the economy is a constant factor, most issues come and go. Dr. Kelley says that a prominent issue in 2008, the use of aggressive presidential power like presidential bill signing statements, has hardly been mentioned at all by either media or the candidates in this election. Throughout his tenure, President George W. Bush used the bill signing statement to strike out entire sections of laws. In the 2008 presidential debates, Barack Obama and John McCain both made statements declaring where they stood on the issue of presidential power. For the 2012 election, however, the issue has hardly been mentioned. In addition, Dr. Kelley notes the difference in the overall atmosphere from the 2008 to the 2012 presidential election. “2008 was a much more uplifting election.” Kelley says. “President Obama was a much more inspiring candidate. Now in 2012, he is a more typical kind of candidate.” And on top of Obama being a more typical candidate, the election itself has been more typical whereas 2008 was a watershed election. “The election of 2008 was historic,” Dr. Kelley says. “The United States saw its first African-American nominee for President, and also a woman, Governor Sarah Palin as nominee for Vice President.” Where the 2012 election trumps the 2008 election, however, is education. Dr. Kelley believes that there has been an increase in media coverage and a jump in the interest of education because in the last few years, indicators outlined by the U.S. Department of Education, have proven that the U.S. is slipping in its educational rankings. “The United States has tanked in math, science and especially in civics,” Dr. Kelley says. “The slippage sends warning signs to Americans and so education is back on the radar, to its credit. And now it’s forcing the campaigns to address the problem.” Problems in education that Obama and Romney must face include fixing the falling academic performance of American students, fixing public schools funding, addressing the policy of No Child Left Behind, and more recently they have been faced with a new rapidly growing problem—student loans. Student loans have overtaken credit card expenditures as the largest portion of overall debt Americans owe. Noted by the Pew Research Center, college seniors last year graduated with an average of $27,000 in student loan debt, which is an increase of five percent from 2010. Although Congress recently extended the government subsidy to allow for lower student loan rates, the cost of higher education, which Pew reported increased by $15,000 in the last decade, will continue to be an important campaign issue and affect many students looking to forward their education. Lakota East senior Raul Takeute is one of many students contemplating the expenses of college. “I’m terrified about paying off my student loans,” says Takeute, who plans on attending Miami or Ohio State University. “My sister is only a sophomore at OSU and she already owes $10,000 in student loans. That’s ridiculous.” As a soon-to-be college student, Takeute is concerned about the future of Pell grants, the main source of government financial aid for students. Obama claims that he will not reduce the eligibility for Pell grants and will in fact increase the maximum amount of grants. Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, however, included a $170 billion cut to Pell grants in the federal budget he proposed in Congress and Romney expressed his support for Ryan’s budget plan. “Taking away money that is meant for students is dumb,” Takeute says. “But the government can’t be handing out money right now in the first place. Our country isn’t in the right state to do that.” Kelley acknowledges that the issue of education begins with funding and believes that tying funding for public schools to property taxes is not a smart move because it allows taxpayers to express their frustration
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 33
art cindy huynh and judy nguyen
Election 2012
with the government. “Education allows people who are upset with the government to take it out on the schools,” Dr. Kelley says. “That’s what happens in school districts like Lakota. People are upset with the Bush or the Obama administration and when a school levy comes up on a ballot, they defeat it because they think they are saying something about government.” There are certain issues, however, that only appear on the public radar during election cycles: controversial social issues, like gun control, abortion and immigration. These kinds of topics are called wedge issues. which campaigns use to try and divide an opposing political party by creating tension on a heated topic. “Wedge issues are important in getting people to the polls because they are the kind of issues that people can identify with,” Dr. Kelley says. “They know their religious value, they know their philosophical views of the world and when they feel those things are threatened, they turn out to vote. That’s why abortion, gun control and gay marriage are the kind of issues that people are passionate about and when they are on the ballot, people feel that they finally have a say.” Gun control has been particularly prominent as of late, due in large part to the shooting in Tucson, Arizona in 2011, in Aurora, Colorado in July and at a Sikh temple August earlier this year. At the second presidential debate on Oct. 16, both Obama and Romney said that they want to better enforce gun laws already on the books in the United States. Dr. Kelley believes gun control has been an effective wedge issue for the Republican Party, because the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be characterized as anti-gun. He says that while there are members of the party who are anti-gun, the party as a whole is not. “Gun control is a lightning issue because it cuts across both parties,” Dr. Kelley says. “Democrats and Republicans both own guns, so this idea that since Obama’s been elected, he is working overtime night and day to come take your guns away doesn’t ring true.” On the other hand, the Democrats have been able to use the issue of gay marriage to their advantage. In Jan. 2011, Obama signed a bill repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy that had prevented gays from serving openly in the military. And on May 10 2012, Obama reversed his earlier stance and declared himself in support of same-sex marriage due to an “evolution” of his thought process. “I have to tell you that over the course of several years I have talked to friends and family and members of my own staff who are in samesex relationships,” Obama said in an interview with ABC news. “And when I think about those soldiers who are fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, I’ve just concluded that it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” According to Dr. Kelley, Obama coming out in support of same-
34 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
sex marriage was a strategic move for the Democratic Party because the African-American community for the most part, does not support same-sex marriage. Dr. Kelley says that in the past when Democrats have supported same-sex marriage they have lost their African-American support. “By being an African-American president, Obama negates that problem,” Dr. Kelley says. “The African-American community wants to support Obama as much as they can and will. Now supporting gay marriage, he also brings out the support of the gay community, who for the most part has broken in its vote between Democrats and Republicans.” While Obama made history as the first president to declare support for same-sex marriage, Romney remains firm in his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. This difference in policies between candidates is yet another issue that divides voters. Whether Obama’s reversal of his stance on same-sex marriage will negatively affect his campaign remains to be seen, with 47 percent of surveyed East students believing his support of same-sex marriage will hurt his campaign, and 53 percent believing it will help it. But if Obama wins re-election, as Dr. Kelley thinks he will, the next four years may not weigh on the issues. And they may not even weigh on the issues most important to the voters. “If President Obama wins the election, what he’s going to be focused on is his legacy,” Dr. Kelley says. “He’ll be trying to accomplish things that will make him historically remembered for being a great president. That’s just the way they do it.” SM
U.s. economy: back to the drawing board
Local restaraunt owner and GM employee discuss how Obama’s economic policies have affected their livelihoods. story Angela ferguson
W
hen Kostantine and Maria Karvelas first opened the Greek Isles restaurant in July 2007, their small business boomed. Quickly gaining popularity among local residents, Greek Isles rose in the ranks to take its place as the only Greek restaurant to be in Cincinnati’s top 100 restaurants. Only five months later, however, Greek Isles and the six million other census-accounted small businesses in America received a financial blow that signaled the start of the 2007-09 recession. “We’ve always excelled in Cincinnati, but we have taken a hit financially because of the recession,” Kostantine says. “Although we still are pretty steady, our repeat customers who used to come two to three times a week, you now see two to three times a month.” One year later, Barack Obama entered office and inherited a nation steeped in a fiscal quagmire the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Great Depression. On his presidential plate: a $10.6 trillion national debt, a Gross Domestic Product growth rate of -5.3 percent, and the highest unemployment level since Jan. 1993. Obama’s first solution was a controversial stimulus passed one month into his presidency, formally known as the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The official ARRA government website states that the stimulus’ objectives were to “create new jobs and save existing ones, spur economic activity and foster accountability and transparency in government spending.” Amounting to a total expenditure of $840 billion, the stimulus allotted funds to 24 different categories, including individual tax credits, unemployment insurance and business tax incentives. With more than $104 billion to its name, the Making Work Pay tax credit was by far the costliest aspect of the entire stimulus. For working families, this credit provided a $400 tax cut per person or an $800 tax cut per couple. The fundamental flaw in this, though, is that they consisted of government-
Everybody supports small businesses in the abstract, but they seem to get left out, while big businesses Get most of the attention. issued, one-time checks, says Miami University monetary theory and policy specialist professor Richard Hart. “The problem here is that we know from economic theory that people make consumption decisions based on their average income over a long period of time,” Hart says. “If you give someone [hundreds of dollars], it’s not going have much of an effect on their average income or their consumption.” Hart also argues that there is an unintended consequence of giving tax credits in the form of a direct payment. “Suppose I gave you a check for one million dollars; this doesn’t increase your need to work, this reduces your need to work,” Hart says. “We call this the wealth effect: if you give somebody a check, it makes them better off, but reduces the need to work.” Another facet of the stimulus spending included $730 million set aside for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in hopes of improving loan availability for small businesses. But Karvelas begs to differ, asserting that the stimulus has not helped his small business. “Generally, banks just don’t extend loans to individuals who want to start up restaurants because three out of five restaurants close within their first six months,” Kostantine says. “A government loan through the SBA is [still] really difficult to obtain. And if you get one, you have to come up with a lot of collateral to substantiate what you’re asking for.” Hart says the reasoning behind ARRA is that government spending will increase the demand for goods and services. Then by cutting taxes, people’s incomes would increase, allowing consumers to spend more on consumption goods and therefore further increase the demand for goods and services. Thus, the act would live up to the name “stimulus.” And in June 2009, only four months after the stimulus was enacted, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the recession was over. Hart, however, maintains that ARRA was a failure. “The stimulus bill was supposed to create three million jobs in two years and prevent the [national] unemployment rate from going above eight percent,” Hart says. “But in the 36 months of recovery from June 2009 to June 2012, the unemployment rate was more than nine percent for 27 of those months.” The national unemployment rate did not fall below eight percent until September of this year, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an unemployment rate of 7.8 percent. Karvelas maintains that Obama’s handling of the economy has been “absolutely terrible.” “What [Obama’s administration has done] for us is make our tax rates and our insurance go up along with the costs of liquor and health licenses,” Karvelas says. “He has done nothing to help me and my
small business but make it difficult for us to stay in business.” MU Professor James Brock, an expert in government policy toward business, says that the government puts a heavy burden on small businesses in particular. Brock believes that these businesses get left out of the mix during the legislative process, and that regulations have made it difficult for them to hire new people and file necessary forms. “It would be nice if someone could come along from either party and actually give small business people a little help,” Brock says. “I think everybody [supports] small businesses in the abstract, but they seem to get left out of things, while the big businesses seem to get most of the attention.” When General Motors (GM) filed for bankruptcy in June 2009, the Obama administration agreed to provide $30 billion in bailout assistance, on top of the $17.4 billion previously split by GM and Chrysler under George Bush’s Automotive Industry Financing Program. “I was ecstatic when he made the decision [to bail out GM] and he stuck to it. Otherwise, I’m sure our plants would’ve been [outsourced] to China, leaving us Americans without jobs,” says Kenyetta Jones, a benefits representative and quality inspector at the GM Powertrain Transmission Plant in Toledo. “[The auto industry] is the nuts and bolts of this country, especially in Ohio and Michigan…where one in eight jobs are related to the auto industry.” The 27-year GM employee was laid off for the first time in March 2009 and remained unemployed for 13 months until the company rehired her. “[Being laid off] was definitely a scary feeling because you don’t know how you’re going to maintain your lifestyle and pay your bills,” Jones says. “We had to make adjustments within the family [and eliminate] the things that we wanted but didn’t need. No travelling, no eating out, trying to buy groceries in bulk and definitely no clothes shopping…because we knew that every penny counted.” After telling her story and introducing Obama at the United Auto
Spark photographer Nick Kanaly took this photo of President Barack Obama speaks at a rally in Cincinnati. Much of the speech was focused on the economy. photo nick kanaly
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 35
Election 2012 photo used with written permission from kenyetta jones
Obama’s foreign policy sidebar madison shelton
36 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
Top Five States Visited By Obama/Biden
Top 5 States Visited By Romney/Ryan 1. New Hampshire 100 Visits
1. Florida 19 Visits 2. Ohio 18 Vists
2. Florida 75 Vists 3.Washington D.C., 69 Visits
3.California 15 Visits 4.Washington D.C., 12 Visits
5. Iowa, 12 Visits
infographic rahul mukherjee
Workers Labor Day celebration in Toledo, Jones was chosen to introduce Obama yet again, this time at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC. The two met backstage 20 minutes before Jones was scheduled to speak, and Jones wishes she had had more than just a few minutes to speak with him. “If given more time, I [would have] liked to thank him for knowing who we [workers] are, looking out for us and really helping us,” Jones says. “There aren’t too many people, especially in a position like his, who recognize and understand the demands and concerns of Working America.” Hart, however, contends that the federal bailout of the auto industry was not justified. “The entire airline industry went through normal bankruptcy proceedings and it didn’t disappear; it was just restructured,” Hart says. “The people that work for GM and the stockholders would’ve gotten hurt. The labor unions would’ve gotten hurt, but the company would reorganize, renegotiate their contracts with the labor unions, renegotiate pension plans, and they would come out of bankruptcy as GM. It would just be a smaller company.” Now, in the fourth year of a recovery that began in June 2009, a recent Gallup poll reports that President Obama has a mere 36 percent approval rating of his performance regarding the economy. Americans are still reeling from a recession that proved to be the longest since the Great Depression. “But you have to understand that the president is only one player in this whole picture, so what’s going to happen with this is unclear right now, because of the election,” Brock says. “So I think right now what a lot of business people in particular probably see is uncertainty. That’s what bothers them. It bothers all of us.” SM
4. Ohio 45 Vists 5. Iowa, 12 Visits
information
Kenyetta Jones speaks with President Barack Obama before introducing him at the Democratic National Convention.
Change. Barack Obama’s campaign slogan for the 2008 presidential election promised revolutionary ideas that would tackle the problems both at home and abroad. And now, foreign policy is a significant aspect of Obama’s administration that is a key point in his 2012 platform for re-election. From the time that Obama was sworn into office, he expressed his desire to alter foreign nations’ perception of the United States, especially in the Muslim world. He wanted to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, make peace in the Middle East and improve relations with China. Thus, concentrating mainly on defense spending and improving relations with other countries were the tenets of the Obama administration’s foreign policy plan. Building strong relationships with foreign leaders became one of Obama’s top priorities during his four years in office. But according to Miami University political science professor Christopher Kelley, Obama should be reminding the public of all his foreign policy successes while he campaigns for a second term. “Obama should list one by one the number of foreign leaders who are behind him that weren’t in the eight years of the Bush administration,” Kelley says. “He should do these kinds of things, because these are all foreign policy successes.” Besides maintaining positive relations with other nations, defense spending became another important issue for the Obama administration. The 2011 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reports that the United States is the top defense spender, paying 41 percent of total worldwide military expenditures; China has the second-highest defense budget, and still spends five times less than America. In Obama’s latest budget proposal, he estimated to spend roughly $5.8 trillion on defense over the next decade. This means that by 2022, the defense budget would only be 11 percent of total federal spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office projections. As Obama campaigns for a second term, his goal is to highlight the successes his administration has had in improving foreign relations while at the same time, amending and balancing the defense budget. “In domestic policy, Obama has all these other competitors,” Kelley says. “Foreign policy is usually the province of the president where he can either be praised or blamed, and Obama’s administration needs to be singing their praises.” SM
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, reaches many demographics ranging from small business owners to retirees. story sophia li
i
t was a month after she moved to West Chester, OH. A bad case of the flu, probably the worst one she’s ever had, she says. Then a few months later, it was a really bad case of bronchitis that turned into pneumonia. But Rachael Eley, who used to go to the doctor four to five times a year in addition to annual checkups, just stayed home. Since her dad lost his job in late 2010, Eley has been without health insurance. Eley estimates that she would still be going to the doctor many times a year, if she still had health insurance. “I get hurt a lot. I get sick often,” says Eley, who lives with her aunt, uncle and cousins, East alumni Amy and Lauren Barker. “But obviously since I don’t have insurance, I feel bad going to the doctor and asking [my family] to pay for it.” While Eley has been able to get by the past couple years without needing a lot of medical care herself, the costs of her brother Garrett’s medical expenses have nonetheless shown the family firsthand how expensive healthcare can be without insurance. Garrett, who is now 18, takes medicine to help him deal with panic attacks. When the family was insured, the prescription cost $25 a month. Now, it costs close to $500. Paying for medical expenses has become a necessary but wearisome affair for the Eley family. “Garrett feels very guilty. He feels bad because he knows that Dad doesn’t have a lot of money,” Eley says. “He wishes he could get a job and help Dad pay for his medicine, but he’s just a kid. It’s not his responsibility.” If Eley’s father was still employed, she and her brother would be insured within her father’s employer-provided plan under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. The PPACA calls for health insurance companies to cover dependents until age 26, extending the previous cutoff age by five years. This mandate went into effect in 2010 and aims to increase coverage for young adults. Data collected by the Census Bureau shows that the percentage of Americans aged 19 to 25 with health insurance increased 3.6 percent from 2009 to 2011. Until recently, the same PPACA provision allowed East special education teacher Kim Lykins to insure her son, whose identity and medical details she has asked to remain undisclosed,
art nicole johnson
Depicting obamacare: America’s Diagnosis
on her Lakota Employee Health Benefits plan. Lykins has not been able to find other insurance for her son since he turned 26 in July because of his pre-existing medical condition. While the PPACA’s age extension helped Lykins retain coverage for her son after he graduated college, the provision banning discrimination of people with pre-existing medical conditions does not go into effect until 2014, and until then finding additional coverage will be difficult. This part of the PPACA is meant to allow persons with pre-existing conditions to obtain health insurance. Currently insurance companies can deny coverage or charge higher rates for a person with a pre-existing condition, which is any health condition that exists prior to enrolling in a health insurance plan. Although this consumer protection has not taken effect, a mandate prohibiting insurance companies from imposing lifetime coverage limits has been in effect since 2010. After her son turned 26, Lykins applied for an extension for him on her Lakota health insurance plan, but was denied. Lykins began filling out applications for other insurance companies that advertised comprehensive coverage, but even those insurance providers sent back her applications, saying that her son did not qualify. “My husband searched on the computer, called different insurance companies and then found applications online,” Lykins says. “One insurance company told us ‘oh yeah, he’ll be insured’ and then that company denied [my son].” Because Obamacare did not provide adequate options at the time, Lykins opted for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) Continuation Coverage, a temporary insurance plan that entails purchasing a company’s health insurance at the full price of the premium. COBRA costs the Lykins family $500 a month. “[The young-adult coverage] was very much a benefit,” Lykins says. “Especially because I know now how expensive it is to pay out-of-pocket for the other insurance that my son is on now.” According to Lykins, the biggest impact of Obamacare for her is knowing that health insurance will become more affordable. “Just because there’s a pre-existing condition doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to get insured,” Lykins says. “You still have a medical need.” Another piece of the PPACA that will go into effect in 2014 is the individual mandate that will require most Americans to purchase insurance if they do not already have it, or otherwise pay a fine. “Insurance is a business that subsidizes people. Someone’s always subsidizing someone else—that’s the whole idea with the mandated insurance,” says Diann Cox, Director of Strategy and Business Planning
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 37
Election 2012 for UC Health. “If you can get healthy people into the system, then everybody’s rates get lowered a little bit. And those healthy people are certainly subsidizing the sicker people but it comes out in the wash which is the way insurance works.” According to Cox, Obamacare has been a wakeup call that will change the way healthcare is delivered. Hospitals are usually paid based off of volume and how much care is being given, but Cox says that under Obamacare, hospitals are instead paid by quality of care. The PPACA measures that quality through readmission rates. Hospitals keep records of all patients who are readmitted into the hospital within 30 days of being discharged. If a hospital’s readmission rate is above the national average, it receives 1percent less reimbursement
Insurance is a business that subsidizes people. someone’s always subsidizing someone else. That’s the whole idea with mandated insurance. from Medicare. Many medical professionals, such as cardiac perfusionist and owner of Greek Isles Konstatine Karvelas, are against the PPACA because of this reduction. “So suddenly, Obamacare has taken money away from physicians, increased our malpractice insurance [premiums], decreased the quality of care and increased [patient] premiums,” Karvelas says. “Where do [patients] turn? What alleviation do they have? I don’t know.” Cox explains that physicians see Obamacare as more than just increasing coverage. “If you talk to physicians about quality of care and the changes that are going to be made within care coordination, they’re going to say that that’s the right way to deliver care,” Cox says. “On the other hand, it’s hard for [doctors] to say ‘and on top of that, I think I should make less money.’” Many of the physicians Cox has talked to believe that the type of system Obamacare is moving toward will mean better care and better patient outcomes. What the doctors take issue with seems to be the reduced reimbursement rates. Besides a number of professionals in the medical field, many small business owners also have problems with the PPACA, which will require businesses with more than 50 full-time employees to either provide coverage or pay a fee beginning in 2014. Reflecting on the overall impact of Obamacare, Miami University assistant professor and health economist John Bowblis believes that there are both positive and negative effects. “While the intent of covering the entire population is a noble goal, certain provisions of the law can have adverse effects on the incentive for firms to invest, and hence reduce economic growth,” Bowblis says. “Most people will agree that the intent of making sure everyone has access to healthcare is good, but the law as written has many significant unintended consequences and doesn’t address the main issue associated with healthcare—that costs are rising rapidly.” Bowblis considers the young adult coverage to be one of the positive aspects of Obamacare. And for people like Eley, who cannot afford insurance, Bowblis sees the problem as one of priorities: if someone does not have a lot of money, he or she will prioritize buying groceries and gas over purchasing health insurance. As a waitress at Steak and Shake who cannot afford to purchase an individual insurance plan, Eley identifies with this line of thought. “I should be [looking for a job with health insurance] but I’m not. I’m just concerned about saving up money,” Eley says. “It’s unsettling to know that you have to choose between getting the care you need or going into spiraling debt because of getting the care you need.” SM
38 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
The health insurance mishap
Obamacare, more formally known as The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, has been Congress’ attempt at resolving health care costs on the average American. In 2009 the US spent 2.47 trillion on health insurance. Thats more than the GDP of Great Britain in 2009. In 2009, Health Insurance companies in the US reported a record 56% increase in profits.
$
Patented drugs in other industrialized countries are 35% to 55% less expensive than in the U.S. Health care spending increased from 9.5% of personal consumption in 1980 to 16.3% in 2010. The number of uninsured americans has increased by nearly 20 million since 1987 Since 2001, employer-sponsored health coverage for family premiums has risen by 113%
$
information cia.gov, kff.org, census.gov, Bureau of Economic Analysis, cbo.gov
coloring in paul ryan
Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan is looking to help his running mate, Mitt Romney, to reform President Obama’s policies. story zach fulciniti
B
y now, we know a number of things about Paul Ryan. We know that he was born in Wisconsin. We know that when he was 16, his father died of a heart attack. Ryan was the one who discovered his body. His Social Security survivors’ benefits helped fund his education. We know that in 1988, he began attending Miami University (MU) in Oxford, and we know that he graduated in 1992 with a double major in economics and political science. In 1991, he began a summer internship with Republican Robert Kasten, the junior United States Senator for the state of Wisconsin at the time. While he was working for Kasten, he also held a job as a waiter at a restaurant on Capitol Hill called Tortilla Coast, a popular spot for the Washington type, politicians, lawyers, aides, interns, movers, shakers. His other job at the time was a trainer at Washington Sport and Health Club. And we know that, while he may have given up serving drinks and nachos, he has yet to give up on the path he was set on by his other odd job: Ryan is a known fan of fitness program P90X, and his marathon
time has been the subject of considerable controversy. He also, as an employee of Oscar Mayer, drove the Wienermobile. But only once. In 1998, Ryan was elected to represent Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, the office he holds today. And we know, of course, that he is the Republican nominee for Vice President. We know he fits the role well: he is a staunch conservative, a proponent of government spending cuts, tax cuts and entitlement reform. He is an opponent of gay marriage, abortion and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare. He is, as MU economics professor Rich Hart puts it, the “intellectual leader of the Republican Party.” Ryan took the professor’s Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory course junior year. Hart had a close relationship with Ryan during his time at MU, to the point that when Ryan returned to give the commencement address in 2009, he acknowledged Hart as his mentor. “He said that everybody at Miami should take a course from me,” Hart says. “And I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’” It was this comment in 2009 that brought Hart into the public spotlight, and then, when Ryan received the Vice Presidential nomination, his name came up again. “I’ve probably done somewhere between 30 and 40 media interviews,” he says. “It is nice, your 15 minutes of fame, but when 15 minutes starts to push 20 minutes, you start to say, ‘Well, I want to end this.’” Ryan was, as Hart puts it, a “cerebral” student in class who had little trouble with the theories Hart discussed. Yet when Ryan came into his office one day, he didn’t exactly plan to talk about what Hart was teaching. “I think the discussion probably quickly turned to politics and then political philosophy,” he says. “And that was the magnet. We’d spend hours in my office talking, but we rarely talked about the economic theory that I was doing in class.” When Hart began discussing the works and theories of economist Milton Friedman in class, he gave, or “may have given,” Ryan a copy of Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, a book which supplements his economic theories with his political philosophy. It’s also worth noting that Ryan pushed Hart to read The Road to Serfdom, the most popular and influential work of Friedrich Hayek, one of the most important economists of the last century. “I knew who Hayek was, I had heard of The Road to Serfdom, I had just never read it,” Hart says. “Then he told me, ‘You need to read it.’ I did and thought, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this.’” Hart is quick to point out, however, that Ryan’s ideas, including those in the budget plan he has proposed in various incarnations in Congress since 2008, and his ideas for entitlement and Medicare reform, are Ryan’s, not his. But he contends that the only place where Ryan loses him, and the Republican Party in general, is on social issues. “I am a Libertarian. And if you’ve got two guys over here and they’re gay and they wanna get married, that doesn’t hurt me one bit,” he says. “That’s where the Republicans lose so many of these young kids, these
college kids. They don’t want these Republicans telling them what they can and can’t do with their bodies, and I understand them.” The best bet for Ryan and the Republican Party, Hart says, is to focus on the economy. But even then, he isn’t completely sure that he and Ryan are that far apart on issues like gay marriage. “We may disagree, but I’m not so sure. He’s a real open-minded guy, and somebody who from a policy perspective really cares about things that benefit other people,” Hart says. “He is religious, but I think this whole gay marriage thing is just pandering to the Christian right.” The last time he and Ryan were able to really talk the way they did when Ryan was his student was in 2009, when Ryan returned to Miami
[Paul ryan] is the one guy that obama is afraid of, intellectually, that can dance rings around him. So I wanted ryan to run for president. to give the commencement address. One of the things Hart mentioned to Ryan was the Republican Party’s problem with social issues. “He wanted me to pick him up at the airport,” Hart says. “So I picked him up, and we went to Bob Evans out there on Colerain Avenue and sat in there for about three hours and kinda caught up. And I said that I think the Republican Party needs to stay away from these social issues.” Much of the conversation was spent trying to convince Ryan to run for president. “This is the one guy that President Obama’s afraid of, intellectually, that can dance rings around him. So I was trying to get Paul to run for president. And I knew he wasn’t going to do it, because he has young kids. He was 16 when his father died. So he said, ‘You know, I kind of went through some of these formative years without a father, and I’m just not gonna let that happen to my kids,’” Hart recounts. Which leads him to believe that Ryan would not have accepted the nomination for vice president without some compromise with running mate Mitt Romney. “I don’t think Paul would’ve taken this job without some kind of conditions. You know, like, ‘Well if we win, you gotta agree to at least start this entitlement reform that I’ve talked about,’” he says. “If Romney had said no to that, I don’t think Paul would’ve joined the ticket.” And as far as his opponent is concerned, Hart is fairly certain he knows where Ryan stands. “I think Paul respects President Obama as a person. First black president. He apparently is a good father. But he thinks Obama’s policies are counter-productive, and I agree there,” Hart says. “Hell, he was trained by me.” SM photo used with paid permission from mct campus
art hannah eads and alice li
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan participate in a sendoff rally in Lakeland, Florida
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 39
Congress
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
Republican Democrat Percentage of Seats
50
Party Control of the House
Off the left end
Democratic VIPS
In 2008, a Gallup Daily Poll found the following seven states to house the largest percent of democrats and democrat-leaning independents. District of Columbia
84.1
Rhode Island
60.4
Massachusetts
60.3
Welc to the
photos used with fair use
Par
infographic
Barack Obama
Nancy Pelosi
Franklin Roosevelt
Andrew Jackson
60
Hawaii Vermont
58.9
New York
57.2
Connecticut
56.7 information gallup.com
Pro-Choice
Increase taxes
Democrats
Legalize gay Raise social marriage Spending
Universal Healthcare
Stem Cell Research
The R (or Lef
information bala
Scrap missile defense
Party Control of the Senate Percentage of Seats
50
Republican Democrat Congress
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 7
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 information senate.gov
Republican VIPS
come the
photos used with fair use
rty
Off the right end In 2008, a Gallup Daily Poll found the following seven states to house the largest percent of republicans and republican-leaning independents.
c jeff back
Mitt Romney
John boehner
55.1
Utah
54.5
Wyoming
49.9
Right ft) Way
ancepolitics.org
Decreased Regulation
Dwight Eisenhower
Abraham Lincoln
Republicans Death Penalty
idaho
47.3
nebraska
47.2
alaska
44.7
alabama
43.4
kansas
information gallup.com
Raise Defense Protect Gun Smaller Limit Spending Rights Government Unionization
Balanced Budget
information house.gov
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112
Election 2012
third parties: shading over the independents
story natasha rausch
T
he Libertarian Party of Ohio (LPO) wanted equality of opportunity—the equal opportunity to have a candidate on gubernatorial and presidential ballots without the added legality brought forth by House Bill 194. Set to be enacted Sept. 20, 2011, this bill required all minor parties to submit a number of signatures equal to one percent of all voters in Ohio. Aaron Keith Harris, communications director of the Libertarian Party, says that this law was a violation of the first amendment rights granted by Ohio’s Constitution. So they brought it to the state’s Supreme Court. “All we need is a fair and reasonable chance to show that we are organized and that we’re serious,” Harris says. “But when the two parties that are much more powerful use the power of the government to keep us or other independents or third parties from even trying to be involved in the government, that’s what’s unfair.” Aug. 31, 2012, the Libertarian Party won the case of the LPO v. Jon Husted Secretary of State. The court’s decision struck down House Bill 194, giving the Libertarians and other minority parties an equal chance because there are no barriers to appearing on the ballot. Harris, however, says that it won’t be long before the Libertarian Party is as much of a ballot-force as its two major counterparts because it is the fastest growing in the U.S. “When I say this, people kind of react strangely, but within roughly 20 years, the Republican Party is going to be dead,” Harris says. “I think that the true pro-freedom, pro-individual, pro-family, and pro-free market party is the Libertarian Party.” According to Harris, who was previously the chairman of Republicans at Wright State University, Republicans are full of “empty promises,” and Libertarians will at some point replace them as the counterpart to the Democratic Party. In the meantime, this prominent minority is trying to build the groundwork by just getting the votes. But with a lack of campaign financing from the government and a lack of voter efficacy from supporters, just getting the votes is more difficult than it seems.
THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES FOR 2012 ELECTION art alice li | infographic emily chao information garyjohnson.com
LIBERTARIAN
GREEN
CONSTITUTIONAL PEACE & FREEDOM
Gary Johnson Virgil Goode Jill Stein Former Governor Former Physician Former Virginia of New Mexico and Teacher State Senator
42 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
Roseanne Barr Comedian and TV Actress
art ellen fleetwood
The Libertarian Party is the fastest growing party in the U.S., but right now it is focused on getting votes.
The Libertarian candidates do not receive the campaign finance that the major party candidates do. In order to receive this government funding Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for POTUS, must receive 7.5 million votes in national elections. In reality, that is only five percent of the total vote, but as of 2010, Libertarians have received just below 2 million votes in national elections. Ron Henrich, a seventh and eighth grade history teacher at Hopewell Junior School, says that the government is the most prominent influence in candidacy because it provides money and therefore promotes the twoparty system. “When you fill out your tax returns, and check one of the boxes, then one dollar of your tax returns will go to political parties through campaign finance,” Henrich says. “Third parties get none of that unless they get 7.5 million votes. So their first goal is to make it to relevancy.” Founded in 1971, the Libertarian party is focused on returning to the limited-government principles of the founding fathers. On the political spectrum, Libertarians lean to the left-wing in the social issues, but they are considered to be right-wing because of their belief in limited government. Because of their position on the political spectrum, Libertarians feel like voting for a third party is a waste of their voice in the political process. As a result, Libertarians are considered to be the biggest swing vote in the elections. Junior Statesmen of America member Justin Smith has views that align with those of the Libertarian Party. He, however, will be voting for Mitt Romney in the general election. “I have to vote for Mitt Romney because voting Libertarian would essentially be throwing my vote away,” Smith says. “Our government is a two-party system and Gary Johnson is not in reality going to get elected. As a Libertarian you have to pick the lesser of two evils. In my case, that is Mitt Romney. But it’s kind of like pulling teeth.” Henrich, however, thinks that voters should vote with their conscience despite the perceived outcome of the elections. “A lot of people think that if you vote third party you are throwing away your vote. You are going to vote for somebody that is part of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party or an independent, but they are not going to win. So why do that?” Henrich says. “But our job as citizens is to vote with the candidate that is most like us and that addresses the issues that we care about most. So we want to have a person as president or representative or senator that is going to reflect our ideals and values most.” According to Harris, people agree with the perspectives of Johnson, but they refuse to vote for him because he won’t win, and they feel that
infographic emily chao information 2012election.procon.org
HOW MANY REGISTERED VOTERS ARE IN EACH PARTY
redrawing district lines
Many voters are unaware of gerrymandering’s implications and its proposed solution in Issue 2.
CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTARIAN 367,000 278,446
story alexa chryssovergis GREEN 246,145
DEMOCRAT: REPUBLICAN 43,140,758 30,700,138
their vote would be better-used to counter President Obama’s candidacy. Libertarian and co-chair of Teenage Republicans Alicia Lang says that another contributor to the shortage of votes is the lack of publicity. For example, Johnson was excluded from all presidential debates. When he filed a lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) saying that his exclusion violated anti-trust laws, the CPD, a government organization, says that Johnson did not meet the required 15 percent of the prospective vote calculated through the Gallup poll. Third parties, however, are not included in the nationwide Gallup poll. “Third parties really don’t get any publicity, so the best thing to do would be to research third parties on your own,” Lang says. “But unless there was a huge movement to research third parties, then I don’t think they will emerge as primary parties for a long time.” Moreover, Henrich says that the media is not going to cover the Libertarian Party as often as the two major parties. “The media is going to move more towards the story which is going to affect the most people,” Henrich says. “If a minor party critiques a major party, it is not as much news as if a major party responds to a critique because then they are acknowledging the third parties. So [minor
A LOT OF PEOPLE THINK THAT IF YOU VOTE THIRD PARTY, YOU ARE THROWING AWAY YOUR VOTE. BUT OUR JOB AS CITIZENS IS TO VOTE FOR THE CANDIDATE THAT IS MOST LIKE US. parties] almost have to provoke them in order to get that attention.” While the equality of opportunity to maintain a presence on a state’s ballot was granted to the Libertarian and other third parties when House Bill 194 was struck down this past August, the LPO is working on addressing other issues that hinder the election of their party’s candidates. “If you think about George Washington, he warned us about political parties because he was afraid that people would lose their identity and just become part of a major party machine,” Henrich says. “But can you take the labels away and just listen to ideas? Vote your conscience. Don’t vote what somebody else tells you to vote.” SM
G
errymandering. It is not as provocative of a political issue as abortion or the situation in Syria. But to Catherine Turcer, gerrymandering holds just as much importance, if not more. “The biggest challenge that we have is that it’s a real problem, but it isn’t the kind of problem where someone will say, ‘Oh, darn that gerrymandering.’” Turcer has plenty of reason to be frustrated. Only a limited number of people understand the concept of gerrymandering, and those who do understand do not deem it a pressing issue. As Chair of Voters First, a single-issue group led by the League of Women Voters, Turcer has worked tirelessly to educate Ohioans about gerrymandering, which occurs when a state legislature, after the decennial U.S. census, draws congressional district lines designed to favor one party over another. According to Turcer, the League of Women Voters has been petitioning for redistricting reform since the 1980s. On Aug. 6, after months of collecting petition signatures to surpass the necessary threshold of 385,253, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted certified Issue 2, a proposed constitutional amendment that would change Ohio’s process for drawing district lines starting with the 2014 election. Although redistricting methods can be reformed on the state level, they remain unchanged at the federal level because the Supreme Court upheld a Texas congressional district map in 2003. Advocates of Issue 2, also known as the Ohio redistricting amendment, argue that current district lines are drawn to give the Republican Party a stronger voting base in as many districts as possible, and thus an advantage in Congressional elections. “None of the [district] seats are particularly competitive, and it’s very hard to hold elected officials accountable [if the district doesn’t] have competitive seats,” Turcer says. Despite the effort Voters First and other groups have made to educate Ohioans about gerrymandering, the majority of the electorate is unaware of its existence. A mere 27 percent of students at East know what gerrymandering is, meaning 73 percent of the school, including potential voters, are unaware of what Issue 2 is and why it’s important. Which makes it clear to supporters and advocates that lack knowledge about the issue, rather than voters’ opinions of gerrymandering, will be the greatest obstacle. Citizens are unaware of the potential impact the issue could have on their district. Turcer feels that, under the current system, an Ohioan’s vote has lost its value. “I always believed that our vote is sacred,” Turcer says. “It really makes me mad that these district lines can be manipulated and that our votes are manipulated by that. I want every person’s vote in Ohio to count. I want it to be as meaningful as it can be. And I want us to be able to hold our elected officials accountable.”
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 43
Election 2012
HOW TO GET A REFERENDUM
Director of the Butler County Board of Elections Lynn Edward Kinkind thinks that the system is currently functional, and that it should not be altered. He agrees, however, that the public is not very wellinformed on the subject. “[In regards to] most state issues like this, most people are not very familiar with [what the issue entails],” Kinkind says. “They kind of just go by whatever the parties support.” Christopher Kelley, Miami Univesity political science professor, disagrees with Kinkind. Kelley thinks that the ideal model for redistricting is Iowa’s method. “Iowa’s districts are nice and square because they have a computer that draws them,” Kelley says. “It doesn’t take any calculations, how many Democrats, how many Republicans you can fit in one district.” Kelley agrees with Kinkind, that lack of voter awareness of State Issue 2 will have a negative impact on the results at the polls. “The problem is that gerrymandering and redrawing districts are such abstract issues to most people that they don’t understand what it is or why it’s important,” Kelley says. “My guess is that when people come to the voting booth, they will either pick a choice or they will skip over it. I don’t think it’s the kind of issue that is going to bring people to the voting booth.” Kinkind believes that uninformed voters will simply vote “no,” rather than skip over the issue. “If [voters are] not educated on the subject, they will just probably vote no because they don’t want to change something that they’re not really that educated on,” Kinkind says. East government teacher Tisha Grote agrees that many voters are unaware of gerrymandering, although she has helped spread the concept to her own students. “I don’t think anybody besides my AP Government students and U.S. Government students even know what gerrymandering is,” Grote says. “My college students didn’t even know what it is.” Despite lack of student awareness, Grote feels that the issue has been well advertised, saying she has received “phone call after phone call this week” regarding gerrymandering. Turcer says that the people at Voters First have been working hard to advertise the issue through signature gatherings, yard signs, phone calls and radio ads. Kelley, however, does not think the effort will be enough. “It is unfortunate that there has not been a better attempt to explain to people why redistricting is as important as it is,” Kelley says. “The problem with redistricting is that what we end up seeing are these extremely partisan districts that then are reflected in our economies. [To get rid of overly-partisan districts], it will take educated voters.” But Turcer is confident that voters will make the effort to understand Issue 2. “I really believe that voters are smart and that they will take the time to figure out what this measure is about,” Turcer says. “[But] I wish we had more time to educate people about it.” SM
44 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
1 2 3 4
5 6 7
Create a petitioners committee of 3-5 people to represent the entire group in all matters related to the petition. File an initial petition signed by 1000 Ohio registered voters and the full text and summary of the section of law referred to the Secretary of State. After the Secretary of State certifies it, the information is filed to the Attorney General within one business day. If the Attorney General approves, start part-petitions. They will be combined at the end of the process as one. Follow the following signature requirements: - Total Number: at least 6% of the total vote cast for governor - Be obtained from at least 44 of the 88 counties of Ohio - Number from each county: at least 3% of total vote cast for governor in that county - Each Petitioner Signer: qualified elector of Ohio - Each Part-Petition: signatures from one county File the part-petitions and $25 within 90 days after the law or section of law to be referred has been filed. The signatures’ sufficiency will be determined by the Secretary of State no later than 105 days and if they are not sufficient, 10 days are allowed for additional ones. The petition committee may file an explanation in favor of the proposed referendum no later than 80 days before the election. It may not be more than 300 words. If that fails, the Secretary of State will notify the Ohio Ballot Board to complete the task.
information ohio secretary of state
infographic emily chao
photo illustration michale tedesco
ON THE BALLOT
Adding it all up
As one of the nine key swing states in the election, Ohioans are subjected to frequent political advertisements.
T
story morgan bain
here are a number of things about Ohio that will always be true. The weather will be unpredictable. The professional sports teams will be unsuccessful. The collegiate sports teams will be slightly more successful. And every time the year is a multiple of four, Ohioans will be subjected to an onslaught of political ads. “Every commercial break, I see at least one ad from each side,” says Lakota parent Robin Lumbert. “I’m waiting. I’m waiting for a light bulb to go off and for somebody to say something [about his plan and show] that they’re going to actually follow through with it.” Currently undecided, Lumbert has been paying particular attention to political ads in order to help her decide on a candidate. Before becoming the vice president of coding services at National Healthcare Review, Lumbert owned her own medical coding business. The effect of losing many clients in December 2008 coupled with an uncertainty about the effects the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) would have on her company, prompted her to sell it. But she does not blame President Obama for her misfortune. “Because I work in the medical field, I knew Obamacare was going to change healthcare tremendously, and that’s part of the reason I chose to sell the business,” Lumbert says. “But when [I lost] all of my big clients because they had no more cash for outsourcing to us, I did not think that that was Obama’s doing.” Even though Lumbert was not entirely upset by the president’s performance, she still wants to see what Romney has to offer. “Over the four years [he has been president], I’ve increased the business tremendously. So, something’s going better,” Lumbert says. “However, even though I think [Obama] has done as well as he possibly could, I want to see if Romney has something better.” It may not be easy for Lumbert, however, to make a fair judgment based on the commercials that she and millions of Americans are viewing. According to Miami University political science professor Christopher Kelley, although some ads are effective, they are not always truthful. “The problem with political ads is that they’re never designed to be accurate,” Kelley says. “They’re designed to be emotional.” Bill Adair, creator and editor of fact-checking project Politifact.com, which rates political statements on a scale from “true” to “pants-onfire,” partially agrees. “The most common ruling that we’re giving on the ads is “half true,” Adair says. “That suggests that there is some truth in the claims that they are making and that they are not overwhelmingly false.” As the writer of the “Fact Checker” column for Washington Post, Glenn Kessler has also dealt with his share of inaccurate political ads. “Being a politician is like being a salesman, and you’re going to highlight the positive of your case and the negative of your opponent’s,” says Kessler, who rates the validity of ads and statements from one to four “pinocchios.” “But it’s a political operation, so [the candidates] are going to stretch the truth if they think it’s going to give them an edge.” And on top of their rampant inaccuracy, the ever-growing blitzkrieg
of political ads has only made it more difficult to distinguish between fact and fallacy. Media General predicts that television stations will earn as much as 45 million dollars from political ads in 2012, an 18 percent increase from 2008. Although TV companies make a killing in revenue from these advertisements, they may not be benefitting viewers as much as they should. While conditions make it illegal for commercial advertising to be false, the same conditions do not exist for political advertising, allowing for much more flexibility with the veracity of the ads. Section 315 of the Communications Act states in the “no censorship” provision that broadcasters cannot censor a candidate’s ads and are not liable for their content. Because of this, candidates continue to ignore the judgments of factchecking organizations. But in a rare occurrence, the Obama campaign changed one of their internet ads concerning the conflict in Iraq after Politifact highlighted its inaccuracy. “Both Governor Romney and President Obama may adjust or modify their statements in response to fact checks,” Kessler says. “But on issues that are core to their campaign that will actually move voters, they are much more reluctant to fix those problems.” Aside from the eight “swing states” (Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida), the majority of Americans do not see political ads on TV.
the problem with political ads is that they are never designed to be accurate, the ads are designed to be emotional. “I have a good friend who teaches at a college in Texas, and I asked her, ‘what are you hearing?’ And she said, ‘nothing,’ because people in non-swing states are not hearing ads,” Kelley says. “For the most part, she can eat dinner and watch football and baseball games in peace.” But in one relatively new, unavoidable way, political advertising reaches everybody. Candidates have utilized the popularity of videohosting sites like YouTube to reach a greater audience with their ads. Most videos have ads that run before them, and during election season the large majority of these ads are political. “[Campaigns] can push their advertising to YouTube, have millions of people view it, and those ads then get picked up by the media and run start to finish for free,” Kelley says. The large majority of ads don’t come from the campaigns themselves, but rather from outside groups. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to abolish any limits on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. The court’s decision led to the creation of Super Political Action Committees (PACs), which advocate for issues or candidates and make unlimited contributions. $238 million have been spent in total by outside groups, with $205 million in support of the Romney campaign and only $33 million in support of Obama. Kelley thinks the advent of Super PACs has been the main cause of what appears to be an increase in negative advertising on behalf of both candidates. “It seems that Romney’s advertising has been far more negative in large part because of the greater amount of money pulled in from advocacy groups that support him,” Kelley says. “But I don’t think it’s been his campaign exclusively running negative ads. I think they’ve both been fairly gritty.”
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 45
Election 2012 But despite all the effort made to persuade prospective voters, many will make their decision without paying the ads a thought. According to a Rasmussen Reports survey, 44 percent of adults are not following political ads, 13 percent of which admit they are not watching them at all. East senior Stedman Lowry has yet to be influenced by the candidates’ ads, and doesn’t think they will have any impact before the election. “I’ve made my decision before seeing the ads, they’re all really negative and they just didn’t really change my opinion,” Lowry says. “I was in AP Government and [I found the election to be] really interesting, so I just did some research on [the candidates] on my own.” Kelley believes that the political ads are more likely to affect undecided individuals like Lumbert rather than those similar to Lowry who stand firm in their decisions. “Generally speaking, the political advertising tends to affect those individuals who are not tied to either party,” Kelley says. “They’re the ones who are most susceptible to either being influenced or being turned off [by the ads].” While Lowry is nailed to his decision for one candidate, Lumbert is still unsure. As she continues to devote her attention to the seemingly endless advertisements, Lumbert wishes to see a plan to bring the deficit down, but most importantly, a plan in general —and with any luck, one that is truthful. “When I’m trying to figure something out, I will listen to [the ads], so I’m still at the point of listening, because I haven’t decided,” Lumbert says. “But honestly, I’ll just be glad when they’re over with.” SM
tracing the virtual battleground
With the use of social media constantly increasing, politicians have learned its positives and negatives.
T
story dillon mitchell
he Lincoln-Douglas debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas during the 1858 Illinois Senate election are probably the best-known early debates, mainly because they propelled Lincoln to national recognition and aided him in his victory in the presidential election two years later. What most people either forget or never know is that these primitive debates had large blocks of speaking and shouting matches, so in hindsight, they weren’t particularly efficient. Televised debates, beginning with the now-iconic match-up between JFK and Nixon, changed how presidential races work in a few ways, the first of these being the increased accessibility of debates for the general public. The televised aspect forced the candidates to forgo their political jargon and speak to the American people in a way they could comprehend. More than forty years later, a similar medium was introduced, only this time it was on the fluorescent screens of computers. Social media is a dominant element in today’s culture. With over 500 million people using Twitter as of April 2012 and Facebook having hit their one-billionth user on Sept. 14, it’s almost unavoidable. Politicians are aware of this, and they’re using it to their advantage. Not seeing a “sponsored” tweet from Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is a miracle, especially in the current political climate. According to Louis Jacobson, senior writer for fact-checking organization politifact.com, political use of social media has become more common in recent years. “Social media is a key area of campaign discourse,” Jacobson says.
46 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
If you like mitt romney’s facebook page and post a comment and the campaign responds, you suddenly feel they care about your concerns. “[Politicans] are not abandoning TV ads, but they definitely put a lot of emphasis on [using social media] to reach voters. When I look at our Twitter feed or our Facebook posts, I definitely notice a high degree of political engagement.” Using social media to advance a political cause has become more popular due to the personal level on which it places candidates and their campaigns. Christopher Kelley, a political science professor at Miami University (MU) , says that compared to older mediums like radio and television, social media allows for a certain intimacy when campaigning. “If you like Mitt Romney’s Facebook page and you post a comment and the campaign responds to your comment, you all of a sudden feel they care about your concerns,” Kelley says. “T.V. and radio are one-track mediums. What social media does is allow you into the conversations.” An example of this is the website Reddit, a sharing site akin to Digg, where users can post links to pictures, videos, blogs, etc. One of the most popular features of Reddit is the AMA. Standing for “Ask Me Anything,” it functions similarly to a press conference where users can ask the original poster, usually a celebrity or someone with a unique story, questions. This tool was utilized by President Obama in August, when he spent 30 minutes answering questions over various topics involving his foreign and domestic policies. It was also used on multiple occasions by Libertarian candidate, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, and once by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. None of these campaigns responded to inquiries about their respective AMA’s. Twitter has also been used increasingly to include the general public in political discussion. During the first presidential debate, users that included “#debates” in their tweet had the chance for it to appear across the bottom of the screen on channels like CNN. From nine to 10:30 p.m., the running time of the debate, approximately 10.3 million tweets were posted. Twitter spokeswoman Shavone Charles believes that due to Twitter, the world has moved from a 24-hour news cycle to a 140-character news cycle. “People are brought closer to events and candidates on Twitter. They’re able to join the conversation without having to be physically present,” Charles says. “Conversations you used to only [hear] at the coffee shop and around the television at home are now happening in a public forum where they can be measured and broadened.” For all the advantages social media provides, there are still a few setbacks, the most common is the spread of false information, whether it be by the politicians or their constituents. Jacobson says the ease of posting with Facebook or Twitter can lead to factual discrepancies. “I don’t know if social media makes politicians tend to be less truthful more often, but when they are [giving false information], it can spread easier and quicker,” Jacobson says. “Chain e-mails are the worst in terms of factual accuracy, but Facebook posts are pretty bad as well.” Kelley points out that social media also affects politicians’ accountability for their actions, especially with the rise of smart phones. “The use of videoing the candidates’ remarks and having them go viral has transformed what candidates do and say,” Kelley says. “Look what happened to George Allen with the ‘Macaca’ remark. Prior to the modern smart phone, that comment would have gone unnoticed.” The incident he is referring to occurred during the 2006 Virginia Senate race. Allen, up for re-election, was at a campaign rally, and during a speech, he gestured to S.R. Sidarth, an aid for his opponent Jim Webb. Sidarth was videotaping Allen, who then referred to him as “Macaca,” a racial slur against African people (despite the fact that Sidarth was
infographic chris bowling and josh shi
information youtube, facebook, twitter, klout
FACE(BOOK) OFF
KEY:
= 1,000,000 followers
= 20 klout
= 5,000,000 followers
mittromney
BarackObamadotcom
subscribers total video views most-watched video top demographic
239,985 26,120,579
“Barack Obama on Ellen” 27,567 likes, 2719 dislikes ages 13-17
Indian). The video eventually went viral and was seen as a major factor in Allen’s loss in the election. Another example of viral videos being used against politicians is the video released a month or so ago that captures Romney telling major donors that “47 percent of the people will vote for the president no matter what…there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them.” According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken after the video’s release, 54 percent of those polled were unfavorable to Romney’s comments, a critical blow as the presidential election draws nearer. Social media is a double-edged sword in that way. In a matter of seconds, a politician can get their message out to the people and almost instantly receive feedback. But in that same amount of time, a video or statement can go viral and break down a candidate’s support. But with 15 percent of online adults using Twitter as reported by the latest Pew poll, don’t expect politicians’ use of social media to slow down any time soon. SM
student politics sidebar kaitlin lange
East senior Raika Casey did not say a single word at her first Junior Statesmen of America (JSA) meeting freshman year. She never planned on taking on a state-wide leadership position for the club three years later. Casey is one of 500,000 American students to participate in the club since its creation in 1934. JSA is a student-led organization for students to meet and discuss political ideas, among other things. “Outside the discussion of current events, [JSA members] are also learning speaking skills,” East JSA chapter advisor and math teacher Jeff Flory says. “We do arrange formal debates so that they learn some of the rules of debate.”
23,692 246,763,073 “Doing Fine?”
634 likes, 780 dislikes
ages 45-54
subscribers total video views most-watched video top demographic
I probably learned more about the way the congressional process works in JSa than i did in Advanced placement government. Casey feels that this is the biggest misconception about JSA. “Everyone just thinks it’s some debate club,” Casey says. “It’s so much more than that. The only time it’s ever a debate club is at chapter meetings.” JSA is divided up into 10 “States.” East is part of the Ohio River Valley State, which is divided into regions. This tiered system makes JSA similar to American government. Through the program, students have the opportunity to receive hands-on experience by working with other people through different layers of government. Although there are advisors at each level, the students mainly run the organization. At the chapter level, leaders include presidents, vice presidents, and a secretary. East senior Jacob Linder functions as president and Casey serves as one of the two vice presidents. The chapter presidents plan the meetings, stay in touch with other presidents and the governor in the state, and prepare the chapter for conventions. At the regional level, mayors function as the leaders. Michael Lakomy is the mayor for the Cincinnati, Dayton and Indianapolis region. Along with making sure each chapter stays active, Lakomy focuses on expansion by tracking down individuals at different schools who could potentially start a chapter. “JSA is big on the coast and it’s not here,” Lakomy says. “There is no reason for it not to be.” The state level consists of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor along with a variety of appointed positions like Chief of Staff and Convention Coordinator. The governor is also a part of the Council of Governors, which focuses on nationwide direction. The Lieutenant
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 47
Election 2012 Governor presides over the Council of Chapter Presidents. Originally, Casey ran for Lieutenant Governor, but lost. In the six years that Flory has been advisor, Casey is the only individual to have run for a state-elected position. The current Ohio River Valley governor, Jordan Dickens, appointed Casey to the position of chief of staff after the election. Casey advises cabinet members and is in charge of the Chapter Challenge. “[The Chapter Challenge] is a point-based system we are implementing to get more people to conventions and participating more in debates,” Casey says. There are three conventions during the school year for which chapters can get credit: Fall State, Winter Congress and Spring State. At Fall and Spring State, members participate in formal debates. At Winter Congress, students write and pass legislation. This is where JSA functions most like American government. It’s also Casey’s favorite part of JSA. “I probably learned more about the way Congressional process works than I did in Advanced Placement U.S. Government,” Casey says. Casey also notes the similarities between JSA campaigns and real ones. “There was a little bit of slandering, there were people doing back door deals, there were people trying to take down other candidates,” Casey says. “It isn’t necessarily something we are proud of but it shows that we are acting like the real candidates do.” SM
sketching east’s reaction to debates
Daphne Ocran invites various East students to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates. story daphne ocran
Y
ou didn’t tell me that there were cookies!” The living room fills with laughter as East senior Matt King’s voice rings out in protest. I roll my eyes and apologize once more for forgetting to mention the warm plate of snickerdoodles sitting on the table in the other room and gesture for everyone to help themselves. The TV screen lights up, and there is the stage. Two empty stools sit there casting shadows along the floor. People in suits and other professional attire scurry this way and that, speaking quietly and moving papers around. “We had pizza last week,” East junior Nate Roth says smugly from his spot on the living room carpet. Matt responds with another protest. I sigh. On screen, the floodlights switch on with a sharp glare, and it looks like we’re awaiting a red and blue tinted interrogation. The doorbell rings and I spring up from my chair to welcome East junior Mikaela Berger into the house. We talk about political parties. “If you would’ve asked [which party] I supported a couple years ago, I would’ve said that I am a Republican, because that’s who my parents tend to vote for,” Nate says. “Now that I know a lot more about politics, I feel like I’ll support whoever is going to serve our country the best, not because of whatever political party they assign themselves to. I feel like people worry too much about the party and not who they’re voting for.”
48 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
“The Founding Fathers did not want political parties. They considered them factions, something that would divide the country even more, and they were right,” Matt says over his cookie. “The Republican and Democratic parties have so much power now that it’s making it almost impossible for a third party to win.” “It’s way too partisan,” Mikaela adds. “People should stop blindly agreeing to things simply because their party says that it’s the right thing to do. Each person should have a more individualized plan of what they think is best for the country.” When we get to the topic of the presidential race, everyone in the room has something to say. “Whatever happens now is obviously going to affect the way the country is,” Mikaela says. “Especially now when we’re so close to going off to college and trying to be by ourselves and be a little more independent.” We wait for 9 p.m. For a while there’s a great organized chaos. We talk and laugh about what we’re doing, and what might come out of our discussions. And of course, we eat food. “I’ve paid way too much attention to this race,” Matt says with a laugh. “I think a lot of it has to do with age. In 2008, I was in 8th grade, I remember watching the president get inaugurated in my lunch period. With time it’s played a larger role in my life.” In between cookies and laughter, I ask everyone about what they would like to see in the debates. “I’d really like to see them discuss education,” Mikaela answers. “I hear so much about taxes and war in the country, and I feel education is one of the things that has just fallen through the cracks. Especially because we feel it firsthand.” “They need to discuss how [the two parties] can get along,” Nate says, kicking his feet up on the arm chair. “The Democrats and the Republicans both have good views. But if there’s no collaboration then we just get caught in a stalemate. They need to sit down and honestly, man to man talk about how they can set an example for the generations to come.” It’s 9 p.m. On screen, floodlights switch on with a sharp glare. The candidates face the cameras, prepared to give the most compelling speech. There’s the sound of microphones, the hum of electricity and the calm, collected faces to two men vying for the nation’s attention. President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney have made their way to the stage. We all relax into our chairs with pizza, cookies and drinks, our eyes on the screen. The countdown has ended. The debate has begun. The second presidential debate is town-hall style, and the audience members begin asking each of the candidates questions regarding issues ranging from national defense to education and healthcare. The moderator, Candy Crowley, picks one man from the crowd, Jeremy Epstein, who asks what each candidate would do to ensure that college students can support themselves after graduation. Romney starts out. Thank you Jeremy… He goes on to speak about jobs. I watch Mikaela’s brow furrow. “He didn’t really answer the question…” President Obama gets up from his stool. Jeremy, first of all your future is bright… “They’re definitely going with a name-recognition thing here,” Nate comments. “Yeah,” I say. “Jeremy...” After both candidates give their answers, Crowley speaks into the microphone. We’re looking at a situation where 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or more. What about those who need a job right now? Romney begins. Well, what you’re seeing in this country is 23 million people struggling to find
art judy nguyen
a job. And a lot of them, as you say, Candy, have been out of work for a long, long, long time. The president’s policies have been exercised over the last four years and they haven’t put Americans back to work… Obama fires back. Candy, what Governor Romney said just isn’t true… “It’s already getting pretty heated,” Mikaela says. “Yeah,” Matt says. “Look at how they’re moving.” We all agree. A few times the candidates cross paths on their way to the front of the stage, or get into each other’s personal space, and we hold our breath. “Whoa, look at his face!” Nate says as Obama comes back and directly addresses Romney regarding the attack on the American Embassy in September in Benghazi, Libya. I think it’s interesting that the president just said that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror… Candy refutes Governor Romney’s claim. He did call it an act of terror. It did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea about there being a riot about this tape to come out. You are correct about that. Obama is invited to speak about gun control. We’re a nation that believes in the Second Amendment, and I believe in the Second Amendment… Romney responds. Yeah, I’m not in favor of new pieces of legislation on guns and taking guns away or making certain guns illegal. We, of course, don’t want to have automatic weapons, and that’s already illegal in this country to have automatic weapons… “But the thing is, people do.” Mikaela says, shrugging. “I don’t get it,” Nate comments from the carpet again. “Why do people insist on having those kinds of guns. They don’t belong with an
average citizen. What are they going to do with them?” A few minutes go by, and Candy introduces another member of the crowd, Carol Goldberg, to ask a question on the subject of job outsourcing. “This should be interesting,” Matt says. The 90 minutes of debate fly by. Obama and Romney exchange jabs, talk about healthcare, defense, spending, contraception and taxes. The candidates finish late, and their families flood the stage to hug them. I move to mute the TV and, sitting on the couch, we reflect on the debates. “It was alright,” Nate says. “President Obama definitely did a much better job in this debate.” “I thought Romney did well,” Matt says. “He wasn’t as strong as the last one, but he brought up good points. Obama had more zingers, but they both had good points.” “I liked when they brought up things that are overlooked sometimes, like education and women’s rights,” Mikaela mentions. “You have to look at the big picture, and vote for who has the better big picture overall.” The clock strikes 11:30 p.m. all the cookies are gone. My guests have since left and the screen now features pundits and commentators taking apart every single word or phrase that was used by each candidate and laughing at the gaffes and blunders that had taken place. I start cleaning up and my thoughts shift to my homework that I still need to finish, and the school day that we will all face tomorrow. I watch the screen playback the debate footage over and over, and I wonder if, in a few weeks, when millions of Americans go out to the polls, anyone will care about what the candidates had to say tonight. I step to the TV and turn it off. Now for that homework. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 49
Election 2012
painting the face behind political calls
East junior Nick Riddick has shown his interest in American politics by working for several political campaigns. story jasmine tuazon
i
n the past four months, East junior Nick Riddick has worked for both Mitt Romney’s and Barrack Obama’s campaigns. But it’s not because he’s flip-flopping between candidates— it’s because of his desire to be immersed in politics. Like many kids, Riddick’s political views began developing through conversations with his family, even though his parents don’t share the same political views as each other. “Growing up, my mom has pretty much been a conservative and my dad’s [been] a liberal.” Riddick says. “I tend to lean toward the Democratic side but I think the fact that I’ve had both sides has given me perspective.” According to Nick’s mom Josiane Riddick, the family first noticed Nick’s interest in politics during their family discussions. “We always debated different topics while watching the news,” Josiane says. “During his freshman year of high school, Nicholas just started becoming more interested and mature in his ideas.” David Riddick, Nick’s dad, reflects that his son has always been curious about social issues. “He has always been a philosophical type. Always likes to challenge a statement. Always wants to fight for the underdog,” David says. “He’s never been one to take other people’s ideas, and he’s been able to turn that argumentative style toward politics.” Nick believes that his interest in politics began at the end of his freshman year of high school. Realizing that he enjoyed debating, he joined East’s Junior Statesmen of America (JSA) club. During the summer, one of his connections from JSA, East alumnus Daniel Robbins, posted on the group’s Facebook page that he was interning with Friends of John Boehner, an Ohio Political Action Committee supporting the Republican party, and that they could use more volunteers. Nick and his friend East junior Tommy Paradiso decided to sign up to volunteer with Robbins. Nick himself worked phone banks two Saturdays a month, where he made calls to survey residents in the community about whom they were voting for. Nick’s volunteering plans, however, changed when the 2012-13 school year started. “The Democratic West Chester field organizer, Emily Fisher, came into our government class to talk to us about volunteering for the Obama campaign, Organizing for America,” Nick says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that existed,’ and I started going there by myself.” Paradiso, whom Nick calls “my other friend who cares about politics,” says that Nick’s switch to working for the other party was expected. “I wasn’t surprised so much about the fact that Nick went to volunteer for Obama,” says Paradiso, who is a Republican. “I was more surprised that he was here [at Friends of John Boehner]. When he worked with us, though, it wasn’t like he was changing his core values. It was more to just get experience in politics.” At the Democratic Headquarters, located next to The Web Extreme Entertainment, Nick works with Fisher and the Liberty Township field
50 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
organizer Brandon Mourich, who both stay at the office most of the day. “Brandon says he’s napped there before, and I know sometimes the field organizers will have a futon in the place—especially now during election time,” Nick says. Because the field organizers work directly for and represent Obama’s campaign and could face consequences for putting Organizing for America in a negative light, both declined to talk to the Spark. Since Nick began volunteering in mid-September, he has become highly involved in Organizing for America, working every day except for Friday from 6-8 p.m. Two weeks into the service, Nick signed up to be a part-time fellow, an internship that requires 15 hours of volunteering at the Democratic Headquarters. One weekend while Nick was volunteering, Mourich offered him one of 10 VIP passes to attend a Democratic rally in downtown Cincinnati at the Duke Energy center to celebrate the first day of early voting. After convincing his parents to let him miss a day of school, Nick went to the rally with Lakota West freshman Simone Henderson, who is also a part-time fellow for Organizing for America. They arrived at 9 a.m. and were able to stay in the front row while listening to speakers like Sherrod Brown and a woman whose child was saved by Obamacare. Michelle Obama also talked about the war in Iraq, the general increase in employment, and the importance of voting in the upcoming election. “Michelle Obama’s speech was real and unscripted,” says Henderson, who volunteers for Organizing for America 30 hours a week. “It was so easy for people to connect to her. Her presence just got the crowd.” After the speech, Nick had the opportunity to talk to the first lady. “She went around and I was like, ‘Hi, Michelle Obama,’” Nick says. “She came up to me and said, ‘Hi, how are you?’ And I was like, ‘Good, I’ve been volunteering for your campaign.’ She said, ‘Oh, thank you so much,’ and she hugged me and asked what my name was. I definitely don’t regret missing school for that.” As the election on Nov. 6 draws nearer, Nick’s volunteering workload back at the campaign headquarters will continue to increase. “On election day, I have to be at the Democratic Headquarters
[Nick] always likes to challenge a statement. always wants to fight for the underdog. He’s never been one to take people’s ideas. from potentially four in the morning until night. It’s going to be a very intense version of what we’re doing right now,” Nick says. “Every person who didn’t pick up, we’re going to call again to [encourage them to] go vote. We will drive people to the polls—anything it takes to get Obama supporters to vote.” After the election, Organizing for America will no longer be available in the area for volunteering. Nevertheless, Nick still plans to be involved in political organizations, even if this means going back to volunteer for the Republican campaign, and he hopes he will be able to pursue a career in political science or law. “Now that I know the process of how to get involved in politics, I want to work for future presidents by being a field organizer like Brandon,” Nick says. “[As for my career], I’d like to be a lawyer, or, if I could pick my dream job, become a congressman.” During these past few months, Nick’s opportunity to volunteer has given him an entirely new perspective on the election, both as a citizen and as an individual. “Before I started volunteering, I wouldn’t grieve about whoever won because I could always argue either side,” Nick says. “Now it’s going to be more personal because of all the work I put into this. If Obama wins, even by a little bit, I’ll feel good because I helped [him] do that.” SM
entertainment | classic book review
FEAR AND LOATHING: ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ‘72 HUNTER S. THOMPSON publisher straight arrow books release date original articles published 1972 book review zach fulciniti art hannah eads
T
umblr-fiends and pseudo-hippies likely know little of Hunter S. Thompson beyond his most popular work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, a tale of drug-fueled debauchery and reflections on the failure of the counter-culture. And despite its merit it doesn’t really do him justice, because Thompson’s true genius was his journalism, what many call Gonzo journalism, but what might as well be called “reporting with heart.” The problem with journalism, well, one of the problems pertaining to presidential elections, is the tendency of media to cover the “horse race,” as it is described by political scientists and civics texts. And in that sense, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, is a masterwork of selfcommentary and a self-criticism. Beginning in December of 1971, Thompson moved to Washington D.C. and began reporting on the presidential election of 1972 for Rolling Stone, and those articles comprise the large majority of Campaign Trail ‘72. He starts, and focuses largely, on the various campaigns for the Democratic nomination, including that of Edmund Muskie, John Lindsay, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace and the man who would eventually become the nominee, George McGovern. Thompson attends a number of campaign rallies and events, all the while attempting to describe the campaign strategies used by the various candidates, ranging from Muskie’s ill-fated “Sunshine Special” to McGovern’s highly effective door-to-door canvassing and grassroots organization. This occupies the first several months of his coverage, as well as his own analysis of the candidates and primaries, often communicated in the form of bets he made with campaign officials and fellow reporters. His frequent triumphs, and his insistence early on that McGovern would be the nominee, reveal several important facts about Thompson that would otherwise be lost on those who know him as nothing more than the gun-toting Mescaline hound who rode through the desert of Nevada with Dr. Gonzo, the first being he was as much a political junkie as a regular old junkie, and he was remarkably politically savvy. In the later months, the campaign for the Democratic nomination largely boils down to McGovern and Humphrey. McGovern, a long shot in the beginning, places second in the New Hampshire primary, and the momentum propels him to victory in Wisconsin, an extremely close second in Ohio and victories in 20 other states. The next major chapter, and arguably the most interesting, is the Democratic Convention held in Miami Beach, Florida, in July of ‘72. Thompson describes a complex, byzantine procedure by which the McGovern campaign secures the nomination on the first ballot. Thompson’s lengthy and complicated description of the maneuver, largely lost on other political reporters at the time, is further evidence that he deserves far more credit for his intellect. The rest of the book is characterized by the controversy over Vice Presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton, who would
eventually be replaced by Sargent Shriver, and McGovern’s unprecedented landslide loss in the general election in November, winning only the District of Columbia and Massachusetts, a whopping 17 electoral votes. Thompson describes the somber mood of both McGovern’s campaign and the press corps on the eve of the election and the days following. Ostensibly the book is a collection of articles. But with the inclusion of a number of interviews and interjections, including the “Dark Interlude” that describes the disastrous and undemocratic “Eagleton Affair,” the book amounts to more of a novel than anything else. The important thing to see is that, unlike other reporters who covered the election, Thompson puts his finger to the pulse of the political process, and by a strange twist of Gonzo fate, the horse race itself becomes his novel’s protagonist. The personality and life and heart with which he comprises his coverage make it a lasting and timeless treasure of political understanding. His coverage goes far beyond the traditional beat-style reporting, and he brings together conclusive points about what each campaign means for the political process and what the final outcome, the re-election of his unequivocal arch-enemy, Richard Milhous Nixon, means for America. First and foremost, Thompson indicts the press for the miscarriage that was the “Eagleton Affair,” by which the Democratic nominee for Vice President, in conjunction with a badgering, relentless and ignoble media, made his own running mate look so poor and indecisive that the possibility of an electoral victory was pushed seemingly beyond reach. But the most courageous and brilliant thing about Campaign Trail ‘72 is that, in his final analysis, he is unafraid to point his finger at the real villain. And while he would largely be expected to point his finger Nixon’s way, he picks a strange and more accurate antagonist in retrospect: the American electorate itself. He, like most Democrats and McGovern himself, considered early on that whoever won the nomination would easily defeat Nixon, but in the end Thompson concludes that nobody could’ve beaten Nixon, because the American people, of whom only two percent considered the Watergate scandal to be of any importance to the election, among other things, had failed their precious democracy. And in retrospect, if even Hunter S. Thompson is willing to look past Nixon in favor of us, then it’s difficult to really point the finger at anyone else. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 51
entertainment | movie reviews
photo labeled for commercial use.
Movie Reviews
EDITOR’S
choice by josh shi
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower Summit Entertainment 102 Minutes ∙ PG-13
G
oing into The Perks of Being A Wallflower, I was a little anxious. I was worried about whether Emma Watson would be able to pull off a convincing American accent, whether Stephen Chbosky had the same directing chops as he did writing, whether Ezra Miller would be too gay. You
52 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
know, the usual stuff. Luckily, all my fears were gently laid to bed, and then smothered with a pillow made of the collective brilliance of Logan Lerman, Miller and Watson. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, based on the novel of the same name by Chbosky, is about a socially-introverted boy named Charlie as he chronicles his entrance into high school. His best friend in middle school shot himself and now, starting out as an unpopular freshman, he quickly becomes the luckiest boy in the world when he meets and befriends seniors and Recognized Beautiful People Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson).
T
he film goes on to reveal that Charlie, as well as many other characters, has more problems than just his social awkwardness. Homosexuality, child abuse, rape, nothing is off-limits in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which
is surprisingly fine. Usually such dreary topics make a movie seem deliberately dark and gritty, filled to the brim with so much teenage angst that it may as well start listening to Green Day and dressing in a way that disappoints its mother.
B
ut it doesn’t happen. The Perks of Being a Wallflower dwells on some serious topics, but it juxtaposes them with scenes of such genuine comedy that the heavy parts are made more poignant without seeming forced. Characters are all multi-dimensional and are capable of pulling off both heavy and light acting. And most of that is due to the amazing performances onscreen. Miller’s range in particular is given a spotlight, and he is able to pull off more believable roles than a whole room of Emmywinners. Lerman’s performance as Charlie shows that he’s not just “that guy they pick when Michael
Logan Lerman as Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Cera is too busy eating ice cream and being shy.” Watson is just as mesmerizing in her first major role after Harry Potter, delivering an impeccable performance in a spoton Yankee accent.
B
ut the best part of The Perks of Being a Wallflower has to be its ability to seamlessly merge comedy and drama, going from moments where I could cry at the drop of a hat to moments where I don’t mind that some lady three rows ahead of me has a hyena-like cackle because I’m laughing just as hard. Normally a movie that combines such humor with bitter topics would seem schizophrenic and thinly spread, but The Perks of Being a Wallflower is able to hold it all together. From the irresistible cast to the first-rate script to the catchy soundtrack, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those movies that just works. SM
entertainment | movie reviews
Here Comes The Boom Columbia Pictures ∙ 105 minutes ∙ PG by
I
thought there was already a movie about a funny, fat and apathetic teacher who saves a music program while managing to inspire his students and get the
hot girlfriend. But according to Here Comes the Boom, I must have completely imagined School of Rock. Scott Voss (Kevin James) begins as an apathetic biology teacher at a failing high school. But after plans of cutting the music program are announced, he takes charge of saving both the program and its loveable music teacher Marty Streb (Henry Winkler). But in order to raise 48,000 dollars, Voss turns to MMA (mixed martial arts) fighting where he can win the necessary money for the program. Although
A
the plot seems interesting and action-packed, there is hardly one good thing to say about the movie. Every character, scene and situation in this movie is unoriginal. But that’s not new, directors are always borrowing ideas. What director Frank Coraci did differently in Here Comes the Boom though is cut out the middleman and create a disingenuous mess that doesn’t even try to add new ideas or create a flow through the jumbled mess of its hackneyed plotline.Every character fills some sort of stereotype, and every scene is so absurd that by the
Argo
Sinister
Warner Bros. 120 Minutes ∙ R
Summit Entertainment 110 Minutes ∙ R
by
s a sophomore in high school, the Iran hostage situation of the late 1970s never struck me as particularly interesting. History textbooks don’t do justice to some events in history. Outside of educating the reader on what happened, they don’t show the true complexity or epical value of the characters that tend to be blown off as minor details. No one ever told me about Argo, a story that occurred behind the scenes of the conflict. I knew that Iranian protesters, under the Ayatollah, stormed the U.S. embassy during the end of Carter’s presidency and took hostages in response to the American government hiding the overthrown Shah. I didn’t know six Americans escaped the embassy and were being hidden by
Chris Bowling
end, when everything becomes a conglomerate of every “feel good” moment writer James could possibly think of, it becomes more laughable than inspiring. The movie at times can be funny, especially in the case of Winkler, but it must be assumed that viewers have zero attention span and a need for instant gratification because that’s the only audience Here Comes the Boom can truly satisfy. The whole movie just gives the impression that the writers had no idea what they were doing coming into this project. Scenes where characters completely double back on their prior decisions and act like nothing’s happened make the movie barely understandable and raise questions as to how this thing even got off the writer’s table. SM
Nick Riddick
the Canadian ambassador. I didn’t know they were rescued by a man named Tony Mendez (played by Ben Affleck) through an elaborate scheme to disguise them as a Canadian film crew, making the fake movie “Argo” and scouting for a location to shoot it. This film is historically accurate down to the bone. Every little thing is accounted for, and rightfully so. It shows the dynamic struggles of the characters, all with their own individual personalities, which helps them add their own two cents to the progression of the mission. At times, it goes a bit overboard and focuses too much on minute details in such a way that made me feel like I was reading a textbook rather than watching a movie. However, this is expected and can hardly be avoided. Argo provides insight and education as well as an entertaining and enthralling directing style, which is something I’d like to see more of in movies. Just like I’d like to be more entertained in history class. SM
by
S
cary movies have never really fazed me. From classic films like The Exorcist to Halloween, to new releases like The Possession, to the most gruesome films ever made, Human Centipede (one and two), I have never experienced that nightmare-inducing-I-will-neverforget-this-movie feeling some people describe after watching horror movies. Scott Derrickson’s Sinister changed that for me. The movie begins with a family moving into a new house, where almost an entire family had been murdered. As they begin to settle down, the typical strange occurrences start to happen. The true-crime writing father Elliot Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) uses the murder as the topic of his next novel. Not so typical. Searching the attic, he finds a box full of family movies,
Kyle Culp
but the movies are really films of families being brutally murdered. As he watches he notices a demon that he later finds to be the pagan deity Bughuul, who then begins appearing in all of the family films. It becomes clear that the murders are not isolated incidents but part of a much bigger problem. Once seeing the deity his own family begins to fall apart. Sinister has some commonly used horror features but it’s what Derrickson does with the details that made my bladder, filled with 44 oz. of Mr. Pibb Xtra, nearly explode. The contrast between the found footage and studio shot footage, the way the story is revealed, the re-finding of the box full of movies in their new house despite Oswalt having burnt it to a crisp, tie all the horrifying moments together. Sinister is unlike so many horror movies where I can fall asleep in between the scary moments and miss nothing at all. Sinister is one of the best horror films I have ever seen, hands down. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 53
entertainment | column
lipstick on a dead dog Josh Shi
Entertainment editor contact josh at joshua.shi@lakotaeastspark.com
A
mericans don’t like politics. And when I say that Americans dislike politics, I don’t mean that they hate it like Americans hate atheists or the homeless. It’s a special kind of hate, unique to Americans, where they sensationalize the very being of their hate until it barely resembles the thing it represents. They give political events the same treatment they give major league football and Mario games by putting the word “Super” in front of it, as if a regular PAC or a regular Tuesday isn’t good enough. Then the mass media covers the politics, (not the actual political issues, God forbid) and shows everyone pictures of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres or of Mitt Romney sloppily eating a corned beef sandwich beside some honest blue-collared workers or something else to make the candidates seem like normal human beings. And of course, like with all other sensations, anything resembling facts are ignored by both sides. And it’s not hard to imagine why Americans hate politics. Politics are confusing, boring and, most of all, require the participant to be an active member of his or her community when it is already proven that the number one hate figure for Americans is other Americans.
S
o, as citizens of this glorious country, we do what we do best. We pay attention to the fluff around the issue and not the actual event. The mass media’s coverage of the presidential campaigns is not centered on the boring stuff, like policies of each candidate. Instead, news websites fill their front pages with headlines like “Pizza Hut Rethinks Presidential Debate Stunt” from Yahoo! or stories about how 7-11 is selling electionthemed slushie cups. Even when the news talks about debates, they don’t really want to talk about the issues. The media doesn’t bring in economists to discuss the plausibility of the candidates’ policies. News outlets just talk about who won the debates and what that means for the upcoming months. Either that or how it
54 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
somehow matters who Nicki Minaj supports, as seen when the media had a field day when she rapped “I’m a Republican, voting for Romney” in a remix of “Mercy” with Lil’ Wayne. Although how anyone can be taken seriously in the context of willingly being associated with Lil Wayne is beyond most rational people and even some irrational ones.
colbert and stewart know that americans would rather pay attention to a dead dog on the side of the road than actual politics.
Colbert and Stewart know that Americans would rather pay attention to a dead dog on the side of the road than actual politics. And they embrace that. They have, through satire and comedy, been able to inform Americans in a brilliant and entertaining way that distracts from that dead dog.
A
nd there are educated celebrities out there who are all incredibly smart and help to deliver politics and real-world issues to an audience that otherwise might not be interested in it. Colbert and Stewart together shed light on the Supreme Court Citizens United decision to allow unlimited donations to Super PACs through the creation of the Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow Super PAC. Colbert himself also gave Americans a first-hand look at the animosity and lack of cooperation inside Congress when he gave his presentation on his experiences as a migrant worker in America. Colbert inserts himself into that absurdity, showing how, if he can do it, it shouldn’t exist. Stewart’s style is to pick it apart, showing why and how each aspect of what he’s talking about doesn’t make sense. Even fake news sites like “The Onion” provide poignant parodies of real-world issues, providing comedy while at the same time forcing viewers to think about the subject matter at hand.
B W
hich is unfortunate. America, a country that prides itself on its ability to freely choose its own rulers, has a terrible habit of not caring about who gets elected. Voter turnout rates rarely peak over 60 percent, and the turnout of 56.8 percent in the 2008 presidential election was actually the highest since 1968. Compare this to the voter turnout of the United Kingdom, which reached its lowest point in the last 70 years in 2001 with 59.1 percent, and the highest was in 1950 with 83.9 percent. Which is what makes people like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart so brilliant.
ut satire shouldn’t be an end. It should be a springboard. The hope is that, because audiences can see the ridiculousness of a system that they have taken for granted, they will start to pay attention to the government around them, at all levels. The hope is that Americans will stop listening or even caring about what Nicki Minaj says about whom she’s going to vote for. The hope is that Americans will be able to see through the lies and the rhetoric that both candidates are guilty of spouting out to anyone who will listen. And if hope can get Obama into the White House, imagine what it could do for the rest of us. SM
entertainment | politics
Oops!
It’s not always easy to separate satire from real news. Even seasoned politicians and news outles are prone to intentionally misleading claims and both are known to let their guard down. Spark takes a look at a few occaasions on which this has happened. infographic chris bowling photos used with permission from mct campus
Louisiana Republican Representative John Fleming posted a link on Facebook to The Onion’s story about an “abortionplex,” with the comment, “abortion by the wholesale.” The fictitous eight billion dollar clinic was to include restaurants, a nightclub, and a 10-screen multiplex theater. (Feb. 6, 2012)
Fars News Agency, an Iranian news circuit, used the satirical website The Onion as a source for a story in which they claimed that an “overwhelming majority of rural white Americans” would rather vote for Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Obama. (Sept. 28, 2012)
After Politico posted a satirical column by Roger Simon in which he quoted Paul Ryan bad mouthing his running mate Mitt Romney, referring to him as “The Stench,” Nobel Prize-winning columnist Paul Krugman took to his New York Times blog in reaction to the article. Lawerence O’ Donnell also dedicated a segment to the fictious article on his show The Last Word. (Sept. 26, 2012)
An article from satirical site The Daily Currant went viral when it claimed that Missouri Representative Todd Akin believes that breast milk cures homosexuality. Famous for his “legitimate rape” comment, Akin is quoted as saying female breast milk,“has a 94 percent chance of permanently curing homosexual perversions.” (Aug. 26, 2012)
THE DAILY CURRANT Fact Box
Key:
=Website rank in U.S.
= Time spent on site(min)
= 779
= 175
= 2,163
= 599
= 3. 32
= 4.05
= 2.6
= 3.43
Top demographic Male, 18-24
Top demographic Male, 55+
Top demographic Male, 18-24
Top demographic Male, 18-24
Host of the popular satirical show The Colbert Report on Comedy Central , Stephen Colbert addressed Congress in 2010 on the issue of illegal immagration in migrant workers. Colbert suggested to Congress, as well as viewers of C-Span3 for Americans to stop eating fruits and vegetables to solve the issue at hand. (Sept. 24, 2012)
THE DAILY CURRANT
information Alexa.com
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 55
entertainment | album reviews
Album Reviews EDITOR’S
choice
be better stated than that there is a reason his name graces The Heist as an artist, rather than in a 4pt font credit line. The production of The Heist may be the best heard on an album this year, and “Can’t Hold Us” is no exception. The catchiness and urge to keep a beat on this piercing track is no accident. It grabs the listener and thrusts him headfirst into the album, never letting go.
Ben Haggerty (left), best known by his stage name, Macklemore, in the video for “Thrift Shop.”
By Jeff Back
M
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis The Heist
Macklemore LLC
Macklemore teams up with producer Ryan Lewis to release an album of the year contender.
B
y all accounts, Macklemore should be a starving artist. He should be playing clubs with fewer than 50 people, 40 of whom he invited. He should be rapping about cars he doesn’t own, parties he doesn’t go to, and girls he doesn’t sleep with. At least, that’s what every other independent white rapper is doing. Maybe it’s the white-man Gumby haircut that shields Seattle-born Ben Haggerty from the standard conventions of ignorant rap on his first studio release The Heist. More likely, it’s
56 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
photo used with fair use
Ryan Lewis refusing for his toptier beats to suffer a painful death by mediocre rap.
W
hatever it is, it works for the Washington duo on The Heist. As the newest face in the “positive” rap game, Macklemore provides hope for conscious rap fans. He refuses to look past the ills of society in lieu of lines of opulence and celebrity. The independent rhymer doesn’t shy away from controversy, and even raps about consciously making the decision to rap about these topics.
But The Heist would be no rap album without a little selflove. In “Ten Thousand Hours,” Macklemore comments on the dedication he has to rap, citing Malcom Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” as a reference to the time he has committed to becoming an expert. He raps, “The greats weren’t great because at birth they could paint/The greats were great because they paint a lot.”
A
nd when Macklemore’s rapping expertise shines, Lewis’ producing skill beams. His importance to the album cannot
acklemore doesn’t give his listeners’ ears a break either, jumping into arguably the album’s most controversial track, “Same Love.” A marriage-equality campaign supporting Washington Referendum 74 is laden atop a soothing piano melody and complemented by an equally soothing hook by Seattle-native Mary Lambert. Macklemore raps “If I was gay, I would think hip hop hates me/Have you read the Youtube comments lately?/‘Man that’s gay’ gets dropped on the daily/We become so numb to what we’re saying.” Not only supporting marriage equality, Macklemore criticizes the rap world for its desensitized use of the word “gay.” The duo shows no fear in calling out rap fans whose respect they are so desparately trying to earn. An unexpected highlight on The Heist is the instrumental “BomBom” which surprisingly becomes a favorite track, despite Macklemore’s absence. Lewis’ partnership with Seattle band The Teaching provides for an upbeat cut independent of Macklemore’s rhymes. The song stands strong on its own and is the epitome of Lewis’ production.
T
he Heist is the product of unparalleled sincerity from both Haggerty and Lewis. Any track could be listened to for its beats or lyrics alone, but the potent grouping of the two combine for what is sure to be a contender for album of the year. SM
entertainment | album reviews
Ellie Goulding
Halcyon
by Josh
I
t’s apparently an unwritten rule of music recording that, after an initial success, the artist must release another album later that demonstrates how the artist has matured or something else no one actually cares about. Ellie Goulding’s attempt to follow this rule manifests itself as her sophomore album, Halcyon, a far venture into the badlands of alternative folk. Her earlier single “Lights,” was a smash hit blend of electro-
Shi
dance pop and dubstep. But apparently Goulding has grown up, and she has since realized that the world is actually not a happy place whatsoever. Goulding said that, in this album, she’s “…going to be more emotional... I’m all about emo.” However, a first listen at Halcyon reveals that Goulding isn’t actually trying to be emo. She’s trying to be Florence + the Machine, which sounds like a respectable ambition until you realize that, if you’re going to listen to something that sounds like Florence + the Machine anyway, you might as well just
listen to Florence + the Machine and cut out the middleman. “Figure 8” sounds like she wants to be Florence. So does “Explosions.” Perhaps the only song that doesn’t sound like Florence is “Anything Could Happen,” but that’s probably because it sounds like she’s trying to be Foster the People. But Halcyon does have some shining moments. “I Know You Care” is the most genuinesounding song in the whole album, and “Figure 8” is a throwback to the days when Goulding wanted to have her songs blasted in a nightclub instead of a dirty hipster’s iPod. Halcyon could have been a good album. It could’ve been, if Goulding had decided what exactly she wanted to be. But for now, she’s in some strange limbo between indie-rock-but-not-quite and electronic-but-not-quite. SM
WHAT EAST IS LISTENING TO as told to
josh shi photos by justin york
Colton Amberge
“Too Close”
alex care
Celine McNally sophomore
“Who We Are”
Danny Kleman
Why?
The Script
Freelance Whales
Why? is a sort of curveball. On the surface, a 30-something white guy with a Jew-fro who combines rap and indie rock doesn’t sound like the most appealing kind of band. Mumps, Etc, their fourth album, continues the trend of bordering between hilarious and serious. Like on “Strawberries,” front man Yoni Wolf raps “I don’t wear rubbers and I don’t wear sunscreen.” But it ends with him almost whispering “I am not okay, boys.” Or on “Waterlines,” he raps “Girls used to fawn over my locks to kill/Now the girls are gone and I’m on minoxidil.” The inconsistency can be a mess, but that’s to be expected with genre mash-ups.—Dillon Mitchell
Some things shouldn’t mix together like styrofoam with gasoline and metal in microwaves. These combinations may be explosive, nothing is as destructive as mixing hip-hop and soft rock, which yields #3, The Script’s new album. The Irish stars have abandoned their path of poprock and switched to hip-hop with songs “The Good Ol’ Days” and “Hall of Fame.” In this album, Danny O’Donoghue’s vocals are replaced by a barrage of rapping, which does not sit well. The Script now sounds like something that would be on American Top 40. Three is a magical number, turning The Script into a puppet of the music industry.—Rahul Mukherjee
I don’t feel like I should like Diluvia by the Freelance Whales. The vocals and bright synths on some songs are reminiscent of Owl City, which isn’t a compliment by any means, and the lyrics tend to lack substance. But not all of Diluvia is like that. “DNA Bank” and “Land Features” both prove that the band can create interesting ideas and offer more than underdeveloped songs about hopeless romantics. Freelance Whales has a unique folk/pop sound which it utilized more on its debut, Weathervanes. Regardless, Diluvia isn’t too far from that sentiment that defined their earlier sound and remains a solid release.—Chris Bowling
Mumps, etc.
#3
freshman
red
junior
Diluvia
To check out Josh Shi’s review of Taylor Swift’s new album, Red, and other album and movie reviews go to lakotaeastspark.com
“The House that Heaven Built” Parklynn Petty
Japandroids
junior
“Kelly”
When Saints Go Machine
Katie Gooch
senior
“Too To Burn”
Sonny and the Sunsuts
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 57
entertainment | band feature
the brothers montgomery
Caleb (left) and Nathan Montgomery perform an a cappela verson of “As Long As You Love Me� by Justin Bieber.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
With a Twitter following of 70,000 and counting, and recording sessions in NYC and Nashville under their belt, Caleb and Nathan Montgomery are ready to take the world by storm. story nugeen aftab photos michael tedesco 58 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
entertainment | band feature
R
ed cushioned seats line the movie theater as churchgoers start to shuffle in. A lyric video pops up on the screen as four musicians walk up to the stage and pick up their instruments. The two singers start with “We lift our eyes to you, exalted One,” and the crowd is immediately absorbed. Church-goers sway to the music and lift their arms up as they mouth the lyrics shown on the screen. The band is just as involved as the crowd. The singers bobbing their heads, the guitarist mouthing lyrics and the keyboardist tapping his feet to the beat. Everyone is into it. The song ends and the sermon starts to stream on the screen of the Video Venue, the overflow room for Rivers Crossing Community Church, which was converted from the old Showcase Cinemas. The band ducks out of the 11:15 a.m. session, having played and attended the earlier sermon, and sits in the lobby close to the old snack bar and the unlimited soda machine. The keyboardist and guitarist, brothers Caleb and Nathan Montgomery, respectively, sit with their friends after their second Rivers Crossing performance ever, having only been a part of the church for six weeks. “Have you been to Costco?” Caleb asks. His dark curls and playful eyes contrast his twin brother’s straight blonde hair and serious smile. He recommends Wholly Guacamole. “It should be a religion. It can be ‘Holy’ Guacamole,” Caleb laughs. “And we can worship the all-knowing Avocod!” The two 18 year-old brothers crack up and try coming up with ingredients to represent the Bible and the Holy Spirit, but they fail and move onto another topic. Although they only play instruments in church, the pair also has a successful singing career. They call themselves Alabama Capital (AC) because they share their last name with Alabama’s state capital, Montgomery, and they have a Twitter following of about 70,000 fans. Producer Shawn Campbell, who discovered Cody Simpson and has worked with Chris Brown and Missy Elliot, found AC in October 2011 after watching their “Stereo Hearts” cover on YouTube. Campbell contacted the brothers and sent them to New York City, where they chose their current management company, Primary Wave Management. AC then went to Los Angeles for their first professional recording session, but Nathan says that the songs “weren’t the musical direction in which we wanted to go.” The two decided to start from scratch and spend an extra four months recording new music, inspired by artists like Boys 2 Men, Michael Jackson and Bruno Mars, in order to “stay true to who we are.” Their parents have been very supportive throughout the whole process and help in keeping the pair on track with their goals. “They take the lead. We just support what they’re doing, help them make decisions and remind them of what they want to do,” says mother Susan Montgomery. “We decided from the beginning that we wanted to get behind all their dreams and passions.”
Nathan and Caleb eventually decided to form their own group because they wanted to create a sound that was reflective of their message. They started playing at local clubs, gaining a local following before they started posting videos on YouTube. “[Being twins], you are literally born with a partner. It’s different from being a solo act, and it’s different from being in a band or a group with a friend,” Caleb says. “You’re intertwined naturally with your brother, so we make all of our music together.” Although the twins’ fan base has grown rapidly, it isn’t big enough for AC just yet. Nathan aspires to be “bigger than Justin Bieber” someday, whether it is in five years or 15, and he has full faith that AC can eventually get there. “I always see music as a journey and a drive that’s always there. You’re never where you want to be,” Nathan says. “[Having 70,000 fans] feels great, but it’s not a feeling of accomplishment yet. I want [our] music to be something that transcends generations, not just in the moment.”
“
T
he twins have grown up with music all around them. Susan has always been very involved with the church choir, and their father, Phillip, started to pursue a major in music theory during his college years, and although he didn’t finish, he still continues to make music as a hobby. Phillip says that Nathan and Caleb’s skills come from their mom’s family, the understanding of music comes from his family and the vocal ability comes from both families. At age three, the twins would pretend they were rock stars, the bed their stage, and rock out to music written by their father. As they got older, their interest grew with them and they started playing gigs with various bands. “We really wanted to play music, but we really didn’t know anything about music [at the time,]” Caleb says. “But we loved it, so we just started playing. It just gradually evolved into what we are right now.”
Being twins, you are literally born with a partner. It’s different from being a solo act, and it’s different from being in a band or a group with a friend.
After church at around 12 p.m., they stop at Chipotle for a quick lunch before going to the studio. A burrito bowl with chicken and chips, no guacamole, for Caleb and a diet Coke for Nathan because he doesn’t like the way food feels before recording.
T
he studio is 20 minutes away. The small city of Monroe, Ohio is a curious place for a studio, and in no time, the car is parked in front of a house that looks no different from any other suburban home. “It’s this random house in the neighborhood, but people don’t know there’s this quality studio in the basement,” Caleb says. AC went to New York City (NYC) and Nashville, Tenn. during the summer to record new songs and work with its managers. Caleb says this studio reminds him of the ones he recorded in in Nashville. The studio where they’re recording today is called Ridge Wood Sound and Sight and is equipped with everything from a green screen to a full studio soundboard and drum booth. The place is covered ceiling to floor with instruments, posters and newspaper clippings. Owner Madrigal greets the boys with a quick nod and a huge smile before pointing to the mini fridge full of assorted drinks, to which the boys help themselves. Madrigal is like family—the boys have known him since they first started taking guitar lessons with him at the age of 11. Over the last seven years, he has encouraged them to learn songwriting and harmonizing, and he now lets them use his studio to record their music. They start warming up, while Madrigal sets up the equipment. They goof off, rapping “Look At Me Now,” playing pop songs on a ukulele and going over parts of the cover song, “As Long As You Love Me,” by Justin Bieber. Within minutes, they get down to work on the a capella cover, settling on the drum booth as the best place to record. “Stop. Do it again,” Caleb says, listening to his brother lay down the first melody. Caleb’s eyes are fixed on the TV, watching the Giants-Eagles game and occasionally making comments like “Big punt, big punt!” “You sang ‘as long as you love me’ in the wrong place. Do it again,” Caleb says. Nathan complies and sings the entire track over again, finally getting a “That was good. That’s what I was looking for,” from Caleb. The two strive for perfection not only for themselves, but for their faithful fan
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 59
entertainment | band feature base which they call the “AC family.” Nathan and Caleb hold “family meetings” weekly on USTREAM, where they broadcast video from a webcam to viewers that can chat in the conversation panel on the side. They update their fans on what is going on in their lives, have conversations with them about whatever they want to talk about, and always call a random fan while streaming. “We love them just as much as they love us. It’s not lopsided,” Caleb says. “Alabama Capital isn’t just two brothers. It’s us and it’s everybody that chooses to support us.” They try to keep in touch with their fans around the clock. While Nathan usually controls the Facebook page, Caleb tweets constantly, asking fans about their days and replying to as many tweets as possible. “Making [our fans] happy is a big part [of our lives], so the fact that we can be so personal with them is great,” Nathan says. “We’ll never reach a point at which we are better than anyone else. So we owe it to [our fans] to always stay accessible. It’s the least we can do for them.” The Montgomery family stresses that the twins’ talent is a gift from God. Although it takes hard work and dedication to use the gifts to the best of their abilities, Phillip and Susan constantly remind their sons that they need to be appreciative of what they have been given. “Everyone has gifts. Theirs just happens to be something that a lot of people enjoy. If they just remember that their talent is a gift they’ve been given and they utilize it, it will never get to be [about only themselves],’” Phillip says. “We always tell them how important humility is, but they’ve got good hearts and they’ve been really good about it all.” And the boys apply that lesson in their lives whole-heartedly. They go to church and youth group almost every Sunday to keep a strong connection with their faith. Whenever they meet fans, they take time to personally thank and actually talk to them. They even chose to make their first acoustic EP a free download off their website.
N
ow it’s Caleb’s turn in the booth. Nathan sits at the soundboard with his headphones on, concentrating on the harmonies and tone of Caleb’s voice. “When you come in, contrast my tone with your richness, like you were doing before,” Nathan says. He tells Caleb to punch in and just redo some of the song, rather than the entire song, but Caleb refuses. “If I’m going to do it, I want to do the whole thing,” Caleb says. “OK, do it once more and focus on the harmonies,” Nathan sighs. “The harmonies are what sell the song and this is a unique version of it, so make sure the harmonies are the selling point.” The two bicker every now and then, but they work really well together. They’re constantly joking around and talking about anything and everything. Caleb even refers to Nathan as his “co-editor.”
“
Caleb records in the studio while Nathan directs him.
their schedules to be able to focus on their careers. “I wake up at noon, do schoolwork for literally an hour and a half, and then I’m done. It’s just been that way my entire high school,” Nathan says. “The extra time we’ve been able to devote to [our music] has definitely helped us do what we want to do.” The boys still intend to go to college. Caleb jokes that he wants to be a store manager at McDonalds, but in reality, he isn’t sure what majors he would be interested in, although he knows that whatever he chooses will involve music. Nathan, on the other hand, already has a plan. He wants to get a degree in business or marketing, and he often finds himself picking up books about the subjects. He believes it will help him later in his career to start businesses and partnerships. “We know they’ve got a really good chance to take their music to another level and you only get that chance once,” Phillip says. “We’re supportive if they don’t [go to college] and we’re supportive if they do.” After four hours of recording, both brothers are happy with the cover, so they sit down to talk and relax while Madrigal gets the equipment ready to shoot the video. “Do Mom and Dad think I’m troubled today or something?” Caleb asks after checking his phone. “Because they both randomly texted me that they love me.” “Why you and not me?” Nathan pouts, faking hurt in his voice. If there’s one thing that the boys have full confidence in, it’s that their family will always love them. No matter what their hectic schedule entails, they always make time to play catch with their sister Hollie or watch football with their brother Joel, who one day wants to be a musician, just like his brothers. For now, AC has prepared eight songs from which it will choose two or three to release as singles. The two hope to score a record deal and record an album or EP within the next year. But for now, they’re sticking to performing at concerts and making various covers for their fans. No matter how the “As Long As You Love Me” cover ends up sounding, AC will have thousands of girls swooning. Justin Bieber better watch his back. SM
Alabama Capital isn’t just two brothers. It’s us and it’s everybody that chooses to support us.
“We’re normal people. We have our own personalities, so obviously every once in a while they clash, but usually we get along,” Caleb says. “We try to avoid getting in really big arguments because that’d be bad for us as brothers, but also because of what we do. If we’re going at each other, we couldn’t do it.” The brothers have been spending a lot of time recording recently, like on their week-long trip to NYC and Nashville. They are able to have a flexible schedule and go on trips when necessary because they have been homeschooled their entire lives through an online school called Connections Academy. Nathan says the alternative schooling frees up
60 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
sports | indepth Coach Haynes addresses his team following East’s 56-0 win over Hamilton on September 28.
In 2010, East head coach Rick Haynes inherited a football program that was coming off of four straight losing seasons. He has improved its record each year and has now lead East to its first winning season since 2005, with hopes of qualifying for the state playoffs for the first time in school history. Certainly, Rick Haynes is
MEASURING
UP
story john grasty photo michael tedesco infographic jack dombrowski
T
heir mindset was simple: win and we’re in. For the 2004 East Thunderhawks football team, the mantra of the season’s final game against Mason High School was really that basic. A win against the then 7-2 Comets would finalize an undefeated season and all but guarantee a spot in the state playoffs for the first time in school history. A loss, and they would be spending week 11 only watching and wondering what could have been. The game was tied at seven late in the fourth quarter when first-team-all-GMC East senior kicker Mitch Reynolds lined up for the go-ahead field goal attempt. At that point in the season, he had been hitting 88 percent of his kick attempts. If he made it: playoffs. If he missed it: overtime. The kick sailed wide left. After a highly disputed overtime, the Comets came out on top 14-7. They had made
it into the playoffs. East hadn’t. “We had good team camaraderie on and off the field that year,” 2005 East alumnus Austin Kava says. “[Mason] was a rough game. Their fans rushed the field at the very end of the game and that was a big controversy.” To former East head football coach Greg Bailie, this game stood out as an unfortunate conclusion to an otherwise spectacular season. “[2004] was a year where we had a lot of guys on the same page,” Wake Forest University director of high school football relations Bailie says. “Our senior class was really good and the junior class was at that time probably one of the best classes that had come through. That was one of the most enjoyable years.” That year also marked the last season East defeated Lakota West, a perpetual measuring stick for the success of a season. After losing to them 17-5 to complete a 3-7 season in 2009, Bailie resigned. Current head coach Rick
Haynes heralded in a new era of Thunderhawk football. Through week nine of his third season, he has compiled an overall record of 13-16 and led the Hawks to their first winning season since 2005. He attributes much of this success to the triple option, the same offense he ran while he was an assistant coach for the state champion Colerain Cardinals. “Anytime you have to compete and you’re not always sure of the talent level [of your players], having an offense that can eat up the clock and keep the other team’s offense off the field will help you win,” Haynes says. “You’ve got to be able to run the ball and you’ve got to be able to stop the run.” This offense presented a stark change from the traditional I-Formation Bailie ran, even though both rely heavily on running the ball. “Everything started square one with the I-Formation,” Bailie says. “It was something I
EAST FOOTBALL SINGLE SEASON RECORDS Rushing Yards - Jay Boyd, 1608, 1997
Passing Yards - Scott Wyckoff, 1131, 2002
Receiving Yards - Matt Amedro, 726, 2001 2001
sports | indepth learned a long time ago. We had a run mentality. We did have to pass from time to time, but for the most part we would run the ball.” 2011 East alumnus JD Whetsel, who played wide receiver in Bailie’s offense and running back in Haynes’ offense, saw numerous differences between the two. “So much about the different offenses totally depends on what type of athletes you have,” Whetsel says. “Bailie’s more of an old-school guy. He liked to just line it up in a Power-I and not take a lot of risks. I liked Haynes’ offense more. It gave me an opportunity to make plays in open space. It really does depend on what type of athletes you have. We had Pedro Powell in 2010, so we would line up [and] run it with him 30 times a game.” In 2009, Powell carried the ball 253 times, the second highest in East football history behind Jay Boyd’s 283 in 1997. Under Haynes, the most carries by a single player was 150 by then sophomore Mikel Horton in 2011. “Coach Haynes is willing to play the best athletes despite inexperience,” says senior lineman Grant Collins, who has started all three seasons under Haynes. “He also allows players to try multiple positions.” Horton even saw varsity playing time as a freshman, carrying the ball 24 times for 84 yards and two touchdowns in the 2010 season. Allowing freshman on varsity is something Bailie always avoided. “We played our best player,” says Bailie, who compiled a career record of 63-67 in his 13 seasons at East. “Sometimes that was a sophomore. We never moved a freshman up. Over the course of time I wasn’t really crazy about doing that. If there is a drawback to playing younger kids, it’s their strength. A 15-year-old isn’t going to be as strong as a 17
As a part of Spark’s series of coverage on the pressures of coaching, former head football coach Greg Bailie was featured on this cover from December of 2001.
62 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
or 18-year-old.” Collins is one of several players who have seen both sides of the ball in the 2012 season, as both an offensive and defensive tackle. Others include East junior Nate Mays, who plays running back, and East senior wide receiver and cornerback Jake Chestnut, who has seen action at linebacker and fullback this year. Bailie, on the other hand, saw the benefits of having two completely separate units for offense and defense.
haynes was a big mindset guy. everybody started to expect to win. “We were two platoons as much as we could be,” Bailie says. “If you looked across the league most of them were two platoons. It kept kids fresher. We did play some kids two ways. Casey Kjos is a two-way player that comes right to mind.” In 2004, Kjos led the team with five interceptions and nine touchdown receptions, going to play at Oregon State University after he graduated in 2006. “You would [play both ways] for JV to get experience, but when you got to varsity you would stick to one side of the ball,” the safety Kava says. “Basically if you could tackle, you were on defense and if you could block, you were on offense.” Another major difference between Haynes and Bailie is their philosophy on offseason strength and conditioning. Under Bailie, East would spend three days each week in the offseason training, and the conditioning would largely be led by assistant coaches. When Haynes took over, the players came in four days a week in the offseason, just like they did when he coached at Colerain. He also assumed a much bigger leadership role during the training sessions. “[Haynes] was a big mindset guy,” now Cornell University baseball player Whetsel says. “His offseason program just kicked our ass four days a week. He would work everybody so hard and you would look at your buddies and they were getting bigger, faster and stronger and everybody started to expect to win.” These wins have come in the face of strong competition. East went 2-1 in non-conference play against teams with a combined record of 16-11. At 6-3 overall, the Hawks have a slight chance at qualifying for the state playoffs. When they line up against the 8-1 Firebirds in the final game of the season, they too will have a simple mentality. Win and they’ll be in. SM
CALCULATING
SUCCESS
Calculating state rankings is a complicated process. How could East not advance with a 9-1 record while La Salle does with a 6-4 record in 2004? There are two levels of evaluation for state rankings, taking more than just the record into account.
Wins over
I schools Div. II schools Div. III schools Div. IV schools Div. V schools Div. VI schools Div.
6.0 Points 5.5 Points 5.0 points 4.5 points 4.0 POINTs 3.5 POINTs
Calculations Level-1 WINS x DIVISION VALUE Total # of games Level-2 Opponents level 1 score x 10 100 – # OF OPEN DATES AVERAGE level 1 + Level 2
Teams are ranked by their averages.
EXAMPLE Level-1
EAST
La salle
53.5000 pts. 34.0000 pts. East outranked La Salle in level 1 points, because it won more games.
EAST
Level-2
La salle
181.0000 pts. 207.0000 pts. La Salle outranked East in level 2 because the games La Salle won were worth more points
8
sports sports| |88things things
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
The Perfect Top-spin jump serve
story ashley evans east varsity women’s volleyball (as told to Gebe Olivencia) photo nick kanaly
Strong Approach
“The left-right-left footwork is crucial to your timing and strength when contacting the ball.”
Arm Extension
“Reaching and hitting the ball at its highest point with your arm fully extended allows the ball to clear the net when you put downward spin on it.”
Arm Swing
“Swing both arms back and forth behind your head. Contacting the ball at a very fast pace produces great speed on the ball.”
Picking a Target
“Picking a target on the other side of the net helps you concentrate on getting the ball over the net.”
Practice
“In volleyball consistency is everything and it doesn’t come without practice. A top-spin jump serve takes time to perfect.”
Routine
“Developing and keeping a unique routine for yourself and repeating the same procedure before, during and after the serve will keep you focused and consistent.”
Conditioning
“A top-spin serve can be very tiring, so being conditioned and having enough endurance to serve four or five times in a row is key.”
Confidence
“Serving is all mental. When you step up to the serve line, you have to imagine yourself putting the serve in play.”
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 63
01110001010001001001011101000100101
01110001010001001001011 sports sports | hawk | 010010001010 hawk culture culture 101000100101010010001010 01110001010 00100100101110100010010101001000101 0 0111000101000100100101110100010010 1010010001010 0111000101000100100101 1101000100101010010001010 0111000101 000100100101110100010010101001000101 0 01110001010001001 01110001010001001 001011101000100101010010001010 01110 001010001001001011101000100101010010 001010 01110001010001001001011101000 100101010010001010 01110001010001001 001011101000100101010010001010 01110 001010001001001011101000100101010010 001010 01110001010001001001011101000 100101010010001010 01110001010001001 01110001010001001001011101000100101 010010001010 01110001010001001001011 101000100101010010001010 01110001010 00100100101110100010010101001000101 0 01110001010001001001011101000100101 010010001010 01110001010001001001011 101000100101010010001010 01110001010
BY THE
NUMBERS
34
Number of points scored by senior soccer player Andi Felix, second in the GMC
15 78 7 150 36
Following the
Hawks
Scan this QR Code with a smartphone to access sports stories and game coverage throughout the winter season on our website: www.lakotaeastspark.com.
After quitting soccer, East junior Bailee Jesse devotes her time and energy to a new passion, dance. Read more online.
Touchdowns scored by senior football player Will Mahone, third in the GMC
Senior Ashley Evans blocks the ball during the match against Mount Notre Dame. The Thunderhawks lost by a score of three games to none.
Service aces per game by freshman volleyball player LeeAnn Starr, fifth in the GMC
Goals by sophomore soccer player Mohamed Elmardi, eighth in the GMC
Strokes taken by senior golfer Wyatt Frazier in the GMC tournament, third in the GMC
Yards of the longest field goal kick by sophomore Grant Smith, fifth in the GMC
GMC TICKER: 64 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
East senior Matt Rice and the boys’ cross country team placed second at the district cross country meet on Oct. 19.
Rob Harpring - fourth in GMC in fumble recoveries
sports | hawk culture
Q&A WITH
Taylor Holden Varsity Tennis Player and fouryear state qualifier interview brett colburn | photo michael tedesco boosts you up and has your back throughout the whole time.
BRETT COLBURN: You’ve
made it to the state tournament four years in a row. Did making the tournament become an expectation for you?
BC: You were forced to sit out for a few weeks due to a hand injury. How did that affect you once you were able to come back?
TAYLOR Holden: My goal
was always to qualify for state and to go as far as I could. I expected that of myself to play as well as I needed to make it.
TH: I didn’t have that much time to prepare. I had two days to get it together before playing sectionals. Thankfully I had a good doubles partner to help me out while I was trying to come back and play at my level again.
BC: When you qualified last year, you were in the singles tournament, but the other three years were all as doubles. Which one do you prefer playing?
BC: Do you plan to continue
playing tennis in college. If so, where are you looking to attend?
TH: I enjoyed playing doubles more because I like the camaraderie of having a teammate there. Someone that
TH: Yes, I am going to play in college. Right now I’m just
deciding where to go. I have a few official visits scheduled on the east coast and some closer to home.
Taylor’s Career Record Singles: 55-6 Doubles: 11-2 BC: The girls’ tennis team as a whole has had a few very successful seasons in a row. How has the experience of playing tennis at East impacted you as a player and a person? TH: Playing high school tennis was a great experience for me. A lot of girls who play United States Tennis Association (UTSA) junior tennis and chose not to play high school tennis are really missing out on a dynamic team experience.
The memories and friendships that I have made through my high school tennis is something that I will never forget.
BC: Out of all of the state tournament runs, which one was the best and why? TH: I really liked all of them. I enjoyed playing doubles the most with my two doubles partners because it is fun to have another person there with you. BC: What will you remember most about playing tennis at East?
TH: I will remember the great friendships I have made and the support that the team all had for each other. SM
HAWK CULTURE A look into the lives of East athletes and coaches infographic wing chow
Nate Mays FOOTBALL
Kristin Saddler Cross country
Miranda Scheitlin soccer
Nina Brillhart Volleyball
Sarah Root Golf
Adam Thomas Cross country coach
How do you feel about Jersey Shore on its last season?
Don’t watch Jersey Shore
Thank the lord
Don’t Care
Hallelujah
Neutral
i couldn’t care less
Gatorade or Powerade?
Gatorade
gatorade
gatorade
powerade
gatorade
gatorade
Favorite animal?
Tiger
otter
tiger
cheetah
koala
bengal tiger
I-Phone or Android?
I-Phone
I-Phone
i-phone
android
android
i-phone
Halloween is...
Fun
the best day of the year
interesting
exciting
interesting
unhealthy
Nick Nick Gasser, first in GMC in touchbacks touchbacks Nick Gasser, Gasser first -infirst GMC in in touchbacks
Kelly AbbieBurrows, VanFossen seventh - second in GMC in 5k in time 5K www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark time | 65
sports | column
recruiting rivalries brett coloburn
staff contributor contact brett at brettcolburn@lakotaeastspark.com
M
y over-enthusiastic screaming came to a sudden halt as I slouched down onto the gym bleachers at East High School with my hands over my head. The then 18-1 East girls’ volleyball team lost on their senior night to the defending state champions, Mount Notre Dame (MND), in three tightly contested games. The enthusiasm of the entire student section was immediately deflated after falling short by such a slim margin to the MND Cougars. The MND parents and students hollered at the sound of their winning point as the East section was in a somber silence, a scene all too similar to the one at Great American Ball Park following the stunning loss of the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Division Series to the San Francisco Giants. The section where I sat was suddenly interrupted by a comment that turned my attitude of dejection into one of intrigue. “It’s okay, guys, we just lost to a school that recruits players.” When the word “recruiting” is mentioned, it is generally associated with the recruiting classes of incoming college freshman or the recruiting violations of the University of Southern California (USC) and ex-Heisman trophy winning running back Reggie Bush.
T
his time, though, the recruiting is in high school sports , and people all over the nation are upset at the mistreatment of high school athletes. Whether it’s Moeller High School or St. Ursula Academy, parochial schools are perceived to be recruiting machines and it causes resentment among publics schools. The result of this bitterness is the formation of brand new rivalries, specifically between the Greater Miami Conference (GMC) and the Greater Catholic League (GCL). Games between public and private schools are battles comparable to the games between the New York Yankees, with its $198 million payroll, and the Tampa Bay Rays, who pay out a measly $64 million. However, some think these games should not be played in a winner-take-all tournament scenario. Followers of the GMC and many other public school conferences around the
66 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
country are calling for two separate state tournaments, which lead to two separate state champions. Tennessee implemented this doctrine into their state athletic bylaws 15 years ago after private schools dominated the Tennessee public schools in most statesanctioned tournaments. Other states, like Illinois, have compromised by using an attendance multiplier, which treats private schools like they have more students than they actually have, putting them in a higher division
most importantly it deprives the players of playing the best competition possible in preparation for the collegiate level. of play. Indiana was considering moving any school that won back-to-back state championships up to the next division in that sport, regardless of the size of the school. These “solutions” have been proposed to state athletic associations all over the country, but the problem isn’t the private schools’ talent. Private schools have always been suspected of recruiting and bending the rules, but that should not matter to public schools. If the job of high school athletics, for the most part, is to prepare the student-athletes for college competition, then coaches,
athletic directors and parents should want their athletes to play the best competition around. Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) assistant commissioner Jerry Snodgrass said that a proposal for a multiplier has been turned down twice by the association, whose most recent vote was in May 2012. In May of 2013, the OHSAA plans to vote on the complete separation of the tournaments. Opposition to these proposals believes that the schools that become athletically successful would simply be punished for their success. Snodgrass went on to say that the common belief is that because the OHSAA is a voluntary association, the private schools would create their own organization and guidelines, which would allow recruiting. If that were to happen, then the roughly 1,100 students that make up Middletown Christian School, would be forced to play perennial powerhouse St. Xavier High School.
A
ctions like these don’t help public school athletics or improve their standings in their respective leagues. All this does is deprive the fans of seeing quality games, and most importantly, it deprives the players of playing the best competition possible in preparation for the collegiate level. Imagine USC putting a ban on playing Notre Dame in football because of an argument over the recruitment of a player. For the fans to not witness the best possible product on the field would be tragic. It’s the same situation in high school sports. If fans were to watch Colerain play against St. Xavier football in the state playoffs, it would be a tremendous benefit for both schools. But if a new system to separate the two schools is implemented, this game would never happen. The sports cliché that “you have to beat the best, in order to be the best,” has always held true. The opportunity for public schools to face off against their private counterparts creates an atmosphere unlike most in a high school sports setting. Taking that away will mean the end of David vs. Goliath matches between East and MND. SM
Singh trains at Adrenaline Sports and Fitness for six days a week so that he can develop his strength and speed for kabaddi.
East junior Anmol Singh plays an alternative Indian sport known as kabaddi. Skilled enough to help his team qualify for the sport’s World Cup competition, Singh is referred to by his teammates as
THE
ANIMAL
ast junior Anmol Singh, a kabaddi raider, must tag one of four Ray Lewis-esque stoppers and return to his side of the field to gain a point for his team. But they don’t make it easy for him. A tagged stopper will do anything to keep Singh from crossing back into his territory, thus gaining a point for the defense. And Singh only has 30 seconds to do it. Four stoppers. One raider. Singh is not thrown in these situations, he thrives in them— the Indian-originated sport of kabaddi requires him to do so. Singh is good. Good enough to be on a team playing in the 2012 World Kabaddi Cup. He and his teammates from the Sher-ePunjab Sports and Culture Club U18 and U21 teams travelled to Toronto, Canada Aug 17-19 to compete against teams of 10-14 players from across Canada and the United States Singh and his teammates make the trip almost every year to watch the games, but 2012 was the first in which they were invited to play. Teammate and stopper East junior Nirpaul Sandhu was one of the players who trekked the border for the World Kabaddi Cup. “It was a really hard tournament,” Sandhu says. “We went out there for the United States and got smashed, but it was a lot of fun.” Although the U.S. Midwest U18 team did not win the World Cup, Singh calls his time in Toronto a learning experience. “It was really amazing to meet the older players,” four-year kabaddi player Singh says. “They gave us a lot of tips. I was lucky enough to have the chance to see how others play.” Singh’s first chance to watch the sport came when he was just five years old, when he watched his relatives play. “My father and uncle played when I was young,” Singh says. “[Kabaddi] is just part of our culture. You grow up around it.” Called “Animal” by teammates, coaches
and trainers, Singh is known to have a positive, goofy attitude. At practices, Singh can be found cracking jokes and horsing around until he recognizes that it is time to get down to work. This “work” requires a unique blend of speed, agility and intelligence. In order to hone the skills required to play this alternative summer sport, Singh and the Sher-e-Punjab club practice at Voice of America (VOA) Park three to four days each week for two hours each day. The U18 and U21 teams complete positionspecific drills, like conditioning for raiders and wrestling for stoppers. The most important part for players is understanding their role; raiders must know the proper technique and
STOP AND RAID In kabaddi, the offense sends one raider to tag a stopper. The raider then runs back across the line before that stopper tackles him to the ground.
RAIDER
STOPPER
If the tagged stopper tackles the raider to the ground, the defense gets a point. If the raider takes too long to tag a stopper, another stopper can tackle the raider.
Amar Kabaddi Countries
Pakistan
Punjab, India
USA
Australia
Canada
Bangladesh
information kabaddiikf.com, asiarooms.com
E
story samantha hauck photo justin york infographic meeta bhardwaj tactics to escape four defenders in 30 seconds or less, while stoppers must be able to wrestle and grapple, a grabbing technique used in order to confine the raider to his offensive end. Singh considers the camaraderie they form at these practices to be one of the highlights of playing kabaddi. “The best part is being around everyone all the time,” Singh says. “The practices are the best. It’s not even playing. It’s about being part of a brotherhood.” Between practices, Singh is at Adrenaline Sports and Fitness six days a week in order to improve his strength and speed. “His training mimics body building— the goal is to get him as big and strong as possible,” 20-year trainer and Adrenaline owner Tony Poggiali says. “We want to create an armor of muscle so that if he is in a tackle, the opponent will end up on his back.” Creating this armor includes complete strength training as well as short-interval conditioning to put as much lean mass on his body as possible. The hard work shows. With a berth to the World Kabaddi Cup, the team won tournaments held across the Midwest, including ones in Detroit, Indianapolis and Chicago, and a club-hosted tournament held at VOA in September. When many kabaddi players take a much deserved break in the winter, Singh remains active as a setter on the East boy’s volleyball team. At Adrenaline, his volleyball workouts differ from those during kabaddi season. “We will now emphasize strength, and jumping, not bulk,” Poggiali says. There will be more work on change of direction in short times, based on the needs in volleyball.” For now, Singh will focus on the more typical sport. But come spring time, his attention will turn back to facing four defenders at once. Because he thrives on it. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 67
EYE Defense ON THE
East senior Clay Han has been playing hockey for the AAA Columbus Blue Jackets for three seasons and hopes to continue his playing career in college and maybe even in the National Hockey League.
F
story emily haynes | photo michael tedesco | infographic cameron drake
our teenage boys, piled into a 2012 Mercedes Benz ML350, attempt to spend the two hour car ride from West Chester to Columbus filming their own cheesy music video. “I Don’t Like” by Chief Keef blares through the speakers. One boy gets ambitious and starts an unrehearsed solo. Everyone in the car laughs. East senior Clay Han is one of those teenagers. He makes the 180-mile round-trip from West Chester to Columbus every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for one reason: hockey. “I’ve played since I was about four or five,” the defenseman Han says. “My two older brothers played and it was just passed on to me. It has become a second life for me.”
68 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
sports | feature Han has played the past three seasons for the sixth nationally ranked AAA Columbus Blue Jackets. AAA is the highest form of amateur hockey, and because of the Ohio High School Athletic Association rule that a student “shall not participate in a team or practice on a non-interscholastic squad in a team sport in the same sport during the school’s interscholastic sports season,” he does not play for East’s club hockey team.” He carpools up to the Ohio Health Ice Haus in Columbus with fellow East seniors Chase Martin and Jason Tackett and Lakota West senior Timmy Thurnau, whose parents rotate driving each month. Balancing between school and hockey isn’t an issue for Han, who has become used to the drive. “We drive more than we practice, so I’ve learned to get homework done in the car,” says Han, who earned a 4.5 GPA during his junior year. “My lap has basically become my desk.” Instead of using his lack of free time as an excuse to slack off in school, Han took on the challenge to keep his grades up while playing hockey at the same time. His teammates, coaches and family all describe him as intelligent, earning him the nickname of “the wise one.” Ed Gingher, who has coached Han for the past two years, recognizes his intelligence and how it translates on the ice. “He’s obviously a smart kid off the ice, which makes a smart player on the ice,” Gingher says. “He’s a great kid and I love having him as part of the team.” Occasionally, being a part of his team demands that he go even further than Columbus. For games and tournaments, the Blue Jackets can travel anywhere from Los Angeles to Buffalo to Detroit for up to four days. Han was not present on this year’s homecoming court because he was too busy checking his opponents at a tournament in Boston. He claims this lack of free time is the biggest drawback to playing on such a highlevel hockey team. “It’s kind of tough because I never get to sleep at my friends’ houses and I have a strict curfew,” Han says. “But one of the
equipment check In addition to the tremendous traveling expenses and playing fees, Han’s hockey equipment adds a great deal to the total cost of playing travel hockey. Below are the prices of equipment Han uses during games. Bauer Hockey Helmet $199.99
Bauer Hockey Stick $249.99
Bauer Hockey Elbow Pads $59.99 reasons I love hockey is that I’m not alone. I have my team and they’re more like my family.” Teammate Charlie Reed takes his role as a family member one step farther, allowing Clay to spend the night at his house in Columbus when they have games all weekend. “Clay’s a great guy and a great teammate,” the Olentangy Liberty High School senior says. “I’ve been playing with him for four years and I don’t have a bad word to say about him. He’s going to go far in life.” Han’s dedication can also be seen in the high costs to play in the elite levels of amateur hockey. His father Hauw Han estimated that over the past three years, the family has spent between $10,000 and $15,000 on playing fees, hockey equipment and travelling expenses. But for Clay’s mom, Amy Han, seeing her son on the ice makes it worth the cost. “I could say that I watch him play hockey,” Amy says. “Or I could say that I’ve watched my
Clay’s Stats as a Blue Jacket 108
Number of Games Played
93
Total Points
50 71
Assists
Penalty in Minutes
43
Goals
Bauer Hockey Pants $99.99
Easton Hockey Shin Guards $59.99
TPS Hockey Shoulder Pads $149.99
NHL Puck $2.49
Bauer Hockey Gloves $119.99
Bauer Hockey Skates $699.99
son develop into a good person on and off the ice and have had deep conversations to really know and appreciate him—moments that will be gone too soon.” According to his parents, the time, money and hard work that Clay has put into this sport are hard to quantify. But this dedication will hopefully lead to a bright future that Clay’s coach can already see for him. “He has the opportunity to play in the higher levels,” Gingher says. “He’s such a great student which opens many more doors than some of the other guys.” An opportunity that Clay received was an invitation to the United States National Development Camp in Rochester, NY during the summers of 2010 and 2011. He hopes to continue his hockey career into the NHL after he attends college. For Clay, a school’s academic reputation is just as important as their hockey program. He plans to attend an Ivy League school, such as Harvard or Yale, to play hockey and major in pre-med, with plans to become a doctor if his hockey career doesn’t work out. “If it happens, it happens,” Clay says. “But if not, it won’t be the end of the world. At least I’ll have a good education to fall back on.” His future may not be guaranteed, but that doesn’t stop Clay from committing his mind, body and soul to hockey. He admits that he only spends about 10 percent of his time on relaxation. Hockey is more important to him than his senior homecoming dance or a Friday night football game. Hockey is his whole life. Past, present and—hopefully—future. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 69
East senior Austin Daly lifts weights as a part of his preseason training for wrestling.
As the expectations of high school athletes expand, three East students give their own
PRESEASON PERSPECTIVE E story & infographic sydney aten | photos michael tedesco ast sophomore Hayden Senger never expected to see the varsity field. He never expected to be the starting quarterback on the varsity football team. He never expected to be the starting catcher on the varsity baseball team. But he had spent months preparing his body for just this opportunity. So when injuries forced coaches to turn to him, he took the ball and ran with it—from the 22 yard line all the way to the end zone on the first play of his first varsity football start. Weight lifting. Conditioning. Agility training. It’s not easy, but he credits his work in the offseason to his current success.
East Sophomore Hayden Senger struggles to find free time around his arduous training regime.
70 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
“Preseason training helps me so much during the games,” Senger says. “It takes a lot of time and it’s hard work, but it pays off in the end.” During the 2012 preseason, Senger had football training on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and then went directly from football to baseball practice with his summer club Midland Baseball team on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Add that together with juggling a class load that includes Honors Chemistry, Honors Algebra II and AP U.S. History, and Senger finds it difficult to stay motivated and find any free time. “Sometimes I feel my grades suffer,”says Senger, who has a 4.1 GPA. “I’ll get home from football practice around 6 p.m. and I think, ‘I don’t want to do my homework.’ It’s definitely crossed my mind to quit one sport for the other, but I’ve always said I’d play football and baseball for as long as I can.” Senger says that although it is difficult to participate in preseason workouts for both sports, participating in one helps prepare him for the other. “Football training always helps me with baseball,” Senger says. “Training for football focused on strength, and baseball helps with both strength and agility for football.” Despite the strain training puts on athletes, East head baseball coach and quarterbacks coach Ray Hamilton wants his athletes to play more than one sport. “With multi-sport athletes, I certainly want them to fulfill their obligations with their other sport,” Hamilton says. “I actually encourage high school athletes to play multiple sports because I believe that the more times an athlete can be put in pressure situations—as they are in any sport—the better off they will be playing for us in sports like baseball.”
Senger seems to be an anomaly when it comes to dual-sport athletes; according to a survey of 252 East students, only 32 percent participate in more than one sport. To keep high school coaches from overtraining their athletes, the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) has put forward many rules and regulations that place limits on when and how long teams can practice. All head coaches are required to attend meetings before the season that explain the restrictions and also inform the teams on the ramifications for breaking them, which includes suspensions, probations and fines. By limiting the number of days that high school coaches have to instruct their athletes, OHSAA assistant commissioner Jerry Snodgrass hopes to put less strain on athletes during the offseason. “When the Board of Education passes the resolution to join the OHSAA, they are stating to us that they will abide by and enforce all the regulations they signed up for,” Snodgrass says. “In today’s society we’re putting a lot of trust in our schools. It would be a perfect world if we didn’t have any violations, but we do.” Despite attempts by the OHSAA to make it easier for athletes to play more than one sport, colleges are seeing a sharp decline in the number of multi-sport recruits. “I’ve never had a multi-sport collegiate athlete, which is different than it was 10 years ago,” Xavier University assistant baseball coach Nick Otte says. “We always tell recruits that they should play as many sports as they can in high school. Multi-sport athletes are more coachable and have a better sense of what their body is doing so they can easily make adjustments.” Otte implemented a training and conditioning program while he was a coach at Miami University and believes that it was extremely beneficial to his players.
sports | indepth “At training we focus on speed and power,” the third-year coach Otte says. “College training is a bit more extensive than high school training and tends to be a bit more team oriented. But no matter the level, preseason training is important because it prepares all the athletes for the begining of the season and allows coaches to prepare players to be strong at the start of the season and to peak toward the end of the season.” This level of training is similar to several sports at East, such as girls’ basketball which trains three days each week during the summer and five days each week during the school year and the wrestling team which trains five days each week during the school year. East senior wrestler Austin Daly has played soccer and wrestled since age five and recently decided to give up soccer because of conflicting training schedules. “In the spring I would go to wrestling training at 4 p.m. and then soccer practice at 6 p.m.,” the three year varsity wrestler says. “When I made it to the state tournament last year and didn’t place, I had a terrible feeling and wanted to do everything I could do and focus 100 percent on wrestling.” The East wrestling team began their preseason training at the start of the 2012-13 school year when they would lift weights and run on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Starting in the middle of September, head coach Jim Lehman added “open man wrestling” on Tuesdays and Thursdays to allow his athletes to improve their skills and techniques. Lehman encourages his players to participate in preseason training in order to get in shape, but emphasizes that he still wants them to play multiple sports. “I take attendance at all the workouts just to see who’s there,” Lehman says. “It gives me an idea going into the season as to who’s SPORT
committed. I still do encourage my players to participate in as many sports as they can. My philosophy is that you’re only a kid once, so you should do what you enjoy.” East junior Erin White participates in basketball preseason training.
East junior girls’ basketball player Erin White enjoys nothing more than playing the sport she has always loved. She is a single-sport athlete who has focused on basketball since third grade. “I play basketball all year round,” the twoyear varsity player White says. “The only time I get a break is two weeks at the beginning of August when Amateur Athletic Union basketball ends and high school basketball preseason training is about to begin.” For White, preseason training for high school basketball began in the summer with open gyms, weight lifting and track workouts. In September, the team begins training five days each week. “Although none of the preseason workouts are technically mandatory, [head coach Nikki Drew] expects us all to attend,” White says. “Preseason training is important because it gets everyone ready for the season and it serves as a time where we can learn and perfect our plays, which also helps with team chemistry.” Drew, herself a three-sport athlete in high school, says it’s a “tough call” for both coaches and athletes deciding whether or Contact SCRIMMAGE not to play multiple sports at the high school limit LIMIT level. “The days of two and three-sport athletes Four weeks are almost over,” says Drew, in her fourth prior to Labor Four season as head coach. “I appreciate what Day each sport can give athletes and I think that especially for girls, the change in mindset 28 days after that athletes get when playing multiple sports last Five is good because it limits burnout. However, interscholastic athletes who are pursuing a college career event. usually start focusing on that one sport after their sophomore year in high school.” White is not alone when it comes to being 28 days after a specialized athlete. Assistant Director of last Two Sports at Xavier University Glenn Arnold event. has seen the trend become more popular recently. “I think that high school, junior high Only 10 days and even younger athletes are specializing between June Four earlier in life versus twenty years ago, when 1 and July 31 students were moving from one sport to
another,” says Arnold, who has a B.S. in Sport and Exercise studies. “Now I’m seeing students selected to be a soccer athlete, and they focus on that one sport year round. Sport specialization is becoming much more prominent due to preseason training before their high school competitive seasons begin.” He also claims the ever-expanding world of preseason sports training is another cause for the decline of multi-sport athletes. “Specialized training has hit a new market that didn’t exist as much as it did in the past years,” Arnold says. “It wasn’t accessible to high school athletes twenty years ago. Now, there are several avenues for an athlete to go during the preseason, such as working with a personal trainer or with a coach so the cost has definitely risen.” Arnold says that there are psychological differences between single and multi-sport athletes, and that the constant focus on a single sport during the preseason can be disadvantageous to the athlete. “There are definitely benefits to the new mindset and the new outlook that multi-sport athletes get at the beginning of the new season,” Arnold says. “It’s almost like a fresh start. I think burnout can exist. Passion and desire can fade over time if not given new challenges or stimuli to work within just training for one sport all year round.” Although preseason training for high school sports is extensive and can wear out an athlete, it is a time when athletes can prepare their bodies for the upcoming season. Director of Physical and Occupational Therapy at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Liberty Campus Chris Kovacs says that preseason training can be very useful in acclimating athletes’ bodies to the sport, but it is very easy to have too much of a good thing. Excessive training can often times be the nemesis for athletes. “Preseason training helps to prevent overuse injuries,” says Kovacs, who has a license in strength and conditioning. “Many times, if athletes don’t participate in training, their bodies aren’t ready to handle the strains brought on during the regular season. The body won’t be in good shape, so when the athlete practices at the start of the season, they’ll be more inclined to get overuse injuries such as tendonitis. When an athlete is participating in the same sport year round, they tend to work the same muscle groups, which also results in injuries. Kids who play multiple sports tend to have a better balance because different muscle groups are used for different sports, but there is also a down side with multiple sport athletes because they never get rest.” Whether single or multi-sport, East athletes embrace their preseason training, because they never know when they will be thrust under the spotlight of the varsity stage. SM
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 71
opinion | column
rioting for restrictions Onur Eroglu
copY director contact onur at onur.eroglu@lakotaeastspark.com
I
’m Muslim. I’m reminded of it all the time. Every time I go to Turkey, wake up and hear the Adhan, the call to prayer, from the mosque. Every time a friend calls me brown. And every time I hear my grandma murmuring words in Arabic that neither of us can understand with her two open hands held up in front of her face. But I’ve never thought of myself to be religious. To be honest, I haven’t been to a mosque in a while. I don’t usually think in terms of Allah when deciding if what I’m doing is right or wrong, and I’ve never even fasted. But whether it’s an important part of my everyday life or not, Islam is a part of my culture, and I didn’t appreciate it when I saw in the news that someone had made a video insulting it. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula made a viral video, “The Innocence of Muslims,” which was advertised by a 13-minute trailer on YouTube, insulting Mohammed, the Muslim prophet. The full movie isn’t out, but in the trailer, Mohammed is depicted as being idiotic and overtly sexual. He looks absentminded and naïve with dialogue written for no other purpose than to make him seem as irreverent as possible. His followers appear to be violent, not hesitating to rape women or even children.
T
he overall message of the trailer is that Mohammed was a primitive brute, who killed men and enslaved women. And it asserts that Mohammed cannot be taken seriously. It would have been one thing to make a detailed video that actually supports its point, but the trailer implies that Nakoula made assertions without building an argument, mocking a belief system that 1.5 billion people around the world follow stringently; for some, it’s a way of life. Many were offended, even angered. To showcase its angst, a group of Muslims retaliated against Nakoula’s YouTube video on Sept. 11 in Cairo, Egypt by gathering at the U.S. embassy and swapping the American flag for a Black Standard, the historical flag
72 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
flown by Mohammed in Islamic tradition. The group wanted to let the U.S. know that it would not stand for the uploading of such an insulting portrayal of Mohammed. It didn’t like Nakoula’s interpretation of the chief messenger of Islam, so America as a whole was held responsible.
N
akoula’s beliefs don’t seem to be very popular in the U.S., either. There are people in this country who are passionate about their religious beliefs, but not many who would so openly attack specific nuances of another religion through the Internet. The issue is not about a wrong that the U.S. has committed against people everywhere who follow Islamic doctrine; it’s about
Our freedom of speech is protected in the U.S., regardless of who it may offend. But it has its limits. the problem people have with Nakoula’s expression of his opinion. Nakoula made a stupid choice. He used YouTube to boldly insult a prophet beloved by the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world; it’s a shameful thing to do and, in the U.S., people merely scoff at it. Of course, .8 percent of its population is Muslim. And they were more than likely offended. But to many others, who cannot necessarily relate to this feeling of umbrage, this was just another offensive video on the Internet. Nothing more than a punch line. Because of the diversity of religion in the U.S., it’s common to hear one person criticize the religion of another. And while criticisms
may be received with anger or reluctance at first, there’s always an aura of understanding, a tacit acknowledgement of differences. That’s how Americans received Nakoula’s act—laughingly.
I
n Western culture, everything is in the open. There’s conflict whether it is economic, social or domestic; people are more aware of other opinions, and debates can occur. But there’s also tolerance. We’re bothered by each other, but we’re allowed to talk about it, so the notion of offending people is a commonality in the U.S. America is proud of this ability to argue itself from gridlock to rugged coherence.
B
ut in the Middle East, dictatorial governments use religion as an excuse to suppress people’s rights, and the freedom to say what one thinks isn’t as valued as it is in America. In the Western culture, people are accustomed to a mixture of many religions with a government that is, for the most part, independent of religious influences. In dictatorial countries, independent speech and expression aren’t virtues. And when Nakoula made the video, declaring Mohammed to be less than ideal, protesters reacted quickly with much emotion in the face of his mockery because Islam, in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran, isn’t just a religion; it’s a lifestyle.
I
t seems foolish that so many people would protest an entire nation because of a video that one man made. But it is also understandable. Because some Middle Eastern societies don’t encourage free speech, the controversy that this video created is foreign. But it’s not so foolish to respond to an insult in the only way that one’s society has taught. The massive protest that this video caused shows how well Nakoula’s provocation worked. This poor-quality video led to chaos. And it’s concerning because the video was indicative of only one man’s distasteful views. But the way people responded, the way they so fervently protested, is perfectly conceivable. SM
opinion | column
#DON’tpunishkara marissa alsip
lifestyle editor contact marissa at marissa.alsip@lakotaeastspark.com
O
n Sunday, Sept. 30, New Jersey teen Kara Alongi decided to stay home instead of going to her brother’s hockey game with her family. She was lying in bed with a headache when her family left. A short time later at 6:12 p.m., Kara managed to take the Twitter world by storm with the misspelled tweet, “There is somone in my hour ecall 911.” When her friends saw this, they became concerned and started retweeting it, and people start retweeting them. Within hours, the local police department in Clark, New Jersey received over 6,000 calls. Kara’s parents arrived home at 7:20 p.m. only to find that the thousands of calls confirmed that their 16-year-old daughter was gone. When the police arrived, they found an unlocked door. K-9 units were able to trace Kara’s scent from the backdoor of the house through a neighbor’s yard and around the corner, when the scent went cold. After all retweeting, people around the world became worried for her safety as #helpfindkara started trending on Twitter. Her followers count jumped to 108,698, and her cry for help received 35,871 retweets and 11,108 favorites. She had the entire world looking out for her. No one could believe this happened to her. Kara just seemed like a typical teenager: she was on the varsity tennis team, worked on homework for hours, and was a big sister to two sixth-grade brothers. And like other typical teenagers, she made a mistake.
A
fter further investigation, the police concluded on Monday, Oct. 1 that Kara had not been kidnapped, but had run away. She had called a cab to drive her to the train station where she bought a one-way ticket to New York City. It was nearly 48 hours later, and Kara was still missing. Her mother, Kim Alongi, pleaded for her to come home because she was worried about Kara’s celiac disease, which makes it hard for her body to process gluten, an ingredient found in most foods with grains and wheat. In an attempt to ask her daughter to come
home, Kim was recorded in Kara’s room, and the audience can see the pictures of flowers hanging on the golden-yellow walls, stuffed animals scattered on the bed and a bulletin board covered with pictures of friends and old birthday cards. Then on Wednesday Oct. 3, Kara called 911 from a Burger King and turned herself into the police. The police speculate that Kara might have run away because a few days before, Kara had called the cops on an underage drinking party and because of that, she wasn’t in a
She won’t be seen as the varsity tennis player or the loving big sister, but instead as the girl who faked her own kidnapping. good standing with some of her friends. No matter the cause, when Twitter users found out the truth, their sympathy vanished and some users started sending angry tweets. “@KaraAlongi Who would have hope in their daughter when she fakes her own kidnapping? Dumb b---- I sincerely hope you get your a-- beat bad,” a tweet from the username @Incalc_ Desires read. “Sucks to be a b---- but pretend you aren’t so when you fake a kidnapping people will actually give a
f---,” another tweet from @TroyDougall read. Thousands of other tweets bashing Kara for wasting people’s time were sent to her account. Many of the tweets to Kara were overly offensive and crude, and she does not deserve all of the hatred she is receiving.
W
hen Kara made the tweet, she did not expect all the publicity and controversy. It was a small mistake that will be with her for a lifetime, thanks to the Internet. She tweeted without thinking about the consequences, just like many other teenagers would have, and it cost Kara her reputation. In addition to the wrath of the public, Kara might face charges for causing public alarm. These charges will be on her permanent record when she goes to apply for jobs. People will recognize her name. When her name is searched on Google, she receives 607,000 hits, making her undesirable to any college or employer. This mistake will never go away. She won’t be seen as the varsity tennis player or the loving big sister, but instead as the girl who faked her own kidnapping. The people who tweeted harsh words to her didn’t realize that she is more than just a Twitter account; she’s a teenage girl with a full life ahead of her. Although the reaction from the public is understandable, their demeaning tweets are unacceptable. The same way Kara tweeted without thinking, critics do the same. Kara is just a teenage girl who made a mistake with bigger repercussions than she expected, and their tweets cannot do anything to change that. What’s done is done, and people need to forgive and forget. Everyone makes mistakes. Kara’s just made national headlines. SM
Go online to lakotaeastspark.com to read more columns, like Raika Casey’s column on the original intent and consequences of political parties. www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 73
opinion | head to head
electoral After the controversy in the 2000 presidential election, should
T
he U.S. prides itself on many things: Texas state fairs, The Big Bang Theory, water parks. More than anything else though, America prides itself on being a democracy. And why shouldn’t we? We as a nation poured sweat and blood into gaining our freedom from the British monarchy, and we’ve poured sweat and blood into defending freedom and democracy across the world. There’s really only one problem with all of this. America is not a democracy. Well, technically it is. Technically, a democracy is any government that allows eligible citizens to have input on decisions that affect them. So yes, the U.S. is a democracy, but it’s hardly one about which to brag. It works like this. When America votes, there are two numbers recorded the popular vote and the electoral vote. The popular vote is simply the number of votes a candidate has received. The electoral vote is the amount of votes a candidate receives from the Electoral College. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on its population, and those votes are distributed to the candidate that receives a higher amount of popular votes, based on a winner-takeall system (except for Nebraska and Maine, which distribute electoral votes based on the popular vote in each congressional district). Herein lies the problem with America still calling itself a democracy.
dillon.mitchell@lakotaeastspark.com
74 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
I
t’s sort of a demented circle. The Commission on Presidential Debates, formed in 1987 by the Democratic and Republican parties, sponsors the televised debates and formed the guidelines for them. One such rule is that, in order for a candidate to qualify for participation in these debates, they must have at least 15 percent of the vote based on at least five national polls. Yet, without the publicity provided by debates of the past elections, there’s less of a chance for Americans to both know about third parties and decide if they support them, which is especially important in a time of increasing political n example: In the 2008 election, Barack Obama dissatisfaction like now. won the state of Florida, a monumental victory The Electoral College kills third parties before as Florida holds 27 of the necessary 270 electoral they even have a chance to burst onto the main votes to win. Obviously that means Obama also won stage of American politics. The face of a true the popular vote, which might cause some to say democracy? Try Germany. In their 2009 federal “that means the electoral vote was representative of election, there were over 12 parties in the running, what those Americans wanted you blithering idiot.” with five parties placing members in the parliament. But wait, there’s more. Not seeing the connection? Look at Greece. Approximately 8.3 million people voted in the There were seven parties competing for election, Florida election, but only and every single one of 4,282,074 people voted for them got at least nineteen The Electoral members elected to the Greek Obama. That equates to just about 51 percent of all Florida College kills parliament. Sure, some of voters and leaves 49 percent them were Socialists and third parties of Floridians who thought Communists and yeah, there before they John McCain, Ralph Nader, were neo-Nazis, but that’s Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin or what the people wanted. If even have a Cynthia McKinney were better neo-Nazism suddenly swept chance to choices for president. into popularity in America A better known incident for some reason, the Electoral burst onto would be the 2000 election. shouldn’t stand in its the main stage College George W. Bush received path to achieve power. If we of American 2,912,790 votes, and Al Gore still want to call ourselves a received 2,912,253, equating to democracy, that is. SM politics.
A
DILLON MITCHELL
a whopping difference of 537 votes. But Bush still received all 27 electoral votes. That clearly wasn’t a representative of what the American people want. The Florida example also illustrates another main problem with America’s Electoral College: the unfair disadvantage placed on third parties such as the Libertarian and Green parties. See, those televised presidential debates that everyone on Twitter panics over, serve two primary functions. The first function, the one they were intended to have, is to showcase the candidates’ political savvy. The second function, the one that’s implied and not necessarily purposeful, is to provide the candidates with publicity that they don’t really need. Third parties crave these things.
opinion | head to head
college?
the U.S. trust an electoral college to decide the president?
I
t has become more common in recent years to hear political theorists and pundits criticize the Electoral College. It has been called undemocratic and unfair, and to an extent, these things are true. But it is important to remember that, to begin with, the United States is a republic not a democracy. And to a certain extent, the decisions regarding our government and our leadership are removed from the sway of public opinion. Among other things, the Framers of the Constitution saw this as a way to protect the minority on a certain issue from the tyranny of the majority. Instead of putting the leaders of our government in the hands of the general populace, who may be uneducated or ignorant regarding certain issues, the president and vice president were to be picked by a group of delegates, from each state, based on the number of Congresspersons that state has. These delegates would be better educated than the general population, and they would be insulated from public opinion so that they would not be influenced by people in no position to pick their own leaders. If anything, the only true problem with the Electoral College is that its original purpose has been lost. The delegates representing each state were never meant to follow suit with their state’s popular vote. And to this day, they are not required by federal law to honor a pledge made to any candidate. But it is almost always the case. The original intention was that the delegates be independent of public opinion; now they are its puppets. The Electoral College as it was originally intended to be, a group of well-educated, independent delegates, would be effective in choosing the best president, but today it is not, and it cannot be unless the delegates reclaim the independence that the constitution guarantees them.
and more each day with the encroachment of the federal government.
R
ather than being undemocratic, the Electoral College protects the democracies of each individual state while maintaining the republic of the nation as a whole. And it isn’t as if this is the only constitutional instance in which the people did not directly elect their elected officials. Until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913, U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures, rather than the people, in order to distinguish between the Upper House of Congress, the Senate, and the Lower House, the House of Representatives, whose members have always been elected directly by the people. These things were not done arbitrarily. They were done because the Framers of the Constitution knew and understood that there had to be a balance between the power we put in the hands of the common people and the decisions that are to be made by a designated group of well-educated representatives working in the best interests of the common people. And this isn’t an outrageous concept. In a country with well over 300 million people, the general populace cannot be expected to fully understand issues that have a greater impact in this country and in the world than they can begin to realize. Especially in the world we live in today, where the advent of television and the internet has made information easier than ever to get ahold of. This, of course, is a double-edged sword. For every pundit on TV, and for every blogger or columnist on the internet or in the media who tells the truth and uses pure, objective facts to try to educate the public, there are ten more behind him looking to spread misinformation to further entrench the people and to serve his ideology. t is also important to remember that in the U.S. there Until we can honestly say that we as a people is such a thing as federalism, in which states, as well are capable of distinguishing between the lies and as the national government, fallacy with which we are have sovereign rights, and are bombarded every day and the the Electoral honest, factual information intended to be independent to an extent. That is to say that that is few and far between College if the president were picked lies, we cannot expect protects the those by popular vote, the states regular citizens to make welldemocracies of informed decisions regarding would lose their identity, and the U.S. would simply be a each individual our highest leadership in loose conglomeration of government. And until that state while regions with different names day, we must trust in the and traffic laws. Keeping maintaining the Electoral College to elect into the Electoral College means national office a trained and republic of maintaining the identity and experienced executive who the nation as a serves our best interests. sovereignty of each state, something that is lost more Don’t hold your breath. SM whole.
I
ZACH FULCINITI
zach.fulciniti@lakotaeastspark.com
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 75
opinion | column
The girl with the storm-cloud eyes nugeen aftab
opinion managing editor contact nugeen at nugeen.aftab@lakotaeastspark.com
H
e’s taking too long. I sip my complimentary 7Up while I wait patiently inside the air conditioned shoe store. The sales associate is bringing me the silver stilettos I’ve picked out. The heel is four inches tall, and it gives me exactly what my 14-year-old self wants: that older look. Our 2007 white Toyota then pulls up to spare us the hassle of walking around during July, the hottest month of the year in Karachi, Pakistan. My mother and I step out of the 115-degree weather and into the airconditioned car, telling the driver to take us to another store. Shops line the packed street, and there are people everywhere. The road is filled with sounds of street vendors advertising food and horns honking. Traffic’s backed up and walking salesmen take advantage of it, trying to sell socks, belts, toys. A small girl of about seven years walks up to our car. She has long, tangled black hair. Her shirt has tears up the sleeves and bottom, and it’s five sizes too big for her— probably found in someone’s trash. Her feet calloused and covered with dirt, with no shoes to protect them. Her face and hands, covered with soot and grime. She hasn’t showered in weeks. She’s the walking dead. The girl bangs on the window and her storm-cloud grey eyes look into mine, telling me she’s hungry. She’s starving, literally starving. And she’s just a little kid. My mom gives me 100 rupees, the equivalent of about a dollar, and I roll down the window and put them in her hands. “Thank you. May Allah bless you,” she says quickly, hurrying off to the next car.
T
he Pakistan heat is relentless. Too hot for mosquitos. I sit with my sister and cousins in one of two air-conditioned rooms in the whole apartment. It’s cool, alright, but it can never be cool enough. Shouts erupt as the rhythm of the cards being thrown down is disturbed. “B.S.” One game after another, one hour after the next. This is how we spend our time.
76 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012
The game intensifies. Two aces, three twos, one three, four fours, bullshit. Really, B.S.? Take them then. A sound comes from outside. Boom. The building shakes, pedestrians stop in their tracks and there’s an eerie silence in our house. The power goes out. What if it was a bomb? Only a small bomb, I think, one that was for show, not for destruction, but a bomb nonetheless. But life continues. People sell fruits in the streets, drivers honk their horns impatiently, my family starts playing B.S. again.
Her face and hands, covered with soot and grime. She hasn’t showered in weeks. She’s the walking dead. I sit by the window, fearing I’d see something I didn’t want to see. Everyone laughs. It’s not a bomb, they say. The transformer blew up, maybe. I shrug and sit down on the beige carpet. OK, a new game. But a day in this heat without air conditioning and we’ll end up like the mosquitos. The alarm clock in my Dallas Marriott hotel room goes off three years later, bringing me out of a deep, trance-like sleep. I chuck the goose-down pillow onto the floor, throw off the thick white comforter on top of me. I won’t need to make my bed; the housekeepers will do it for me. I iron my wrinkled georgette dress, apply COVERGIRL eyeliner and spray Lacoste perfume all over myself.
For breakfast, I go into the hotel lobby. Blueberry bagel, $1.50. Grande Caramel Macchiato, $3.95. But no cream cheese? How am I supposed to eat a dry bagel? I try scarfing it down with some jam. Then I head downstairs to the ballroom for my first class. Sprawled out across the floor of the ballroom, I try to come up with a topic for the column I am required to write for the workshop. I take a sip of my now-cold coffee and remember my time in Pakistan, where there is no Starbucks. I’ve spent more than $600 already on a journalism workshop I’ve been at for two days, much more than the $2 that the stormcloud-eyed girl probably spent that week. I feel ashamed that I don’t want to drink the cold coffee anymore, but I finish it anyways, reminding myself not to waste it.
D
o you agree with this sentence? Creation should be taught in school alongside evolution. Agree. Bonus checks should be given in place of supply side economics. Neutral. Welfare should not be provided to the poor. Strongly disagree. Three AP Government political identity tests later, I learn my place: moderately conservative, radically democratic. I stare at the results, satisfied, and think back to the little girl with the storm-cloud eyes. We’re in two different worlds. I’m drinking a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. She’s drinking dirty water. I’m watching Stepbrothers. She’s selling trash from the roads and fields. I’m staying in the Marriott. She’s sleeping in the dirt next to empty water bottles and spice mix boxes. My biggest worries are clothes and school. Her’s are getting food for the day and making sure she doesn’t get raped. And I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to help her. But even though she’s helpless halfway around the world, I know that tomorrow morning on my way to class, I’ll still buy my regular Grande Caramel Macchiato. The blessed person I am can’t stop. SM
opinion | east speaks out
Which way are you swinging?
editorial cartoon judy nguyen
2012 Election
Ohio
LAKOTA EAST
SPEAKS OUT
Who would you vote for in the presidential election? Obama because, despite what he has done to our nation, I don’t really trust Romney and his policy of switching a thousand times on his views. He contradicts a lot of the things he says. -East senior Hunter Miller
Romney, because Obama had his turn, and he failed. Obama had four years to do it and he hasn’t improved the country. -East junior Ben Call
I personally would vote for Obama because I like his idea of building our middle class outward, rather than from the top and then trickle down. -East sophomore Jonah Christner
Go online to lakotaeastspark.com to read the Head to Head on who should be elected president. Maggie Schaller, a liberal, writes for Romney and Courtney Yanza, a conservative, writes for Obama.
50
percent of students out of 254 surveyed who would vote for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election
69
percent of students out of 289 surveyed who believe, if they voted in the election, it would make no difference
8
percent of students out of 283 surveyed that consider themselves members of a third-party political group
28
percent of students out of 286 surveyed who say that personality has the greatest impact on their opinions of candidates up for election
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 77
opinion | the final word
the final word
Sophia Li Editor-in-Chief
M
y racial and cultural identity can be likened to a mashed-up Twinkie. Yellow and white mixed together, I’m a product of strict Chinese parents and a predominantly Caucasian school. Going to the movies and hanging out with friends are always at war with studying and working on college applications. Although I am finally finished with taking the PSAT, SAT and ACT, my parents haven’t loosened the leash one bit. We’ve already moved onto AP test preparation and internship opportunities for next summer. Dinner table conversations begin with Columbia and end with application. There are rarely stories about my day, rather only strategies for my future. When it comes to standardized tests, I prefer not to talk about my scores because when I do, I usually feel frustrated when others comment about how smart I must be or how they wish they were capable of scoring as high as I did. While it’s true that I have scored relatively well, my achievement is not so much a product of my innate intelligence as it is the result of years of academic training. Like some champion show dog, I have been groomed and trained by professionals to “win” on standardized tests. Practice tests, workbooks, instructional videos—I’ve done it all. Since the eighth grade, I have taken over 300 hours of SAT/ACT preparation in a small class taught by University of Cincinnati professor Shuang Zhang—for just the math section alone. It’s actually pretty funny. Most of my friends at East think I’m pretty good at math, but compared to everyone else in the private SAT prep class, I was one of, if not the dumbest student in the room. It’s probably worth mentioning that 99 percent of the kids in my SAT/ACT class were Asian. In those three years of my attendance,
there was only one black student and two white students, both of whom were still half-Asian. Although 300 hours might seem like a lot, and some people may think my parents are crazy, Asian parents are simply responding to years of reverse discrimination towards Asian American students by several competitive universities. According to a 2009 analysis of freshman college applicants in 1997, performed by Princeton University sociology professor Thomas Espenshade, Asian students need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points more than Hispanics, and 450 points more than blacks on a 1600-point scale to have the same chances of admission at the best colleges and universities. Asian parents are known to hold their children to high standards. Because both my brothers were National Merit Finalists, it has been a longtime expectation from my parents that I become one, too. Not to mention, one of my Asian friends still gets berated by her tiger mom at least once a week for only becoming a Commended Scholar, having missed the Semifinalist status by only three points. And evidence from Espenshade’s study has inevitably increased the pressure Asian parents put on their children by proving that Asian American students are held to higher standards by many of the nation’s top schools. Having to deal with the insanity that comes with stereotypical Asian parents has sometimes made me wish that my family would have moved to a school district with a higher number of Asian students so I could share my stresses with kids who understand my situation. But looking back, I am incredibly grateful that we stayed in Lakota. Many of my Asian friends who live in Mason and Sycamore are happy. They’re doing well and living up to expectations, but I’ve noticed that most of the time, all of their friends are Asian, too. They sit at lunch with the other Asians, they do their homework with the other Asians. They only go to parties every once in a while, but when they do, it’s with other Asians. I might not always be able to relate to my white friends, but being surrounded by them for so many years has helped me rise to my mom and dad’s expectations without losing my individuality. While my parents may have, to some extent, been able to fit me to their Asian mold, my friends have always allowed me to express my quirks, whether it be my addiction to thrift shopping or my love of The Notorious B.I.G. So I’m glad I’m a Twinkie. The experience has made my life so much sweeter. sm
www.lakotaeastspark.com | Spark | 79
80 | Spark | Nov. 2, 2012