ON CAMPUS PAGE 4 Left: Junior James Shelton and South High School Gay Straight Alliance adviser Courtney McGuire help out at Acoustic Latte Lounge Nov. 20 which benefitted the Trevor Project.
NORTH
POINTE
SYDNEY BENSON
GROSSE POINTE NORTH HIGH SCHOOL
FRIDAY, DEC. 5, 2014
SINCE 1968
SAT TESTING
Saturday, Dec. 6 at North
CHOIR HOLIDAY CONCERT Thursday, Dec. 11 and Friday, Dec. 12 at 7 p.m. at First English Lutheran Church
PRINCETON SCORE REPORTS For junior parents on Thursday, Dec. 11 at 6 p.m. in the PAC
ACT TESTING
Saturday, Dec. 13 at North
BAND-O-RAMA
Bands from Parcells and Brownell Middle Schools and North perform Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 7:30 p.m. in the gym
STRINGS EXTRAVAGANZA
Orchestras from all three middle schools and both high schools perform Thursday, Dec. 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the gym Contents 1-2 3 4
News Ideas On Campus
5 6 7 8
Life Reviews Sports Feature
IDEAS
“BELTING OUT NOTES
No recognition means challenges for students of minority religions
By Anu Subramaniam & Andrea Scapini CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & CO-MANAGING EDITOR
Converting from Roman Catholicism to Islam meant that junior Law rence Lezuch went from hav ing time off school to obser ve holidays to obser v ing his holidays and performing his religious routine while balancing school. “I wake up 5:20, 5:30 in the morning, latest 5:45, and I pray for Fajr, and I usually go back to sleep after that, but I tr y not to because I don’t like oversleeping. After that, I of course go to school. I am the particular sect of Islam ... a Shia, so according to the Shia jurisprudence and all the Shia scholars and whatnot, I am allowed to pray at 12:15 ... (and) to do the evening prayer in the middle of the day,” Lezuch said. “Then the other prayer (is) the Asr, so there is Dhuhr and Asr, and I am allowed to pray those two together.” Due to the fact that Islamic holidays such as Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr occur during the school year, Lezuch must nav igate balancing schoolwork and celebration during that time. “During Ramadan, that’s during the summer, so there is no need for that to conf lict w ith school and whatnot during the summer. But there are certain Eids, which means holiday in English, that aren’t obser ved here obv iously, but in Dearborn, they are. One of the two—there are two Eids, I can say the most prominent one is Eid A l-Adha, which is the same day as Yom Kippur—is commemorating Abraham’s sacrifice,” he said. “I notice a lot of my friends who have been Muslim since birth—they were born into a Muslim family—they usually just skip (school) when there is an Eid.” District policy states that “upon the signed request of a student’s parent and
IN
reshman
PERFECT
“HARMONY MAKES
ssist Program receives District of Distinction award
THE
HEART HAPPY.
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w ith appropriate documentation, the Board w ill allow exceptions to the student’s continuous attendance at school,” meaning that students of minority religions can be excused from school for appropriate allotted celebration time. However, many students find missing school and hav ing to catch up on missed work more difficult than to remain in school. Junior Mallika Kanneganti’s parents have adjusted the timing of their holiday parties so they don’t conf lict w ith her school schedule. “The only holiday I celebrate is Diwali, and I have school on that a lot. It changes ever y year, but usually the end of October, early November,” Kanneganti said. Diwali is the Hindu celebration of lights that signifies the triumph of good over ev il. The holiday celebrates the return of Prince Rama from ex ile after he defeated the demons plaguing the nation of India. “My parents don’t really do any thing outside of school, but a lot of times there’s a Diwali party on the weekend (instead of ) on the holiday because the parents don’t want kids celebrating on school nights. We moved the party to the weekend instead of the actual day of Diwali,” Kanneganti said. Counselor Anne Mabley believes that the school system’s current policy makes it simple for students to exercise their freedom of religion. “I haven’t seen that as real problematic for most kids. If there’s a holiday that they need to worship that day, usually they get called in, and that’s not a problem. I don’t see it as an, as my kids say, epic problem, but I think we respect the fact that there are lots of religious holidays for kids, but we haven’t got a set standard about that,” Mabley said. “I think it’s important that students that know that they’re going to
By Anu Subramaniam & Caitlin Bush CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & INTERN
Out of the 14,000 public school districts in the United States, only 49 were named Districts of Distinction for their outstanding programs. Grosse Pointe Public School System is now one of those districts, listed under Student Achievement for North’s Freshman Assist program. Districts of Distinction is a national program created by District Administration magazine that recognizes school systems for “initiatives that are yielding quantifiable benefits, and that could be replicated by other districts.”
@myGPN
www.myGPN.org
be participating in some sort of ritual, or whatever have you, and they know the day they might be missing, or whatever, days, to tell teachers that because teachers are really wonderful.” Junior Jacob Kahn feels that missing school to obser ve his Jew ish holidays are similar to missing for being sick. “I just take school off. I just ask the teachers that I’m gonna be out, and they give me the homework,” Kahn said. “It’s just like me being sick or something or going to the doctor’s or something like that. Usually I miss two days. It depends what day it ends up on, but it’s usually two days. It’s ... Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I don’t mind. Either way, I’m getting the day off, so I don’t really care.” Lezuch also doesn’t mind working around school time. He capitalizes on the dow ntime that school allows throughout the day to pray. “It really hasn’t been that big of deal, really,” Lezuch said. “I pray during lunch because ... it just happened to match up perfectly, and I work after school.” Junior Julia Babcock recognizes the sensitiv ity of maneuvering days off school to accommodate for each religion and feels luck y that school is off on most Christian holidays she obser ves. “If it were my religion, and I didn’t have the time off, I would probably be upset, or I would just take it off myself,” Babcock said. “It’s wonderful that we live in a place where that’s so w idely celebrated because there’s other places where people are not even allowed to openly voice that they’re Christian, so it’s definitely a blessing, and I’m so thankful that we live in a place where we have time off school.”
Junior Mar’tel Morgan entered Freshman Assist in 2012 and exited the program having learned more than just English or math. “It’s not even organization and all that. It’s with discipline, also. It wasn’t harsh because Grosse Pointe is nowhere near harsh in any aspect of it, but they just—it’s amazing,” Morgan said. Morgan said it wasn’t just what the class did at school. “They took us out,” he said. “I remember once the only field trip or two field trips I didn’t attend, they went to a soup kitchen and helped there. And then I remember—this is my favorite field trip of all— we went to this place, and we were putting bags together for the kids going into foster care,” Morgan said. Freshman Assist began almost a decade ago as a joint effort between Principal Kate Murray, former Principal Tim Bearden and English teacher Geoffrey Young. “We began to realize that perhaps we weren’t meeting the needs of all of our students and that there were students arriving at North High School that had been undereducated and hadn’t had some of the opportunities that a lot of our Grosse Pointe students have. There was an increase in struggling learners, and we wanted to create a program that supported, wrapped around, encouraged and helped make those students be successful, not just in literacy, but throughout their schooling for their four years here,” Murray said. The district applied for the 2014 District of Distinction award after gathering information from the Freshman Assist teachers to fill out the application.
VOLUME 47, ISSUE 6
CONTINUED ON PAGE 2
© 2014 North Pointe