theroar
Students face off about up-and-coming rap artist Mac Miller and his latest release.
Voice of the Students
may 2011
// See page 8.
VOLUME 13, ISSUE 5
West Shore Junior/Senior High School's Student Newspaper • 250 Wildcat Alley • Melbourne, Florida 32935 • www.westshoreroar.com
IN THIS ISSUE NEWS
VARIOUS GROUPS WISHING TO BE RECOGNIZED FEEL
GRADUATION DIS-CORD
He said, she said The ratio of boys to girls on campus concerns both students and parents.
Bin Laden’s death stirs memories for senior Mia Glatter Business manager
// See page 2.
The price of education
With college debt increasing, there may be ways to avoid it, choices to make, and advice offered. // See page 2.
Catch a ride
With a possible decision of cutting corridor busing, students could feel the impact in various ways. // See page 2.
OPINIONS
Thirsty and thrifty
Are the prices of water in the soda machines and cafeteria too high? Senior Mia Glatter shares her thoughts. // See page 7.
STRIKING A CORD: Quill and Scroll seniors (above) won’t be able to wear the cords representing their honor society at graduation. Senior Chelsey Herrell, below, demonstrates how a graduation cap would look with more than the allowed number of tassels.
Non-academic clubs on campus worry over inability to wear cords, stoles at ceremony
Students speak out
See what students have to say about the new state policy regarding end-ofcourse exams. // See page 7.
LIFESTYLES Flying high
Head in the clouds, Carolyn Kiss shares her feelings about her future in the skies. // See page 4.
Nine years later
Senior Brendle Di Gioia and her father share their experiences of the September 11, 2001 attacks. // See page 4.
CONNECT Box office hit scares
New horror film ‘Insidious’ paralyzes viewers with help from a variety of types of horror elements and exceptional actors. // See page 8.
Hitting their stride
After three years, Panic! At the Disco releases a new album which blends their former discography. // See page 8.
INDEX News Sports Lifestyles
1-2 Feature 3 Opinions 4 Connect
5 7 8
Lucia Baglivio Managing editor
S
eniors who excel in areas other than academics will not be able to represent such talents at graduation. The National Honor Society and few other academicbased societies are the only organizations that graduates may wear the stole or cord to constitute their membership along with one graduation tassel, according to Jackie Ingratta, Assistant Principal for curriculum.
“Graduation is to recognize the high school diploma, diploma of distinction, and students with scholarships,” Ingratta said. “National Honor Society represents curriculum across the board, and all of the other cords take away from our dignified ceremony. Our graduates look uniform and formal, even more reverent than some college ceremonies.” In addition to the NHS stole, the only other academic accessories permitted to be worn at graduation are the honor student tassel and cord, for those with an unweighted Grade Point Average
Photos: Jennifer Garrido and Bill Beck
of at least 3.5, Senior Beta, Spanish Honor Society, French Honor Society and Mu Alpha Theta, if the student qualifies for standards. According to the administration, cords representing other groups such as National Art Honor Society, Quill and Scroll, National English Society and International or National Thespian Society are not permitted to be worn at graduation. Junior Yasmeen Elsawaf, president of the journalism honor society Quill and Scroll, finds the policy to be unfair. “I feel that other students who may not be in NHS do not get to represent themselves,” she said. “There are students here who excel in ways other than academics, and they should be able to display this at graduation.” Principal Rick Fleming says he’s not trying to play favorites. “The problem here is that once we start to recognize other groups that were not originally in the ceremony, we’re going to have to allow every single organization to be included as well,” he said. “There would be seniors walking across the stage looking like lit up Christmas trees, which will just take away from the reverence of the ceremony.”
News of Al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden’s death spread across television channels and the internet following a presidential announcement May 2. Crowds of excited people stormed the streets in Washington D.C and New York, cheering and chanting while film crews caught those celebrating the demise of the man who took credit for masterminding the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center a decade earlier. Senior Brendle Di Gioia was about to fall asleep in her bed, when a friend texted her that Osama had been killed. “I didn’t believe her,” Di Gioia said. “It wasn’t until I got in the car the next morning that my friend asked me if I had watched Obama’s speech and I believed her.” Di Gioia had reason to be skeptical about the news. “He’d been hiding for 10 years and then suddenly we find him in an obvious house? I didn’t know if I should believe it,” she said. Once she was convinced Bin Laden was dead, she didn’t know how she felt about it. “It’s sad when anyone dies and it’s sad that an entire nation hated this man, but it’s also sad that he killed so many people and made his nation miserable,” she said. Reflecting on the impact that Bin Laden had on the United States caused Di Gioia to remember when the twin towers in Manhattan were struck by two hijacked planes and how that attack struck home for her family. “I was in the third grade in a school in [Staten Island] New York and one kid got checked out then another and another and so on,” Di Gioia said. “The teachers were acting strange but they were not allowed to tell us anything. My mother finally comes to pick me up and we go straight to the chapel.” Meanwhile, Di Gioia’s father Gaetano was working on the 39th floor of the north tower when it was hit by the first plane. “At the moment the plane hit, the building must have bounced at least, or it felt like, three feet,” he said. “Moments before that, I was to enter the elevator to go down and out when my working partner said he had to make a phone call and delayed it, thank God. We could have been one of those people caught in the elevators who died from the burning jet fuel pouring down the shaft.” Although Gaetano did not know the towers were under attack, he knew something was wrong and that he needed to escape.
// See BIN LADEN, page 4.
Drug dogs could search for illegal substances on campus Jennifer Garrido Lifestyles editor Your teacher does not allow you to leave the classroom for the first half-hour of class under any circumstances. He mentions it is for your own safety. In the middle of the lesson, you are disrupted by scratching at the door, and then remember it is the on-campus K-9 unit dog sniffing out the campus for
illegal substances. This was an everyday scene assistant principal Jim Melia recalled from his high school years in Indian River County. “There was a dog named Rambo that was our on-campus dog, and the hallways had to be clear the first 30 minutes of class to make sure he didn’t bite anyone,” Melia said. The idea of having on-campus dogs is Brevard School Board Chair Andy
Ziegler’s plan for the upcoming 20112012 school year. “My goal is to have this approved as soon as possible and have them on campus by the coming fall,” Ziegler said. West Shore’s School Resource Officer Chuck Landmesser expressed his understanding of the on-campus precaution. “I’ve heard the idea before,” Landmesser said. “I think it’s being
used as a deterrent more than anything, used to prevent substance possession instead of punishment. “ Ziegler plans on using the dogs for this exact reason. “I don’t want to catch anybody; I just want to get drugs off campus,” Ziegler said. Ziegler expects to give students multiple notices on when the dogs will conduct the searches.
// See DOGS, page 2.