Lance Issue 6

February 28, 2014

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW Check out pages 12 and 13 for the Lance’s coverage of the preseason preparations for spring sports.

lance Jack and jack THE

8701 Pacific St. Omaha, NE 68114

Volume 58 Issue 6

For senior Viners, Westside’s a place to be ‘normal’

By Emma Johanningsmeier Editor-in-chief

At Westside, seniors Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson are two pretty normal kids, but to their 2.2 million followers on Vine, they’re something else entirely.

They’re Internet celebrities, teen heartthrobs who get over 100,000 likes on each six-second video they post a n d have fanfiction written about them.

They’ve attended conventions full of screaming teenage girls alongside other immensely popular Vine and Instagram users, and they recently released a song that hit #7 on the iTunes hip-hop chart.

As much as they have going for them outside of school, though, Westside High School is still one of the places they feel most at home.

“Nobody’s ever going to come up to me here and ask for a picture,” Johnson said.

“When I’m with my friends, I don’t really like it when

people come up to me and ask for pictures. I just want to live a normal high school life, and so I love it here at Westside just because we can be ourselves and be with our friends like we’ve always been. We don’t really think about what’s going on with the whole Vine thing while we’re here at Westside.”

“The whole Vine thing” started in early July last year, when Gilinsky and Johnson were enjoying watching videos on the social media site Vine. Thinking of how their friends called them class clowns, they decided to try their hand at making Vines themselves. They made a joint account with the username Jack and Jack.

By the time Johnson had to leave for summer camp, they were at 1,000 followers.

Then, Gilinsky posted a Vine in which he drove up to a Dairy Queen drive-thru window shirtless, accepted an ice cream cone from the employee inside, and smeared the ice cream on his chest as the employee looked on. It was a hit.

A few weeks into the school year, Jack and Jack were at 50,000 followers. Once they posted a Vine called “Nerd Vandalism” and got 100,000 new followers in a week, posting regularly became more of a job than a hobby.

They’ve continued with it ever since.

The subjects of their Vines vary, but the fast-paced, short videos usually feature several shots spliced together, and some type of “punch line” at the end. In some of them, one or both of the boys are dressed up; sometimes there’s a mom character, sometimes they’re girls, and sometimes they’re dressed as other characters. Often, a song is used in

a creative way.

Johnson said coming up with topics for the Vines is a simple brainstorming process. He and Gilinsky try to make funny, relatable videos teenagers will appreciate.

“If it’s something the masses can relate to, it’s pretty much set in stone that it’ll get a lot of likes,” Johnson said. “We’ve kind of figured out what is going to get likes and what isn’t going to get likes.”

However, for Gilinsky and Johnson, getting likes doesn’t always mean letting their own sense of humor show. Instead, they focus on making Vines they think will make their fan base laugh.

Johnson said there are a few videos that have featured his and Gilinsky’s humor, but they’ve never been as popular.

“Like with any business — we consider it a business now — we’re kind of in it for the continued on page 10 Photos by Sarah Lemke and Estella Fox

PROJECT HARMONY Students paint mural, help nonprofit organization

By Phoebe Placzek News editor Children tremble as they make their way down the hallway.

Their eyes wander as they try to get their minds off of their situations at home. As they avoid the adults, their eyes land on the walls surrounding them.

They are blank.

Shiri Phillips, the development administrative assistant at Project Harmony, sees these walls as a blank canvas.

“Our building has beautiful artwork in the atrium, and it’s a place where a lot of children come to. It needs to be childfriendly,” Phillips said.

Project Harmony is an organization that collaborates with professionals and the community to protect and support neglected and abused children of all ages. The facility houses the offices of a team of law enforcement, investigative, medical and referral professionals devoted to keeping children safe and prosecuting offenders.

To fill the blank canvas of the wall at Project Harmony, Phillips turned to a friend, Westside art instructor Liz Dittrick.

Together, they planned Westside students could paint a mural there.

“I went to Westside High School, and I know the talent Westside has in their department, so I contacted Ms. Dittrick,” Phillips said.

Westside’s chapter of the National Art Honor Society will be painting a butterfly mural that will cover all 35 feet of both walls of the hallway. It leads to a healing garden in the shape of a butterfly. The mural will show a caterpillar developing into a butterfly with a tree and grass in the background.

Sophomore Yvonne Stone, a member of the National Art Honor Society, said Project Harmony’s theme of transformation inspired the butterflies and went naturally with the healing garden.

Dittrick said students created sketches after the butterfly theme had been chosen. After that, the students selected the sketch they liked best. Next they drew enlarged images of the sketch and transferred them to the wall. The students decided what colors to make the drawings and started painting the walls. According to Phillips, the mural should be finished by April 23.

“I just like the story [shown in the] mural,” Stone said. “I think it’s inspiring to the kids — the whole story of it and just working on it every day.”

Stone said five to 10 students work on the mural every Wednesday from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 or 9. The art students also occasionally meet on weekends.

This is the first year the National Art Honor Society has been at Westside, and it is also its first community-based project.

This is also the first time Project Harmony has done a project with a high school, according to Phillips.

“I wanted to create a project connecting one of the high schools in Omaha because to have that correspondence with a non-profit and a high school is important with the work that we do, and to teach kids about what we do,” Phillips said.

For the Westside art students, the purpose of the mural is to make the children at Project Harmony feel welcome in the building.

“The whole project and location where we are painting is a place that kids enter when they are about to be transferred to another family or they’re about to be placed, so it’s a spot where they might feel insecure or scared or nervous,” Dittrick said.

“This hallway [as they walk down] is to uplift them and be a happy place for these kids.”

Stone thinks the mural she and the other students are working on will add life to the hallway.

“I hope that [it] brightens their day a little when they see it,” Stone said.

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Photo by Estella Fox

Junior Blair Goldstein and sophomore Yvonne Stone work on the mural at the Project Harmony building. The mural will have a butterfly theme. Photo courtesy of Shiri Phillips

2 FEB. 28, 2014

A CYCLE BEGINS

News

Teachers to bring new sport to Westside this fall

By Jace Wieseler A&E Editor All it will take is a bicycle and a little bit of passion; the only other prerequisite is knowing how to ride the bike. Physical ability is optional, and cycling team won’t require much free time.

In fact, all that’s needed to participate in the cycling team is just the drive to compete.

Math instructor Nicholas Joslin started Cycling Club four years ago just out of pure love of the sport.

“I had a few students that knew that I rode and wanted me to start the club,” Joslin said. “We kind of thought it would be a fun thing to do.”

English instructor Nathan Moseley joined in on the sponsorship of the club two years ago, but it was only this year that he decided to take it to the next level.

“My brother, who works at Millard West, and I got approached by the guy that owns Trek stores, and that guy owns a youth development cycling program through middle schools, and there’s not really anything at the high-school level yet,” Moseley said. “He approached us about possibly seeing if there’s anything we could do at the high schools, and so we’ve been brainstorming and came up with a cycling team we could do at each of our high schools.”

Fall 2014 will be the first season of competitive high school cycling in the Omaha area. The schools that will compete in the five races during the season are Westside, Millard West, and Millard North. Other potential competitors are Millard South and Papillion-La Vista.

The main goal of the cycling team is to encourage an active and healthy lifestyle and to maintain an interscholastic competition series.

“For this first year especially, we just want people to get a taste for competition,” Moseley said.

“So we’ll do some training and some organized rides a few times a month.”

This team will work a little differently than other organized sports.

“If you are able to compete in the race and finish it, you earn points for your school, no matter how fast your time was,” Joslin said.

There are no tryouts, no cuts and no sitting on the bench.

Even if students are involved in another fall sport, they can be a part of the cycling team. There are no afterschool practices, and the races will always be held on Sundays.

The training will begin in March and run through May, and will include a few organized rides with Joslin. Over the summer, the athletes will be required to do their own training. The season with Joslin and Moseley will begin in the new school year with a few organized practice rides.

Moseley and Joslin see potential for the cycling team in the future.

“I could potentially see 10-15 high schools in Omaha and Lincoln participating in this in the future,” Moseley said. “That might not happen in three or four years, but I think it can [happen] not long after that. We just have to build the momentum from there.”

Joslin sees some benefits to the cycling team even further in the future.

“Unlike most sports, you can exercise by riding a bike forever,” Joslin said. “It is one of the least physically demanding sports. It’s just nice to get involved in a sport that you can continue to do forever.”

‘‘

If you are able to compete in the race and finish it, you earn points for your school, no matter how fast your time was.

Nicholas joslin math instructor

‘‘

Instructors Nathan Moseley and Nicholas Joslin talk about the cycling team to interested students at an informational meeting held Tuesday, Feb. 4. Photo by Jakob Phillips

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Preparing Westside Students for the ACT and SAT for over 13 years...

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News

CHANGING COURSE

FEB. 28, 2014 3

Three required classes to change for accelerated students

By Emma johanningsmeier Editor-in-chief Last semester, students taking AP American Government and students taking regular American Government found themselves in a classroom together four times a week. The only time they were apart was when the AP students had a 1.5mod meeting all together, and the other students had their own callback.

Next year, however, this is all going to change.

AP and regular Government students will be in completely separate classes; the only time they’ll see each other is when there are guest speakers in large group.

The main reason for the switch, according to Government instructor Jon Preister, was the difficulty of serving both groups of students in the same classroom.

It’s gotten harder over the years. Whereas in the past Preister would usually have one student or so in a class who needed extensive help, now he has an average of three or four.

Part of the reason for that, Preister thinks, is that the district’s demographics have been changing over the past decade. Open enrollment and changes in the makeup of the district neighborhoods themselves have made Westside more socioeconomically diverse, moving it away from the old “Hollywood High” stereotype. For a variety of reasons, students from low-income backgrounds are more likely to struggle in school than their middle-class counterparts.

“I think we have to really acknowledge that we have a changing student body over the last five to six years, that we have a segment of our population that really needs a different curriculum than what the current curriculum system gives them,” Preister said. “It’s increasingly hard for the teachers to balance the needs of the AP and regular Government students.”

According to Preister, the change next year should benefit all students, not just some. The only major disadvantage will be the additional planning time required of the teachers.

“I think it’s going to open new areas in the AP curriculum that will allow us to do some fun things with the AP students, and it will also aid in creating motivation and focus among regular Government students with a curriculum that’s really tailored to their needs,” Preister said.

In the science department, first-year physics, a class that most students have to take to fulfill a graduation requirement, has always lacked an accelerated option.

“Because of that, there’s a huge discrepancy between kids that are struggling with low-level math concepts and kids that are almost bored because

it moves too slowly for them,” physics instructor Ben Powers said.

To meet the needs of the different groups of students in Physics at Westside, the physics team decided that next year they’ll allow accelerated students to take a new class, AP Physics 1, in place of regular Physics. Powers said 50 to 60 students, mostly sophomores, are expected to sign up for the new class. They’ll take an AP exam at the end of the year.

Powers emphasized that regular Physics is a good class that in itself doesn’t need to be changed; the teachers just wanted to ensure no one would be bored in class.

“It’s just the very upper track, where Physics was a breeze for them and they just got an A+ — it’s going to challenge them in the way regular Physics challenged the regular group,” Powers said.

In senior Composition, another graduation requirement, students taking the AP version of the class have traditionally been in the same classroom with those taking regular Composition. The AP students have one extra small-group meeting, which is used for AP exam preparation.

English department head Kim De La Cruz said it makes sense to have Composition and AP Composition combined because unlike most of the college-bound-level English classes, college-bound Composition is a group 4 class.

“It’s more of having an honors and AP class together, because it’s putting group 4 and 5 classes together, so they’re both accelerated courses,” De La Cruz said.

There is nothing on the horizon as far as changing the format of the Composition classes, but a change is coming to English 9, the required freshman English class.

Starting last year, students enrolled in Reading Workshop, a remedial class, could take English 9 Basic. However, although accelerated elementary and middle school students can participate in the Excellence in Youth program, and 10th through 12th graders who do well in English can take AP and honors English classes, there has never before been an honors option for freshmen who excelled in English. “[Ninth grade] was kind of sticking out as the one place where we didn’t have a course for students who excel in that area,” De La Cruz said. “In math and science, we had opportunities for students who excelled in those areas, but we didn’t have an advanced option for students where literature was maybe what made them excited about school.”

De La Cruz said English 9 teachers have done a “phenomenal” job of creating differentiated assignments for students who wanted an additional challenge, but like Preister with Government, in

the current setup they sometimes couldn’t do enough for everyone.

This year, eighth graders who had a B+ or higher in English and teacher approval were given a short story to read, and asked to write an essay about it. Their performance will determine whether they are eligible for a new group 4 class, English 9 Honors, which will be completely separate from the regular class.

The number of sections and teachers for the honors class will depend on how many students sign up. De La Cruz and English instructor Stephanie Pueppka have been developing the curriculum since last summer, and have some plans. For example, they know the course will include a historical fiction unit in which students will read stories told from different perspectives.

“We have some ideas proposed at this point, but we want the ownership of the actual curriculum to be with the teachers who are teaching it,” De La Cruz said.

For help coming up with ideas, De La Cruz contacted other area high schools to see what texts their accelerated freshmen read. She thinks having an honors option for freshman is “pretty typical” among schools; she received reading lists from Millard, Papillion-La Vista and Elkhorn.

Although English 9, Physics and Government are changing in similar ways next year, none of the teachers interviewed said there is an overriding push towards splitting students up, or keeping them together.

“The administration has said, ‘You guys are the experts — tell us what would benefit these students,’” Preister said. “That’s one thing I think makes our school really great — they’re willing to look at it and gear curriculum towards what really benefits students.”

Physics Instructor Ben Powers teaches physics to his first mod students Tuesday, Feb. 25. Next year accelerated students have the option of taking AP Physics instead of a generic class as sophomores. Photo

by Jakob Phillips

Flappy Bird app taken down but students still striving for high scores

By Libby Seline Staff Writer

Graphic by Allie Laing

A thumb starts rhythmically tapping on a smartphone screen to control one bird during a game of Flappy Bird. With each tap, the bird continues to flap its wings and navigate between the green tubes. But for one second, the thumb stops tapping. The bird falls to the ground. The thumb’s pace picks back up in an attempt to avoid making the bird run into a tube, but the bird accidentally touches a pipe and dies.

Flappy Bird recently captured the attention of many students and many have confessed to becoming addicted to it at some point. Students were becoming hooked on the game as they attempted to beat their own high scores as well as compete with friends. Freshman Sabina Petersen plays the game almost 40 times a day in an attempt to beat her high score of 245.

“I want to keep beating my high score to show everyone that I have a very high score,” Petersen said.

This game only started to hit the top charts in Jan. 2014, despite its release date in May 2013.

Due to its popularity, Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird, was making $50,000 a day from advertising according to an article on the website Verge.

This popular application has caused students to become easily frustrated as they attempt to earn a score higher than zero.

“You have to be really concentrated when you

play because one small mistake will kill your bird,” sophomore Troy Suwondo said.

Some students are able to concentrate while playing this game. Freshman Jasmine Pivonka has been able to focus long enough to the point where her bird was able to pass 340 green tubes, and it took her a month to reach this score. Pivonka says she has not been able to stop playing ever since she began.

“My first time reaching 340, I was psyched,” Pivonka said. “I seriously screamed because it took me forever to get to it.”

A few students have been able to achieve high scores, but some may never play at all. Nguyen took the app off the App Store and Google Play store Feb. 9. In an interview with Forbes, Nguyen claimed he took the application down because of how addictive it was becoming.

Most Westside students were unconcerned that the application was no longer for sale. According to a poll on Westside Wired, 251 out 442 voters did not care that the game was taken off of the App Store.

“I was upset but I already have the app and it still works, so I’m not complaining,” said senior Jordan Rys Some students, like junior Halie Platt, were actually happy that the application was taken down.

Platt was tempted to play the game, but stopped herself.

“I never downloaded the app because I knew I would get addicted to it,” Platt said. “I knew that I would play Flappy Bird instead of doing homework so I decided not to chance it.”

4 FEB. 28, 2014 the

OPINION

lance

The Lance is a schoolsponsored publication of Westside High School, Westside Community Schools, 8701 Pacific St., Omaha, NE 68144.

The Lance office is located in room 251. Phone: (402) 3432650. The Lance is an in-house publication.

The paper is distributed every month to all students, except in vacation periods.

Subscription rates to others are $25 prepaid. The Lance is printed by White Wolf Web, in Sheldon, IA. Advertising rates are available upon request. The Lance editorial staff reserves the right to edit all ads for clarity and grammatical errors. The editorial staff reserves the right not to publish any ads that are libelous or that contain nonfactual information.

The Lance editorial staff also reserves the right to nullify contracts at any time without prior notification. The Lance also refuses ads that promote activities illegal to a majority of the student readership.

Reader response is welcomed in the form of letters to the editor. Letters should be less than 300 words, signed by the author and sent to room 251. Names may be withheld upon special request. Lance editors will decide whether to honor such requests.

The Lance editorial staff reserves the right to edit letters for clarity and grammatical errors. The editorial staff also reserves the right to not publish any letters that are libelous or that contain non-factual information.

The Lance is a member of the Nebraska High School Press Association, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the National Scholastic Press Association and the Quill & Scroll Society.

The Lance staff recognizes that the administration of Westside Community Schools controls the curriculum and, thus, sets the parameters of the production process of school publications. The Lance staff also recognizes its own responsibilities to inform, enlighten and entertain its readers in a way that reflects high standards of journalism, morals and ethics.

Editors-in-Chief Emma Johanningsmeier, Aren Rendell; Managing Editors Estella Fox, Tom Schueneman, Kellie Wasikowski; Design Editor Allie Laing; News Editors Connor Flairty, Phoebe Placzek; Feature Editors Grace Fogland, Nata Ward; Sports Editor Tim Graves; Arts & Entertainment Editor Jace Wieseler; Cartoonist Doug Flakes; Staff Writers Abby Coen-Taylor, Owen Rush, Elise Tucker, Libby Seline; Sports Writers James Buckley, Jack Cohen; Photo Editor Sarah Lemke; Photo Staff Jakob Phillips; Adviser Jerred Zegelis.

Wow, that’s rude.

Illustration by Doug Flakes

Editorial

Social media neglected as outlet for respect As mentioned in our pullout on social media, the Twitter account Westside Compliments (@Compliments66) has brought some much-needed positivity to the timelines of many Westside students. Compared to other “Westside” accounts we have seen on Twitter, it has far and away the best intentions.

But the account is not perfect. It has received criticism from followers and even alumni for posting too many compliments about “popular” students, compliments that are sarcastic, or compliments that are too focused on physical traits. While the criticisms are valid, they are misdirected.

As is stated on the account, the creator and manager for the account does not personally write the compliments. Westside Compliments is only there to relay messages sent, either on ask.fm or via direct message, to the account. The person managing the account has said she tries to filter out some of the sarcastic comments. However, it isn’t possible to know everyone giving and receiving the compliments, so some of the less sincere comments make it into a tweet. As far as popularity or physical traits, again, the account only passes on things students send.

With this in mind, the fault for any flaws in the account lie with the students posting negative things.

The goal of the account is pretty simple: to give students a voice to say something nice to their peers. Helping the account reach this goal should be easy as well; all that is required from students is to follow the guidelines put forth by the account. But as was once tweeted out by the account, “I hate that half of the compliments sent in cannot be posted. Why are some of you so rude and disrespectful? Be nice.”

Despite ample opportunities, and even pressure to be nice, somehow

social media interactions manage to turn bad.

It would seem that since one must type out, then decide to send out a comment through technology, it would be easy to rethink rude and negative things. Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be true.

The Internet age in which we have grown up has given us the opportunity to be heard like never before, as has been preached to our generation over and over. And while some students use this with good intentions, many, knowingly or not, end up being negative.

Students should think about the impact they are having both on their own futures, as colleges and future employers often look at applicants’ social media profiles, and on other people.

It isn’t hard to be respectful on social media. There’s no reason students shouldn’t be able to take advantage of this, especially when an oppurtunity to do so is readily available.

But at Westside, it seems as though this doesn’t happen, as evidenced by Westside Compliments, Twitter battles with Creighton Prep students, and “beef” between show choir members and and members of other activities.

Specifically in the case of the show choir “beef,” many students are missing the chance to support their school, and instead turn to criticizing show choir members for celebrating their success.

It’s a shame students can’t take pride in the successes of their classmates. We would love to see students encourage each other both personally and in activities, and Westside Compliments is a good place to start.

Anonymity may make it easier be hostile online, but in a culture dominated by negativity, it can also make it easier to be kind. Ultimately, however, anonymity shouldn’t be necessary.

favorite part of

Dancing with my friends because I got to get my grooves on.

Winter formal?

I really liked the theme for Winter Formal. It was really creative.

Battle of the Bands because there was a lot of surprising talent.

Abbey Hulbert

I liked the Eiffel Tower because it was shiny and the decorations looked cute.

freshman

Ege Azak

Kelsey coziahr

senior

sophomore

junior

Devin Stueck-Hughes

FEB. 28, 2014 5

OPINION

HOVERING

Early 1920’s Chicago is jazz capital, trumpeter Louis Armstrong performs

Helicopter parents not so bad

We all know a helicopter parent.

They’re that adult who constantly hovers, the one who asks you about your grades every time you see them. They give you unsolicited advice and are often, for lack of a better word, annoying.

Lia hagen It doesn’t matter if Guest columnist they’re your parent or a friend’s, a relative or the lady down the street.

Inevitably, it gnaws on you.

Still, helicopter parents aren’t the only ones pushing their opinions on their children. For many parents, it’s seen as part of their job. In many ways, it is.

Your parents are meant to love and support you, but sometimes they mess that up. In some cases it’s intentional. In most, it’s done with only the best intentions. They want to help you grow to be your best.

Unfortunately, intentions don’t change actions, and imposing your will on a child will do little to help them in the long run.

Many of us do have parents that cling to these attitudes. They dream of us going to medical school or attaining some other magnificently practical career goals. Whether deliberately or not, they push us away from things we may have a passion for in order to push us towards what they see as practical.

It doesn’t matter what it is. Maybe they want you to go to a college you don’t like. Maybe they really want you to become a nurse or a neuroscientist. Regardless of what they expect of you, they are not the ones who will be doing it.

You are.

When it comes to actions like these, you are the only one who will be suffering the consequences. It ultimately will not affect your parent’s everyday life if you become a teacher instead of a business person. It will affect you.

I’m not telling you to ignore your parents. I’m sure they still have legitimate things to say. I am only telling you to remember that you are the only one who has to really live with your decisions.

It is not your job to be unhappy for your parents. It is not your job to please anyone but yourself.

Think hard before you compromise your passions for those around you. Yes, they could be right. Maybe you won’t make it as an artist, or maybe your chosen job won’t pay as well. Maybe that college would’ve been just as cool as what you decided.

But maybe you could be right. Maybe the work will be more rewarding than the money would be. Maybe you’ll be a hit. Or maybe you’ll just be happy.

Ultimately, your life is yours to make or to ruin. You should have the right to decide how to do it.

1969

1955

1922 Famous jazz musician Duke Ellington moves to New York

Chuck Berry performs “Maybellene”

1964

Elvis Presley becomes a rock star

1963

The Beatles come to America, along with Woodstock Music and many other British bands Arts Festival features Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and The Who

1955

Bob Dylan popularizes protest songs

MUSIC

1978

1970’s

Art Rock emerges, made by bands like Pink Floyd

Hip-hop is born in the South Bronx

Graphic by Estella Fox

Music isn’t dying, you’re just lazy

This is a letter to the 13-year-old girls wearing Black Sabbath t-shirts who can’t name one of their songs and to the 80-year-old men clinging to their youth. It’s to anyone who thinks good music is dying.

Countless times, I have heard the theory that the quality of music is getting worse. Some say the best music Estella Fox was created in the age of Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Managing editor the industry has gotten progressively less talented as new forms of music emerge. For those who believe this, I have three words: You are lazy.

Everyone is entitled to their own music taste, but to say that our generation of music is awful shows that you don’t really care about music. It’s easy to say “The ‘70s were the best decade for music” because you can easily think of the top five bands from the ‘70s. You aren’t thinking about the thousands of generic pop songs that were played on the radio throughout the decade, just the bands that were talented enough to still be popular today. After all, students at Westside are not exposed to ‘70s bands that only had 15 minutes of fame.

The top bands from this generation, like Radiohead, The White Stripes and The Strokes, would easily be a match in terms of talent and ingenuity for the best bands from any other decade. Artists from other decades would be unlikely to think so; however, since the conception of music, people have had a problem with modern artists. Even artists that are

revered today had critics.

“The effect which the writings of Beethoven have had on the art must, I fear, be considered injurious,” said the Quarterly Music Magazine and Review in 1827. Countless other musical items have been critiqued for “ruining classical music,” including the piano, which Heinrich Heine said in 1843 was “killing all our thoughts and feelings” and making us “stupid, dull, [and] imbecilic.”

The people that simply dismiss a generation of music aren’t trying at all to search for better music. It isn’t fair to just turn on the radio and judge a whole generation.

In the age of the Internet, people are able to release music immediately. This is an outlet utilized by awful beginners and (I know this may come as a surprise) people with actual musical talent. There are millions of people making music, and the range of genres today is the largest in music history.

Fortunately, most of this music is free. I think it’s time that people step off of their high horse of music superiority and try to actually find current music they like. I promise you, it’s out there.

There are plenty of websites that give you almost unlimited access to music. There are even applications like Spotify and iTunes, with its new iTunes Radio feature, that will find music that matches your taste. It’s almost impossible to not find any good music.

So start looking. Check out any one of the apps named above or even just do a simple Google search. And seriously, if you want anyone to respect your opinion on music, please learn about the band on your t-shirt.

PowerGrade A+

To Battle of the Bands. Although not many bands tried out, the night displayed really fun acts and great talent. The Lance staff had difficulty deciding its favorite performance of the night. Congratulations to the winner, Clark & Company!

C

To Tech Support. While the Lance appreciates that Tech Support recently unblocked YouTube, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is just a temporary state of affairs when other sites like Reddit and Spotify are periodically blocked and unblocked arbitrarily.

F

To the people who leave trash or food on the floor in the hallways. Students are constantly wondering why we can’t have food in the IMCs, and this clearly shows why. Custodians work hard to keep this school clean, so why not help them?

Doug’s Comic Okay, so what‛s my punishment for skipping school? Out-ofschool or in-school suspension?

Graphic illustration by Doug Flakes

Which would you pr efer?

It‛s up to you. You‛r e going to miss school no ma tter what.

So no matter what I pick I miss more school as a punishment? Okay!

Thanks.

6 FEB. 28, 2014

FEATURE

TEAM CLEAN: Custodians share stories, hobbies

By Libby Seline Staff Writer After a fresh snow, students and teachers walked into school and thought about the day ahead of them. They parked their cars with ease and wandered into the school with only a little snow getting on their shoes.

TIM COX

Tim Cox picks up his handheld transceiver during the school day.

The beeping, clicking and muffled voices are all signs of communication between Cox and his staff as sudden events occur each day.

Cox is the facilities manager. He uses the skills he learned as a construction worker to help run the building. He is in charge of elements such as the roof, drains, lighting, air conditioning and snow removal. He also scans the events going on each day and makes sure there are people to help set up, take down and help in other ways.

As a little boy, he moved around frequently because his father was in the Air Force. He lived in places such as Puerto Rico, New York, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee and Florida. As a

Mary Fast was tired of “being treated like a woman.”

As a secretary in the 1980s, she used to spend her days clicking the keys on her computer keyboard as she typed up proposals and other documents for businessmen. Some men would order her to type up something faster so a letter would be sent out before other competitors. She would receive a free lunch and watch them become wealthier.

Then as the company she worked for was about to close down, she thought she would turn this into an opportunity to change her career.

She said to her husband, “I wanna start getting paid the same that all of the guys get paid. I am getting tired of being treated like a woman.”

At the time, Fast’s husband was working for a pest control company that was being bought out by another company, so he was about to start his own pest control business. They decided they should partner up to run the business together, so Fast started studying for the licensing test. On the day of the exam, the man who tested her was very pleased. Fast was the first woman he had ever tested to become an operator in the state of Nebraska. Although it took her two tries to pass, it impressed him that she took it at all. He eventually allowed her to receive her license.

Rick Murphy

What most people did not know was that the custodians arrived at school that day at 4:30 a.m. to make sure everyone would be able to enter the building safely. Custodians are always doing what they can to help maintain the building. Students may see custodians working in the school but not know anything about them besides what they do for a living. Here is a look at three of Westside’s most well known custodians and what their lives outside of school are like. child, he rode a toboggan in New York by the Canadian border but also played in the ocean on the Puerto Rican coast when he was 6 years old.

“I was able to move around and see different climates and different people and what they did in those areas,” Cox said. “I think it just gives me a better idea of what’s out there and what you can do.”

Cox believes he has a better understanding of people at Westside because he interacted with people from different cultures as a child.

When he’s not working, he still looks for opportunities to participate in different activities. He goes skiing with his three sons in Colorado and also loves to four-wheel through the mud with his grandchildren.

“I don’t go to restaurants,” Cox said. “I don’t go to movies. I don’t stay inside much. I like the outdoors.”

Now that Mary had her license, their business, All-Ways Pest Control, could start running. As soon as it began, Fast and her husband realized they were having difficulties paying their bills. They had to make some important decisions.

“At first we ran it together but then we had to have something to pay the bills,” Fast said. “If you are not born with a silver spoon in your mouth and daddy comes running with a check for your electricity and your mortgage, and everything like that, you’ve got to pay your bills as you go.”

Fast and her husband decided they should both work for a temp agency, where she started working as a custodian at Westside Middle School. Fast was soon offered a part-time job through District 66 that she accepted in 1988. After her son graduated from high school, she felt a need for a full-time job and started working full-time as a custodian in 1994.

Throughout the years, Fast has exercised the social skills she had learned as a secretary and enjoys interacting with the kids. She loves to talk to the students about their plans for the night or converse with them about upcoming dances.

“I feel like a teenager again when they start talking about their dresses to me and stuff,“ Fast said. “It just warms my heart.”

At the age of 15, Rick Murphy fell in love with cars. “[I love that] you can change the color of the car, change the motor in it, change how it runs, how it looks. You can do a lot of things to a car,” Murphy said.

Murphy fixed up a lot of cars, including one that had been burned in a fire that he found at a young age. He brought it home and started to repair it. He placed new interior on the inside of the car and fixed the wiring. Later, he sanded down the car down and painted it. This car that he had rebuilt became his drag racing car that he used to compete with his friends.

As a kid, Murphy and his friends used to meet on Abbott Drive in South Omaha. After the sun had set, the drag racing would begin. They would race down Dodge Street and do their best to pass each other in the process.

Murphy had learned a couple of tricks and tips to drag racing that allowed him to beat out his friends. “[Drag racing] is a big rush,” Murphy said. “You’re setting a light, you’re

MARY FAST

running, you’re revving [engine] up faster speed.

You’re trying to outrun the other guy and most of the time it’s just fun.”

However, Murphy would not advise kids to drag race today.

Murphy said, “When I was a kid, things were different. But nowadays, it is dangerous.”

As he grew older, his love for cars remained. He had quit his job as a custodian at a church so he could work for Maaco, a company where he was able to paint cars. At Maaco, he learned many people skills that continue to influence him today as a custodian. However, he developed an allergic reaction to primer after five years of working in the business.

“It [primer] soaks down into your skin, gets in the pores and gets in to your nervous system,” Murphy said. “It will make you nervous.”

Once Murphy developed this reaction, he went back to being a custodian.

He has continued working on cars in his free time and cars have become a hobby instead of a job.

A NEW DRAFT

Students write screenplay, direct short film By estella fox MANAGING EDITOR

The first screenplay didn’t work.

Sitting on senior John Ficenec’s bed, Ficenec and senior Alec Hein racked their brains for a new idea.

Together, the two were writing a screenplay, which evolved from another originally written by Ficenec. The first screenplay described, in detail, Hein’s relationship with senior Maggie Kroeger.

They both felt it was a little too personal and a quest to find a new story began.

Hein texted Kroeger to tell her they were rewriting the screenplay, and she responded with an idea that sparked the new premise.

“We originally thought of three guys who go to a party, but Maggie said something about dates,” Hein said. “We ended up with our final idea of three guys going on three separate dates, and then all the guys come together and talk about their disappointing dates. The overall moral is life is a letdown.”

Although the premise seems bleak, the creators are interested in showing an alternative point of view. Ficenec, in particular, is interested in experimenting with film.

“The problem that I have with a lot of movies is that most of them have happy endings,” Ficenec said. “Even though sometimes I like a happy ending, a lot of times it leaves me thinking, ‘What if [a sad ending] follows through in the movie?’ You could say that we wanted to explore this side.”

Ficenec’s passion started last summer when

he dedicated his time to watching movies, namely Woody Allen films. He downloaded screenwriting software in the fall and started his first screenplay.

Ficenec has experience making videos, but this is the first one with a script.

“I’ve always been making ‘movies,’ whether they were five-minute videos of my friends jumping off of slides in sixth grade or making a retrospective of my life, but this is going to be my first fully realized thing,” Ficenec said.

Ficenec’s hobby of filmmaking led to a more serious interest in exploring screenwriting.

“When I wrote [the original screenplay], I had the intention of filming it,” Ficenec said. “I didn’t want to sell it, but [I did it] just to get my feet in the water and see if this is a career I would like.”

In the new film, Hein and Ficenec also play two of the films three lead roles, and the third is filled by senior Drew Gerber. The characters are based off of the actors who portray them, which serves to keep the interactions realistic.

“As far as real life elements, I tried to work in real life mannerisms, like things Drew would say or what John would say,” Hein said.

Luckily, both Ficenec and Hein have had little trouble working together.

“There have been little spats of different artistic opinions, as far as what someone should say or how things should go, but I feel like we have similar personalities and we know each other well enough that we can see where we are going with each other,” Hein said. “That’s why we’re able to snowball and build off of each other.”

Not only have the friends found this to be a cre-

ative learning experience, but they’ve also learned about each other in the process.

“This whole screenplay had started with me writing a screenplay about [Alec’s] and Maggie’s relationship, and what I like is how he was so willing to be involved in this,” Ficenec said. “I never really thought of Alec as a writer, and this has shown me a side of him I haven’t seen.”

Seniors Alec Hein and John Ficenec run through their new screenplay Thursday, Feb. 20 in Hein’s living room. Photo by Estella Fox

6 Jan. 31, 2014

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8 FEB. 28, 2014

In-depth

Something to tweet about fans use social media to connect with supporters, celebrities

By Nata Ward Feature writer Today, people don’t just watch shows. A few years ago, all you had to do was grab the remote and turn on your TV. But now sitting down at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday doesn’t mean much if you don’t have the social media creds to accompany it.

Supporting a show means liking the official Facebook page and following the show’s Twitter account. It means picking your favorite actors from your favorite TV show and finding them on Instagram and Twitter. It means using the series’ promotional hashtags during showtime.

Freshman Kara Osborne has done all those things.

Her obsession: the show Pretty Little Liars. On Tuesdays at 6 p.m. sharp, Osborne sits down in front of her TV to watch last week’s episode to refresh her memory before the new one premieres at 7 p.m. This has been her ritual ever since the show aired its first episode two years ago.

“I watched [the show] from the beginning,” Osborne said. “And when it goes off season, I watch it on Netflix. Depending on where I am that night, it’ll record on the DVR or I’ll watch it live.”

Shows fight for fans like Osborne, the kind that will use their promotional hashtags and attend special events and conventions.

“People take pictures of the screen or of a certain actor and post those online, and that gets [other] people interested,” sophomore Francesca Michelizzi said. “That’s how I got hooked on some of my

favorite shows.”

Hashtags and selfies have become a way for shows to reach more audiences. Sports fans are also benefited because now they support their team even if they’re not at the stadium.

“I think it’s really cool that, for example, if you can’t go to a game, you can follow the Twitter for it [to keep updated],” English instructor Stephanie Pueppka said. “It makes it more accessible to a lot more people. It lets it access a bigger audience.”

Social media sites also provide a means to connect with the people behind the TV shows and athletic events that make those events possible.

“I feel more connected [by following athletes],” senior Nyalot Momyjiak said. “I’m in [track] and typically [the athletes] talk about workouts and motivational stuff. Since they’re successful in [track], I feel like they’re someone to look up to. They actually do it for a living and prepare all year.”

It’s all in that connection piece. Social media brings people to you, whether those people are your friends, the athletes in your favorite team or the actors on your favorite show.

There’s something people get out of social media that is fueling culture change. One interviewee calls it “entertainment,” another “drama.” Osborne calls it “happiness,” and that’s what she felt when Pretty Little Liars actress Lucy Hale replied to her post on Twitter.

“I was just like, ‘Holy…’ is ‘crap’ okay? ‘Holy crap,’” Osborne said.

#what’snext teenagers lead the rapid change in social media By grace fogland Feature editor When Myspace was officially launched in January 2004, it was an instant hit. Just one month after its launch, one million people had already registered for it. It was one of the first successful social media sites people used. According to Comscore Inc., Myspace reached its peak in December 2008 with 75.9 million visitors in the United States.

By 2008, another social media began taking over: Facebook.

The new phenomenon was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg.

It replaced Myspace as the largest networking site, and by 2010, Myspace users declined to 57 million. By 2010, Facebook had over 400 million users, and by 2012, there were one billion members.

Now, Facebook is being pushed aside in favor of new social media sites, such as Twitter, Snapchat, Vine and Instagram. Today, teenagers are leading the rapid changes in social media. While adults still may use the “old” sites, teenagers are already on the “next big thing.” Why are teens so quick to discard old social media sites? English instructor Molly Spisak believes it’s because parents have had an influence on teen’s social media habits.

“When parents started using Facebook, it became the edited version,” Spisak said. “Teenagers turned to Twitter because their parents haven’t figured Twitter out yet.”

There may be some truth to her theory. According to research done by Pew Research Center in 2013, 71% of online adults use Facebook, while 18% of online adults use Twitter. From 2005-2013, the numbers of older generations using social media has increased immensely. Sophomore Jasmyn Ross agrees with the belief that as parents learn the new technology, their children move to the next thing to avoid them.

“Parents aren’t on Twitter, so you can post anything,” Ross said.

“When the old generations find the social media kids use, we have to find new ones.”

In Fall 2012, 42% of teens used Facebook, making it the most popular social media sites for teens. However, as the older genera-

tions began to get accounts, that percentage dwindled to 23% just a year later.

Teenagers turned to Twitter. Launched in March 2006, it gained popular support with its new concept of ‘tweeting,’ 140-character messages about ‘what’s happening’ in a user’s life. By 2013, there were 500 million registered users. Unlike Facebook, which is primarily a social outlet, Twitter encompasses politics, businesses and global news.

“I like [Twitter] because I like seeing what people are doing,” senior Liz Kutilek said. “A lot of people post opinions, and I enjoy seeing their views on things. It’s also a lot faster than Facebook.”

Junior Sydney Harlow believes that the changes in social networking are due to the fact that people want everything new.

“We dump things quickly because we think new things are better,” Harlow said. “I like Instagram and Vine the most because I find them more entertaining than Facebook.”

There is evidence to prove this theory as well. After Myspace was pushed aside, the company redesigned its layout in 2011 to try and keep up with Facebook and Twitter. Facebook recently came out with “Look Back,” a tool that automatically creates videos for each user, based on photos and posts the member puts on it.

“I haven’t been aware of the video thing on Facebook nor the Myspace designs because I don’t use either of them,” freshman Erin Kruger said. “I think people are moving on to new and improved social media sites simply because there is a lot more to offer.”

Some people, such as math instructor Jeremy Long, don’t have any kind of social media simply because they lack interest in it.

“I think younger people have a higher importance for social networking because of their stage of life,” Long said. “They are still connecting to people and bonding and relating, building that network of friendships. I’m spending my time connecting with my children and my family.”

Regardless of the reasons why social media moves so fast, there will always be something new. Soon, Twitter, Snapchat and Vine will die out, and a new sensation will arrive that everybody will need to join.

FEB. 28, 2013 9

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18% of online adults use Twitter

71% of online adults use Facebook

Present Day teens switch from Facebook to Twitter, Vine, and Instagram

2012 over 1 billion profiles on Facebook

2011 MYSPACE redesigned their layout with hopes of bringing back users

2008 Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook

2008 In December of 2008, MYSPACE reaches its peak of 75.9 million users in the U.S.

2004 One month after launch, MYSPACE reaches 1 million users

Social experiments

By Tom Schueneman MANAGING EDITOR Science fiction now tends to conjure up images of auditoriums filled with sweaty young men in bizarre clothing, but in the middle of the last century, science fiction works by the likes of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and George Orwell were earning plaudits for their commentary on a rapidly changing postwar society. The technological nature of these changes made the genre uniquely relevant, but it’s interesting to imagine what those authors would have thought of the equally significant social changes that the information age — and the new social networks it’s created — has brought with it.

It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine a short story appearing in a 1950s issue of The Atlantic or The New Yorker portraying a future in which people share their every brain fart with the world, or an absurdist piece about an interconnected network of computers through which people share pictures of their food. In many ways, the growth of social media has provided an outlet for large-scale social experiments, creating an opportunity for society to examine itself under various different circumstances.

The advent of social media has created an environment in which people are willing to experiment with the way they interact on a society wide scale. No university experiment could ever hope to match the scale of a popular social media service’s user base, and yet the life cycle of these social networks is often so short that their lasting impact is fairly minimal, while those that are beneficial tend to persist.

The relatively young app Secret is a perfect example of this.

Secret allows users to anonymously share secrets with anyone in their contacts who also has the app. “Loving” someone’s secret makes it visible to people in their contacts, however it remains anonymous, with only a general description of the original posters location (state or country) once the secret has gone beyond two degrees of separation.

Secret has already picked up plenty of media attention, with some concerned that it will enable cyber bullying, while others are tipping it to be the next Snapchat — an app which itself caused controversy upon its release over its potential use as a platform for “sexting.”

Secret may indeed have the potential to cause a great deal of strife, but so far most of its users are Silicone Valley techies — who tend to be early adopters — complaining about their jobs. It’s hard to know yet whether or not it will become an outlet for cyber bullying, or any other sort of social ill, but giving people the opportunity to share their thoughts with their acquaintances seemingly without consequence is a novel idea, and will likely add an interesting dynamic to social interactions for about 18 months, before its novelty begins to wear, and the next big thing raises new interesting questions.

There is, however, evidence to the notion that anonymity will lead to hostile interactions. Once a novel situation, Internet users are now accustomed to an unprecedented level of anonymity, which lends a sense of detachment to interactions across social networks.

This creates a very interesting environment, in which there’s no such thing as off-limits. The most notable example of this is the imageboard and community 4chan. Vulgarity and hostility are common themes, and it’s created a reputation as a cesspool for all manner of potentially destructive social forces from casual racism to child pornography. In general, it’s fairly benign, but the ability to interact with strangers anonymously leads to an environment where sympathy is rare.

In spite of this, however, it’s also allowed the site to become a hotbed for political activism, with movements like Occupy and the not coincidentally named Anonymous able to trace

much of their early history to the message board. In fact, social media has become one of the most important methods of spurring political change.

The use of the Internet to organize social and political movements is well documented. However not all such activity is as well organized or even coherent. Below most videos and articles on the Internet, there is a comments section, meant to provide the public a forum in which to discuss whatever it is they’ve just been presented. And spur discussion it does, but generally not very good discussion, and in some cases it can become outright vulgar. No comment, however well thought out — and very few are well thought out — will carry the legitimacy of whatever it is responding to simply because that’s not why people are there. A published article was written for a reason, and someone deemed it worthy of publishing. Even a blog or video posted by the creator will dominate any discussion it spurs because anyone who navigated to that page did so to watch that video, look at those pictures, or read that article, not to read what some internet stranger thinks.

As a result, the quality of discussion in these forums tends to be relatively low, and this sort of discussion is rarely very insightful, and it’s not uncommon to find racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted responses underneath articles published by major national news sites.

This too raises an interesting question about the nature of free speech in the era of the Internet. Many sites moderate such discussions and remove or hide responses that are deemed inappropriate or offensive. In many ways, such censorship may seem counterintuitive when the goal is to stimulate discussion. It creates something of a dilemma between the desire for open discussion and the desire for a productive discussion. More often than not, neither objective is fully achieved. Typically, the comments below a CNN article are roughly equivalent to several dozen people in a small room shouting loosely related streams of consciousness interlaced with occasional racist or sexist remarks.

Sexism in particular is a prominent issue on the Internet.

Sites like 4chan and Reddit, on which a great deal of Internet culture originates, tend to have predominantly male user bases, and an attitude of casual sexism is often pervasive among certain sub-communities on the Internet.

Strangely, this same community tends to be young and liberal, a demographic that wouldn’t normally be associated with sexism, and yet due to these unique social conditions, it’s become a serious issue.

Another young social media app, Lulu, has created a great deal of controversy over alleged sexism for very different reasons. The primary purpose of the application is to allow women to rate men on a scale of 1-10. Such a scale is commonly used in real life, but more prominently among men. However, Lulu creates an environment in which women can objectify the opposite sex without fear of judgment or recourse in the same way men often do. Some believe that this is sexist, arguing that a male equivalent app probably wouldn’t be allowed on the app store, whereas others see the app as only fair, given the perceived prominence of this sort of behavior among men. Regardless of the actual morality of the application it raises interesting questions about gender relations in the information age, and renders centuries old issues in a modern light.

Social media, has done this with many issues, from the promotion of democracy, to the issues presented by free speech. For better or worse, the information age has changed the way people interact, perhaps not permanently, but in ways that would have been difficult to imagine before their inception.

10 Feb. 28, 2014

In-depth

anonymous account brings positive touch to social media

By Aren rendell editor-in-chief For students who have Twitter accounts, it isn’t uncommon to happen upon a tweet from an account dedicated to spreading rumors, relationships or stereotypes. A few of these accounts are, in essence, dedicated to cyberbullying.

Since Monday, Feb. 4, however, Westside students have also been able to find compliments coming from Westside Compliments, or @Compliments66. Since its start, the account has reached over 600 followers, while sending out nearly 900 tweets, almost all of which are praising a Westside student. The creator of the account, who wished to remain anonymous but said she is a junior girl and will be referred to as WC, started the feed after seeing accounts of the same type for other Omaha Metro schools.

“It was kind of refreshing to see compliments from student to student instead of cyberbullying, so I decided to start it [the account] for our school as well,” WC said via text message.

The account allows students to send a direct message (DM) with a compliment or anonymously send in a kind remark via an ask.fm question, and the account tweets out the compliment.

The student said that she has seen the other, more harmful accounts,

and thinks they reflect poorly on Westside.

“Even if it is just a Westside account, students from other schools see it as well,” WC said. “It allows students from around the city to form their own negative ideas about our school which is very sad because there are so many great things about Westside that are never taken note of on social media.”

The student herself, while she has not been cyber-bullied by one of the other Westside accounts, said she has been cyberbullied on social media, although it did not play into her decision to start Westside Compliments.

“Well, personally, [being cyberbullied] literally made me want to put a paper bag over my face the next day at school after someone had said something negative about me on Twitter the night before,” WC said. The student sees cyber-bullying, specifically on a social media platform like Twitter, which focuses on speaking your mind to the world, as more devastating than traditional bullying.

“Cyberbullying is so effective because everyone can see it and it can always be found somewhere on the Internet,” WC said. “So it’s not like someone just said something to someone else about you, it’s like someone announced it to the whole school.”

Westside guidance counselor Kirk Henningsen echoed a similar senti-

ment. He said cyberbullying victims could potentially worry about other people seeing them in the way the bully presents them. He added that for the bully, cyberbullying is easier, just as it can be worse for the victim.

“When you bully someone you kind of have to [be] face-to-face, see that person, but with cyberbullying, you can kind of emotionally get away with it a little bit more because you aren’t having to face it,” Henningsen said. “You can kind of detach yourself from it a little bit. It doesn’t seem as real.”

But the parts of social media that make cyberbullying more effective and painless for the bully also aid in making social media more powerful in being kind.

“I think it is a lot easier for someone to give a compliment about someone anonymously, rather than walking up to someone in the hallways and saying it,” WC said. “... [Social media] is also a way to say it not only to that person, but to everyone.”

The student added that she thinks the account can increase students kindness in face-to-face contact as well, and she hopes her account will have a positive effect on Westside.

“I want our school to be a kind place that students wake up in the morning and actually want to go to, and from what I’ve seen on Twitter, that’s not the case,” WC said.

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I hate that half of the compliments sent in cannot be posted. Why are some of you so rude and disrepectful? Be nice.

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JACK AND JACK: seniors talk about fame continued from page 1 numbers,” Johnson said. “We want to get as many likes as possible, and get as many followers as possible, because we want to appeal to as many people as possible. So we kind of have to just figure out what our fan base likes and go from there.”

That fan base consists almost entirely of 12- to 17-year-old girls. Very conscious of their audience, Johnson and Gilinsky try to tailor not only their Vines, but also their tweets to that demographic.

“We used to be kind of vulgar with our tweets and curse a lot and stuff, but now we don’t do that because we have a lot of younger girls following us,” Johnson said. “We try to just have a clean image.”

For several months, Johnson and Gilinsky’s following was limited to Vine. Then, realizing Vine could easily lose its popularity, they started branching out, promoting their Twitter and Instagram accounts. It didn’t take long for followers to flock to them there too.

Along with seven other popular Viners and Instagram users, Gilinsky and Johnson get paid to attend a convention called Magcon every other weekend. The “Mag” stands for “meet and greet.” The conventions, held in different cities across the country, are attended by hundreds of girls who want to meet the kids they follow and adore. The fans take turns going through the line and meeting all the headliners.

“It really keeps your fan base dedicated,” Johnson said. “We like to think that they’d be a fan for life after we meet them and have a good interaction with them.”

Having huge crowds of girls screaming for them is “cool,” Johnson said, and both he and Gilinsky enjoy the attention, but seeing the sheer numbers and enthusiasm of their fans in real life is also rather surreal, especially considering it’s been less than eight months since they made their first Vine.

“When I get up on stage and there’s a couple thousand screaming girls, it’s weird to

take in,” Gilinsky said. “Especially the first time I did it, I was like, ‘Wow, all these little girls are here to see me.’ It was crazy. I guess it’s kind of cool to know that all these girls love me and I mean so much to them. It’s really cool to connect with them, but I like coming back to Westside and just being a regular kid.”

“It was kind of weird — like, really, girls are actually this crazy and this hardcore of fans?” Johnson said. “But it was awesome, after you got past the awkwardness stage.”

Most of the comments Gilinsky and Johnson get on Vine, Twitter and Instagram are from female fans, many of whom genuinely feel like Gilinsky and Johnson are part of their lives.

“I think it’s cool that I can have that much impact on someone’s life,” Gilinsky said. “It makes me happy to make them happy. The only thing weird about it is when girls say really inappropriate things.”

This is the era of online fangirling, and some girls use Jack and Jack-themed Twitter names, or have made fan accounts specifically dedicated to the boys. Some of them have names like “Mrs. Gilinsky.”

Sometimes, though, obsession translates into serious comments.

“I’d say by now it’s become kind of a common thing, but it is scary sometimes when girls will be like, ‘Hey, if you don’t follow me I’m going to kill myself,’ or something,” Johnson said. “I mean, obviously they’re probably just bluffing to get our attention, but if we see that, we can’t really take that risk.”

If the boys see a comment like that, they always direct message the girl on Twitter to let her know they’ve followed her and urge her not to follow through on any threats.

That’s not all they have to deal with, though.

“We definitely get some weird people that are kind of sketchy,” Johnson said.

“We don’t really know how to respond to a lot of things. There will be people who will

respond to every single one of our tweets and just say, ‘You’re ugly, you should all go die,’ and stuff.”

Probably the strangest aspect of the boys’ Internet fame, though, is the fanfiction. In this online genre, people write stories about characters or celebrities they’re obsessed with. One website, Wattpad, returns over 100 results for a search of either Jack’s name. In many of the stories, a girl moves to Omaha and ends up with one of the boys. A few, though, are quite risqué.

“It’s really weird,” Johnson said. “I read one and it was about me and Jack being in a romantic relationship, and I was like, ‘I’m done with this.’ It’s just kind of creepy.”

Despite the bizarre aspects and downsides of Internet popularity, both Johnson and Gilinsky said they enjoy being popular. They like knowing that interacting with a fan could make her day, or that tweeting something like “Keep your head up” could actually help someone.

Recently, the boys made their first foray into the world of music — an interest of theirs — when they released a single called “Distance” on iTunes. They both worked on the lyrics, and Gilinsky sang and Johnson rapped in the song.

The first day “Distance” was available on the iTunes store, it got 10,000 downloads, and it spent time in the top 100 singles, reaching #89. On the hip-hop chart, it was in the top 10 for about four days.

The duo is releasing their second single, “Flight,” this weekend. Gilinsky described it as “kind of cheesy” but thinks the fans will love it.

For now, Gilinsky and Johnson said, they don’t have any grand plans for the money they’ve been making from music and Magcon.

“It’s either going to go towards college, or we’re going to save it,” Johnson said.

“We don’t need to spend money on anything right now. We’re just high school kids.”

He and Gilinsky will almost definitely attend the same college next year, so they can keep working together and maintain their brand image.

Although their parents thought the whole thing was a joke at first, they’ve gotten enthusiastic about it too.

“My dad was like, ‘Hey, if you don’t start making money off of this, then you have to get a job after winter break,’” Johnson said. “So we’re like, ‘All right, we have to find ways to make money off of this,’ because neither of us wanted to work if we didn’t have to. Once we started making a good amount of money, our parents really started getting into it.”

In fact, Gilinsky said his parents have been serving as unofficial “managers” for the duo. They deal with business e-mails, set up interviews, and get sponsorships.

Although Johnson never foresaw the Jack and Jack Vine account leading to popularity of this magnitude, he said he doesn’t have any regrets about what’s happened.

For Gilinsky, though, it’s not always so easy.

“Sometimes I hate being under the microscope,” he said. “In Omaha, at least, it’s hard. I get a lot of crap from other people at other schools. Sometimes I wish I never did any of this, but in the long run, I know, it’s definitely going to help me be successful in life.”

Gilinsky, like Johnson, said Westside is a comfortable place for him, a sort of safe haven from all the outside attention.

“You know, I think Westside stayed exactly the same for me,” he said. “That’s what I love the most about it. When I’m at Magcon and stuff, I can’t go anywhere without a security guard, because it’s a dense population of all our fans in one place, but here it’s nice because no one treats me differently. All my friends are still my friends, and my good friend group is really supportive, and they understand I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. It’s nice to come back to Westside after a weekend at Magcon and be normal.”

FEB. 28, 2014 11

FEATURE

THE ARTISTIC TOUCH

Talented junior amazes instructors with work

By CONNOR FLAIRTY NEWS EDITOR Every stroke, every sketch and shade that Junior Jenny Solheim makes adds to the utter perfection that is one of her artworks. Her work is like a science; every movement of her pencil is just another part of the equation. The exact detail and utter realism found in her works would be astonishing coming from an adult, let alone from a high school student.

“It’s really something I’ve never seen at a high school level,” art instructor Erin Lunsford said.

“I’ve simply never seen natural ability like Jenny has.”

Solheim specializes in a form of art called photorealism, which is taking photos and recreating them into art with exact detail. Though the style is common, Solheim’s talent has baffled students and instructors.

“She has the ability to look at anything and duplicate it exactly,” Lunsford said. “It’s amazing.”

Two years ago, when Solheim was first entering the Westside art program, her work was so well done her teachers couldn’t believe it.

One of Solheim’s first pieces was so perfect that instructors were skeptical of its authenticity.

“One of our first exercises was to recreate shapes to make a picture, and her work was so spot-on accurate that I falsely accused her of tracing,” Lunsford said. “I had simply never seen somebody be able to sit down and duplicate something so accurately like she can.”

Solheim has loved art for as long as she can remember. She says her artwork comes from hard work and an eye for detail that few possess.

“My style is realistic, so I try to draw and paint to make it look real,” Solheim said. “I just try to get as many details as I can.”

Solheim’s art hasn’t gone unnoticed. As a freshman, Solheim had a piece go all the way to national competitions, even being featured in Carnegie Hall in New York. Solheim recently took home three Gold Key awards in the latest regional contest, and all three pieces of artwork will be

Above: Junior Jenny Solheim works on her Chuck Close-inspired painting of herself in the art room Monday, Feb. 24. Art instructors say Solheim is one of the best students they’ve ever had. Right: A painting Solheim is currently working on includes her hand holding a paintbrush. Solheim specializes in a form of art called photorealism.

Photos by Estella Fox

featured on the national level later this spring.

However, despite all the success and all of the recognition, Solheim, like every true artist, simply does art for its own sake.

“I like it because I can express my ideas,” Solheim said. “When I’m done I feel good about being able to know that I created that artwork.”

No one can deny, though, that Solheim seems to be on a level all her own. Solheim is so advanced that Lunsford believes she never even needed the extra help of an instructor.

“We give her instruction, but honestly I don’t know if it would make a difference if she had us [art intructors] or not,” Lunsford said. “Any student with any talent level can use feedback, but for Jenny it might not even be needed, her talent is just that unusual.”

While Solheim’s art was already excellent early on in high school, Lunsford said Solheim has still improved as an artist.

“Everything that she does shows growth, and everything she does topped the last thing that she did,” Lunsford said. “She has definitely improved, particularly in her creative side.”

Solheim’s talent has the potential to be transferred to the professional art community.

However, Solheim’s intelligence makes this junior packed with talent.

“She’s an amazing calculus student, an amazing chemistry student — she’s a really well-rounded student and she’s multitalented,” art instructor Shawn Blevins said. “Her future is really wide open.”

Solheim has been to the national level for spelling as well as art; in the summer of 2011, she competed in the National Spelling Bee, securing 19th place.

With all of her other interests and talents, Solheim may not see a career in art.

“I’m not sure if I’ll have a career in art, but I’ve definitely thought about it,” Solheim said.

“But even if it’s not my career, art will always be a part of my life. If not a career, I’ll always keep it as a hobby.”

Science instructors double as weather spotters

By Elise tucker Staff Writer The wind and rain hurl around you. You grab your phone and take a photo of the low cloud forming above your head. You think to yourself Why am I here? Am I really going to risk my life to help other people? The information you collect will save others. How did you even get to this moment?

Being a trained weather spotter can be dangerous sometimes, but it can also be an experience the spotters will remember forever. For two Westside teachers, being a weather spotter has been an interesting experience. Science instructors Angela Bergman and David Bulin are both weather spotters for the National Weather Service (NWS).

Bergman had an unique experience as a weather spotter.

“Last summer I was in Minnesota when they had softball-sized hail coming down,” Bergman said. “We were on vacation so my car was out in the storm. I had to submit three reports because the hailstones kept getting bigger. It was my first formal report and it was no fun.”

Although Bergman didn’t like that specific experience, she still loves this opportunity to be a weather spotter.

“It is fun to do something I was interested in and I found out about local training opportunities,” Bergman said. “Plus, severe weather is cool.”

To become a weather spotter, Bergman went through a training process. Bergman still hasn’t forgotten her first weather spotting experience.

“My first informal report was a hailstorm on I-80 about two months after getting my certifica-

tion,” Bergman said. “It was pea sized hail and it just kept going.”

Even though her first experience was a minor one, she still loves to go out and weather spot.

“You don’t go out and look for storms,” Bergman said. “You just report the conditions at your location. The exception to the rule is if the National Weather Service asks you to report.

To record data and information is also a process a weather spotter must go through. They need to use their ID then the NWS will put up all the individual reports coming in from other weather spotters such as Westside science instructor David Bulin, who is also a weather spotter for the NWS. He wanted to be a weather spotter because of his past experience with tornadoes.

“The closest one I have ever been to was near Lincoln and it was dark out so we were unable to see it,” Bulin said. “It’s just like everyone says. It sounded like a freight train but with lots of stuff flying around.”

He also experienced a tornado while he was in northern New Mexico when he was in the military.

“We were headed to Colorado and it started to rain a little,” Bulin said. “Then there was a lot of hail making us all nervous, I was in the passenger seat and the other passengers and driver asked me what I was staring at out the driver’s side window, I said I saw a tornado right in front of us.”

Bulin also recalls the amazement him and his friends felt during the weather phenomena.

“I said to them, as I looked at the tornado, ‘that tornado right there,’” Bulin said. “No one talked. We all just looked. It was maybe two football fields away off the interstate. I could tell ex-

‘‘

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IT IS FUN TO DO SOMETHING I WAS INTERESTED IN AND I FOUND OUT ABOUT LOCAL TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES. Angela bergman Trained weather Spotter

actly which direction it was going, but looked it like it might have crossed the interstate at some point in front of us.”

The other tornadoes Bulin has spotted in and around Nebraska were fairly far from his car.

“I did get to see one that may have been starting to form over my house in Lincoln a few years ago,” Bulin said. “I could see the clouds rotating and start to organize then quickly disappear. The radar had indicated rotation in that same location.”

Bergman and Bulin made a decision that they wanted to become weather spotters together.

They both decided to train together. Since they are both science teachers it was pretty easy for them to train.

Bergman and Bulin both have each other’s back even though they have had different weather experiences.

This friendship and teamwork has allowed them to be not only great science teachers but great weather spotters as well.

Science instructor David Bulin shows off his weather spotting ID outside his classroom Tuesday, Feb. 25. Bulin is one of the two weather spotters here at Westside. Photo by Estella Fox

12

FEB. 28, 2014

SPORTS

SPRING Illustration by Doug Flakes Photos by Estella Fox, Jakob Phillips and Sarah Lemke

BOYS GOLF: New district grouping provides opportunities

Pictured: senior Tom Stegman

It’s been five years since the boys golf team has made the state tournament. A whole high school class has come and gone without seeing the team play for the state championship. This year though, the team seems ready to break this streak.

“We have more experience coming back,” head varsity golf coach Brett Froendt said. “I’m really excited about a couple kids who could play at a higher level this year.”

Froendt has particularly high expectations for two players who have gone through a season on the golf team.

“Tom Stegman should have a good year if he plays well,” Froendt said. “He certainly has the ability to play well. Sophomore A.J. Nolin played varsity most of last year and he should have the chance to step up his performance this season.”

Experience isn’t the only thing making Froendt optimistic.

A new format for the state tournament should give Westside a more level playing field for making state.

Starting this year, the districts won’t be organized geographically, but by record and performance from the season. That

would have benefited Westside last season.

“We didn’t finish very well — we finished fifth at districts, and you have to be in the top three go to state,” Froendt said.

“We also outscored a lot of other teams that went to state in other districts, so we didn’t finish terrible, but we really want to make the state tournament, which we haven’t been to in about four or five years. We have to play consistent golf to make it happen.”

Consistent hard work outside of practice is what Froendt emphasizes to his players, and that resonates with them.

“That’s up to the kids to play during the off season,” Froendt said. “The more they played during the off season the better they will play during the year because our season is so short and because golf is a difficult sport to improve upon in a two-month time period.”

With all of these factors having the possibility to align, the golf team seems poised for a breakthrough season.

Story by Jack Cohen

GIRLS SOCCER: Key qualities motivate for successful season

The Westside girls soccer team has three qualities all successful teams have: experience, teamwork and talent. It is looking to use these characteristics to make the best team possible for this upcoming season.

Experience. Most of last year’s team’s contributors will return this season. The team also is looking to some talented freshmen to round out the varsity team.

Senior Cheyenne Janicek will be a key player for the team because she is the only returning goalkeeper. Janicek was on the varsity squad last year, and traded off time at goalie with Kayln Kaslon who graduated.

However, the Warriors have more than just Janicek as a senior leader. The team returns many of the starting players from last year, including Summer Khalil “I think with as much experience as we have, it won’t get much better than this,” Khalil said. “Being experienced on varsity and going to state is incredibly important. You know what to expect and when to expect it.”

Teamwork. The girl’s soccer team trains extensively in lifting during the off-season, and it has a tradition of a Friday fun-day, in which the seniors and returners lead the workouts.

“Pre-season helps the team not only get in shape, but also helps the team become closer and get prepared more for tryouts and the season ahead,” Khalil said.

Talent. Westside has one of the most talented girls soccer team’s in the state. Two of the players have already committed to play soccer at the Division I level: Khalil to Creighton, and junior Michelle Xiao to Stanford.

“I think it’s really beneficial to have people committed to D-I colleges because this way we can help guide the team in the right direction and be leaders in that aspect,” Khalil said. “This season is my last season before playing D-I soccer and before I start training with the Jays, but the determination I will have is what is going to prepare me for D-I soccer and I think seeing me do this, will help motivate the team to work as hard as I will.”

Story by Tim Graves

Pictured: senior Lauren Griffin

BOYS SOCCER: Rebound efforts begin after late season loss

Pictured: senior Quinn Nelson

In May of 2012, a heavily favored Bayern Munich lost the UEFA Champions League in dramatic fashion. Despite being the better team for most of the game, after 120 minutes, Bayern was tied 1-1 with a Chelsea team no one expected to win. It subsequently lost 4-3 in penalties. The next year, It redoubled it’s efforts, and again found itself in the final. This time, however, things were different. It won with a dramatic 89th minute goal.

The Westside boys soccer team sees itself in a similar position this upcoming season. After a devastating 3-2 loss to Millard West in districts last year, it knows it has something to prove in the 2014 season.

“They realize the disappointment of losing in the district final and not going to state after having been in the state final the year before, so they’ve really worked hard in the offseason,” head boys varsity soccer coach John Brian said.

The team’s loss in districts was disappointing. However, varsity player senior Quinn Nelson says that it is in the past.

“Last year’s loss in district isn’t the focus of our season; it’s not even our motivation,” Nelson said. “Our motivation is to achieve our team and personal goals. Our motivation is to play the best soccer [we possibly can].”

This year’s team is eager, prepared and strong to make state again.

“Characteristics of a strong team are teamwork, the desire for each player

to make themselves better and improve those around them, but also to work so hard that the others around them see that attribute and try to mimic it,” Brian said.

Brian sees that in his team this year. Out of the 22 players that went to districts last season, there are 19 returning. Despite the large number of returners, there is always a possibility that some of the underclassmen will take their spots on the roster.

But young talent is nothing new to Brian. He’s had many of the current seniors on the varsity team since their freshman year, such as Daniel Shonka, Chase McCann, Quinn Nelson, Nathaniel Lippincott and Patrick Wilkening.

Brian, having the best preseason he’s ever had in terms of numbers of players as well as effort, knows his team not only has skill, but also has been putting in practice ever since the end of last season.

“We’re not just relying on the talent we have; it’s the hard work as well,” Brian said. “Every game is a game where we have to prove something. That’s finally sunk in. Every team at the beginning of the season has the possibility of a state championship. Those that see their dream come through to the end are the ones that will win.”

Story by Jakob Phillips

FEB. 28, 2014 13

SPORTS

GIRLS TRACK: Returners strive to continue success

Coming off a year in which Westside sent nine girls to state, and finished 3rd in it’s district, the girls track team looks to build off the success of last year.

In the state meet last year, two Westside jumpers competed in the triple jump. Olivia Baker (who has since graduated) and junior Hayley Krumwiede finished fourth and sixth, with lengths of 35-11.00 and 35-08.00, respectively. In the long jump Hayley Krumwiede placed 16th with a length of 14-10.50 With several girls returning from this team, Preister thinks that the team can top last years finish this season.

“Three or four girls on the distance side, you have Catie Thull is coming back, she is our top distance runner,” Preister said.

“She should be really strong in the mile and two mile and really help our four by eight, and hopefully place at state.”

Westside brings several other strong athletes in the other events this season Pictured: junior Allie Laing “Haley Krumwiede in the jumps,” Preister said. “She should

be one of the top girls in the state in both the long jump and the triple jump, you have a couple other girls, Regan Johnson, Annie Bradford, Emily Reece That are all coming back who ran in our relays and participated in individual events at the state meet.”

Over the past several years Preister has just tried to keep his winning formula consistent.

“We have pretty much stuck with the same program for a while, we run a summer conditioning program for some of the girls that want to stay involved all year long,” Preister said.

“Our pre season stuff has been going since October.”

Preister sees consistent growth in the athletes who do the off-season conditioning. If the team plays well this year, it won’t just be the individuals who grow this year.

“This team really has a chance to grow, I think through hard work we will definitely see improvement.” Said Preister Story by Jack Cohen

BASEBALL: Team aims to run home with another title

Pictured: junior Josh Burnett

With such a long season for baseball, plus the postseason, some teams begin to lose focus year after year.

Take the San Francisco Giants. A team that won the World Series in 2012, then went on to have a sub .500 season and a second to last position in the NL West in 2013.

After winning the state championship in the spring, and being the regional runners-up in Legion baseball during the summer, the baseball team could see this “World Series hangover” as well.

Even though history is against the team, head coach Bob Greco doesn’t think it will be a problem.

“We address that quite a bit, to where we don’t want any of us to be complacent where we’re at,” Greco said.

To help prevent the team from being content with its skills, meetings are held every Wednesday, where varsity and junior varsity players learn about being a leader.

“First we go over our mission statement, then coach Greco will show us a inspirational story or book and apply it to our

Pictured: sophomore Kirsten McCormack

upcoming season on how we can improve,” senior Jacob Meyers said.

One thing Greco notices in this team compared to last last year is the lack of one big leader.

“We’re taking on a new definition of leadership, it’s not just a one-man leader- it’s more of a committee,” Greco said. “It’ll be most of the seniors. Sometimes it’ll be someone different at different points.”

Having this “committee” shouldn’t be too hard, because the team only lost one starter from last year, Will Frei. Since the team has most of its starters back, they are more familiar with each other.

“Our team chemistry is great,” Meyers said. “I’m so excited for this season, because I’m trying to win a state championship, and I know we’re going to get it done.”

With eight returning starters, and loads of leadership, the Warriors have the perfect formula for a repeat.

Story by James Buckley

GIRLS TENNIS: Coach tries to ace last season It was the last set of the match. Winner takes state, loser goes home. Back and forth the games went, one game for Marian, one game for Westside. It’s 7-6 (7-4), 6-6. Then-sophomore McKinney Harwood and then-senior Andrea Kinnerk have a long rally, and finally get the point and the 2012 No. 1 doubles state title.

At this point everyone stormed onto the court and head coach Kim Gradoville comes up to the pair telling them how proud she is of them.

For Gradoville, this win was the culmination of all the hard work during the season was shown through that one win, in the eyes of Gradoville.

This year will be Gradoville’s last year coaching at Westside.

She will then move on to coaching at the College of Saint Mary’s.

Even though it’s Gradoville’s last season, she views this season as if it were her first.

“I’m not really treating it differently than any other season,” Gradoville said. “I always go into each season with high expectations for myself and the players.”

The same can be said for Harwood, who will be playing with her sister, sophomore Lizzie Harwood for potentially the last time.

“It’s bittersweet, but it makes us a lot more motivated knowing this is our last chance to win state,” McKinney said.

Tennis is a sport requiring a lot of repetition to master one of the skills, because of this the girls have been working with their respective coaches to make their game better.

“Last year was really hard coming in second because we all believed we had a really good chance to win,” Harwood said.

“However, I think this year we are all coming in ready to work hard and win back the title.”

Story by James Buckley

Pictured: senior McKinney Harwood

BOYS TRACK: Team shifts strengths towards new events

Pictured: senior Stuart Willett

This season, Westside track athletes have the opportunity to step into roles previously held by record breaking seniors.

Craig Timmons, who holds Westside records in the 200-meter and 55-meter sprints, and holds the second best time in the 100-meter sprint graduated last year. Varsity track coach Rick McKeever knows replacing such a valuable athlete such as Timmons, and several others who graduated won’t be easy.

“Last year we had Craig Timmons, who was an outstanding sprinter,” McKeever said. “We have to replace him — that will be our main difference.

We also lost Josh Payne who was a very good thrower, shot putter and a sprinter for us. We do have Tom Young who has the leading shot put coming back.”

Even without Timmons, McKeever believes that replacing him will be a good challenge for the other athletes.

“That’s difficult to find a replacement for someone who placed fourth in state, and set school records,” McKeever said. “It’s going to be interesting to

see who steps up, I can’t say now.”

Even without a clear-cut replacement for Timmons, many of the areas for the track team look strong for this season.

“Our distance crew with seniors Stuart Willett and Jordan Wheeler and many others, should be really strong,” McKeever said. “The jumpers led by junior Njali Kowa should be strong, our hurdlers all come back with more experience. We feel we have some younger kids from last year who I’m anxious to see how they do.”

It’s never easy replacing an athlete of Timmons caliber, but McKeever likes to encourage a next man up attitude when it comes to stepping up for graduated seniors.

“Of course having a runner like Craig [Timmons] was great, but we have good runners still on the team, and I know they’ll increase there playing level this season,” McKeever said.

Story by Jack Cohen

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14 FEB. 28, 2014

Sports

BRING IT ON

Cheer squad competes at state for the first time

By Tim Graves Sports EDITOR

Graphic By Doug Flakes

It all started with senior Maddie Salerno, who cheers for a competition cheer team in addition to Westside.

This year she brought an idea to varsity cheer head coach Amy Studts: to take a squad to state cheer.

“Maddie is our competitive cheerleader because she goes to Elite,” Studts said. “She thought, ‘Hey, this would be a good idea.’ And I wasn’t opposed to it, and so I thought, ‘Let’s try it.”

Westside sent a squad made up of varsity and junior varsity members to the competition Feb. 21 and 22. The team was originally going to be varsity members, but that needed to be changed to have enough girls for the competition. The varsity and junior varsity teams combined because of a show choir event on the same day.

Although it was the team’s first year, it was not going into the competition blind. Studts has experience and Olivia Kelly, a current University of Nebraska Omaha cheerleader, assisted the team.

“My jumps were horrible before Olivia,” varsity cheerleader junior Sydney Hawekotte said. “She helped me out with those. She also did most of our choreography, and knew what to expect for the state competition.”

The team practiced five times a week to prepare for the competition. It headed into the weekend with two goals: finish in the top five and beat Millard South. The team succeeded in one of the goals — it finished fifth — but Millard South

finished first.

The team battled tough other teams, and had to deal with judges’ break right before it was scheduled to go.

“We were ready to go on — we had done our chant and everything,” Hawekotte said. “Then a guy says we’re going to take a five-minute break, and it was more like 15. Everyone was just really nervous then.”

Even though the squad lost to Millard South, it was still happy with the results.

Going into next season, the cheerleaders will be losing some of the senior leaders from the team.

The two seniors, Salerno and Laura Salisbury, provided leadership, and helped the cheerleaders turn into a true team through the competition.

“The seniors knew what to do,” Hawekotte said. “Maddie does competition cheer, so she explained things to us and calmed us down for the competition.”

But there were just two seniors on the state cheer squad. The team returns with new experience and talent from this year’s state competition. It also has a drive to win.

“We want different music next year,” varsity cheerleader junior Morgan Novacek said. “We didn’t plan as well last year; we’re going to start earlier for next year.

The Nebraska State Cheer Competition has been going on for about ten years. The event is held in the Heartland Event Center in Grand Island every year. Westisde competed in the nontumbling event this year. There is also a sideline cheer event in the competition. Millard North won the non-tumbling competition with a score of 79.83. Westside was fifth with a score of 69.

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FEB. 28, 2014 15

Photo illustration by Sarah Lemke

ARTS & Entertainment

By Abby Coen-TAylor Staff writer

After the winter holidays, wallets are likely looking slim. Still, people don’t have to stay home on the weekends. There are plenty of things for two people to do in Omaha under $25. Sometimes you just have to look somewhere new. After all, there aren’t boring cities. There are only boring people.

Art museums

Sometimes the evening brings out your inner hipster. If that’s the case, the Joslyn Art Museum, Nebraska’s largest art museum, has free admission and is open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays. In addition, they have a small restaurant that’s open during lunch hours. It boasts delicious food and fairly inexpensive prices. After grabbing a snack, you can visit the Joslyn’s art fixtures like the exhibits. The art pieces vary from the permanent American Indian and Asian art to the museum’s featured exhibits, Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult and Daily Life and 1968 both temporary exhibits opened this month

Movies

Once in a while I like to go to a movie theater solely for the popcorn. When Netflix and microwave popcorn just don’t cut it, I go to the movie theater.

Still, I don’t want to pay $10 for the ticket and $15 for the food. If you’re like me, you should check out the dollar theater. Tickets are only $3, so there will be enough money to get loads of popcorn and M&M’s. A dollar theater near the Westside area is Westwood Cinema 8, located at 2809 South 125th Avenue. On Tuesdays, Aksarben Cinema offers $2 popcorn and soda, so that’s an option as well.

Thrifting

Another inexpensive thing to do with friends is go to Goodwill. It always has crazy and cool stuff in stock, and you never know – you might find something you like.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Also, with March soon approaching, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade will be a memorable experience for anyone, Irish or not. The parade will be held Saturday, March 15 at 15th and Howard Street, by the Omaha Police Department.

Admission is free, so you can grab a group of friends. But, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this year, so I’d recommend bringing a jacket. Make sure it’s green, though, because nobody wants to get pinched.

The Old Market

When the weather starts to warm up and the snow melts, a good stroll around the Old Market is entertaining and interesting. With over 100 shops and restaurants, the possibilities are endless. Admire one of Omaha’s largest attractions with some friends while enjoying the street artists and musicians.

Kick up some dust on the cobblestone streets and get some fresh air, admire the beautiful shops, or you can simply people-watch.

IN THIS REVIEW Joslyn Art Museum 2200 Dodge St. Westwood Cinema 2809 S. 125th St. Askarben Cinema 2110 S. 67th St. Goodwill Reserve 501 S. 13th St.

Metro Goodwill 8310 Spring Plaza

Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge

For the outdoorsy bunch, a walk down the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge is a perfect activity. The bridge is the longest bridge connecting two U.S. states. It was built in 2008, and there are colored lights all around and above the bridge. They turn on at night. Sometimes, a light show is held, displaying multiple colors. However, as the bridge is suspended by wires, it would not be a wise choice to go during a windy day, especially if you’re scared of heights.

WE BE LIONS

Omaha band produces new album, plans CD release show

By Kellie wasikowski MANAGING EDITOR

Pursuing a career in music almost inevitably involves letdowns. Trying to form a band but later finding out that no one else is serious is something most professional musicians have gone through many times, and the perseverance they have to pursue their passion shows their love for music.

We Be Lions is a band that was formed in Omaha in 2010, and is made up of band members Cody Fox, a 2003 Westside graduate, on vocals, Kelvin Brooks on the drums, Jake Pirruccello on the bass, and Mike Novy and Ricky Szablowski on guitar. While the band’s style doesn’t fit into one category, it’s a mix of each of the band members individual influences, including genres such as funk, rock and hip-hop.

While the band got together only a few years ago, none of the members are amateurs when it comes to playing music. Each of them began playing instruments at a young age, and they were all part of different bands that played at house shows and other small-scale venues. But the members agreed that one of the difficulties of being in bands in high school was always finding members that were equally as committed.

Pirruccello also mentioned memories of going to the Ranch Bowl when he was in high school, which closed in 2006, where he saw some of his favorite shows.

“When I was 15 and a freshman, going to the Ranch Bowl was the coolest thing ever,” Pirruccello said. “Back then, it was so loud and the same people went every weekend.”

After high school, each of the band members pursued different projects, but nothing as serious as We Be Lions. Brooks and Fox were in a band together, and they then met the rest of the members through mutual musician friends. Fox thinks in order to succeed, a musician has to be really driven to pursue a music career.

“If you’re trying to be a musician, you can go to school for it,” Fox said. “But there’s really no degree to get a record deal, so you just have to put yourself out there and try to do it.”

We Be Lions released their first self-titled album in 2011, and have played shows at many different venues around Omaha, and in other states such as California, Minnesota and Missouri. The band has built a fan base in Omaha, but members hope that with the release of their next album, Fingerprint, their fan base will grow.

They began working on Fingerprint about a year ago. Production began with writing new songs, and practicing them with the band before going to record them in the studio. The band worked on the 10 songs in three different environments, and the members all agree that the places they wrote the songs reflect how they sound.

“Listening to the music now, I can hear it change based on where we wrote it,” Pirruccello said. “When you’re in the studio, you really get a chance to sit back and listen to what you’ve created.”

We Be Lions has done a lot of fundraising to be able to pay for studio time to record Fingerprint, including an Indiegogo campaign, revenue from playing shows, revenue from selling merchandise, and revenue from advertising on the flyer for the upcoming CD release show, which will be March 22 at the Waiting Room.

Fingerprint will also feature original artwork from Omaha artist Gerard Pefung. Pefung, originally born in Cameroon, moved to Omaha when he was 15 years old. His art has been influenced by the rich traditions and culture that he was exposed to while living in Cameroon. Pefung’s artwork has been featured on different buildings around Omaha, as his forte is mural paintings. Pefung also illustrated a children’s book for Penguin Group Books called What is Africa Really Like?

“Gerard is doing the flyer for the show and the album artwork, and it’s been really neat to work with him,” Fox said. “Every time we tell him a new idea he gets super excited. He’s always thinking of new things we can do.”

Both We Be Lions and Pefung have been nominated for Omaha Entertainment Awards. The band was nominated for an OEA in 2013 in the progressive rock category, and Pefung won the

OEA in 2012 for Emerging Visual Artist.

After the release of Fingerprint, the band hopes to increase their market for touring, but they know touring is a difficult way to make money if the fan base is not yet there. Their strategy is to travel to other Midwest cities on the weekends, because most of the band members have other obligations during the week, and weekend shows bring the most revenue.

But for now, they are trying to market their new album to Omaha listeners, because they always want to have the strongest connection to fans in their hometown.

“Music is a universal language,” said Brooks, the drummer. “There are a lot of people who like to play music, and playing at a local venue on a Friday night is a dream come true for so many people. So it’s important for people to go out and see these bands and support them.”

Bassist Jake Pirruccello records last minute background beats in the last night of the studio for one their new songs Wednesday, Feb. 19. We Be Lions currently records in a local basement studio in the Westside neighborhood.

Photo by Sarah Lemke

16 FEB. 28, 2014

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It’s Friday morning and boxes of donuts raid the hallways. The same old labels show up again, week after week. Krispy Kreme and Hy-Vee donuts are getting a little old.

Phoebe goes to homeroom and sighs. Another week of plain glazed donuts that aren’t fresh.

Jace sits in her homeroom without a donut, wondering when someone will finally remember to bring them.

As donut connoisseurs, we, Phoebe and Jace, are on a mission to rid our school of plain donuts.

We needed to find the best-tasting donuts in Omaha.

We grabbed our wallets, kept our stomachs growling and made our away across Omaha.

Our first stop was Winchell’s. Winchell’s is almost always known for just being “that one place next to Krispy Kreme,” but in reality, Krispy Kreme should be known as “that one place next to Winchell’s.”

Winchell’s is a nearby donut shop that has a large variety of donuts, from plain glazed to apple-filled. We chose the chocolate glazed donut. The chocolate was rich and the donut was doughy and delicious, but the donuts

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at Winchell’s do cost double the price of Donut Stop and Dunkin Donuts.

Not feeling fully satisfied, we headed to Dunkin Donuts. Located at 14225 Pacific St., it’s not much further to travel to get some donuts for your homeroom. They not only have donuts, but also offer a wide variety of breakfast sandwiches and coffees. Dunkin Donuts donuts are thicker and have more chocolate icing, but are not the best donuts in Omaha. We moved on.

Then we arrived at Donut Stop, a small bakery located at 1256 S. 13th Street. It’s a little shop that is open from 6 p.m. to 10 a.m., a perfect place to have a late-night treat or an early-morning delight. Although it is a long trip from the Westside area, the homemade flaky donuts are sure to have your mouth watering for more. One flaw to this donut shop is that it doesn’t have a wide variety of donuts to choose from, but its donuts do cost half the price of Winchell’s.

Then we found it: the best donut shop in the city of Omaha. Gerda’s Bakery on 51st and Leavenworth is a small restaurant/bakery with the flakiest, most melt-in-your-mouth donuts. The blueberry ones, in particular, are to die for. They’re also cheap, costing only 75 cents each.

Although Gerda’s is a bit out of the way, the drive is worth it to make your homeroom happy and have a nice bite to eat to start off your Friday morning.

IN THIS REVIEW Winchell’s 2905 S. 120th St. Dunkin Donuts 14225 Pacific St. Donut Stop 1256 S. 13th St. Gerda’s 5180 Leavenworth St. ALSO CHECK OUT: Pettit’s 502 N. 16th St. or 15615 Pacific St. Suite 8 Krispy Kreme 2715 S. 120th St. or 707 S. 72nd St.

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