wingspan 7 WEST HENDERSON HIGH SCHOOL
Bullying becomes local and national issue
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3600 Haywood Road, Hendersonville, N.C. 28791 • Volume XXIX, Issue 3 • February 25, 2011
AP history class experiences life from 1800s
Freshman Katie Welch creates a poster to illustrate the term imagery for her English I class. The English I EOC is now a local graduation requirement. (photo by Rachel Farmer)
Kiersten Ellsworth Senior Editor
W
ith near freezing temperatures and snowy conditions around her home in Horse Shoe, junior Kara Miller stepped outside to set up a green tent in her backyard. The thought of living in the wintry conditions was not something she would have thought of on her own. Miller was one of the 48 students in Ben Seneker’s AP U.S. History class to participate in a “Walden Pond” experiment last month after studying transcendentalist writers. The guidelines of the experiment were to “unplug” from technology within reason and mimic the lifestyle Henry David Thoreau described in his 1854 classic book Walden, or Life in the Woods for seven days. That would mean no cell phones, iPods, computers or televisions. “I really got into the project and slept outside in my tent five of the seven nights and only took two showers the whole week,” Miller said. “We couldn’t use lights, so I just went through about 10 tea candles. I didn’t realize how early it got dark, so the first night I went to bed around 6:30 p.m.” Fellow classmate, junior Kristina Anderson, also gained a new outlook on time. Without her electronics, Anderson was able to appreciate and make use of new opportunities. “I really view time differently now,” Anderson said. “Before the experiment, I was killing time on Facebook and mindlessly watching TV. But in the Walden experiment I was giving life to the hours of my days, through reading and writing. I was also able to slow down and appreciate more things in my life.” Students in Seneker’s class each utilized the time they normally spent using electronics in different ways. Rachel Farmer, a junior, played pool and darts with her father and worked jigsaw puzzles with her mother. “The jigsaw puzzles were really time consuming, so they took a good portion of the day and distracted me from my boredom,” Farmer said. “My dad and I spent a lot of time together by him teaching me new dart games, so I had the opportunity to hang out with him more.” Farmer’s classmate, junior Jessie McKinney, spent the time with her family as well. McKinney was grateful for the time she spent building a snowman with her father. “Bonding with my dad was nice because we haven’t been able to spend time together in months,” McKinney said. “I also brought my grandma firewood be-
Sophomore Lee Fullam performs a front pike at diving practice at the Asheville YWCA.
•Diver named regional winner, state runner-up Sophomore Lee Fullam placed first in the 3A Western regional swimming and diving championships on Feb. 4. He and three other divers continued to the state championships on Feb. 11 where Fullam was named runner-up and sophomore Joseph Manzi placed third. The men’s swim team also received individual medals at regionals for freshman Garrett Hoce in the 500-yard freestyle and junior Dylon Johnson in the 100-yard butterfly. At the state competition, the swim team set five new school records. The men’s team placed ninth overall. (For related story see page 9)
exit strategy School board votes to maintain state standards
Peregrine Poll
A
Josh Wentzel Web Editor
t the October 2010 meeting of the North Carolina State Board of Education (SBE), members voted to do away with several “student gateways,” better known by high school students as “exit standards.” The standards, put in place in 2005, required that students had to make a Level 3 or 4 on the English I, Algebra I, U.S. History, Biology I and Civics and Economics exams in order to graduate from high school. Earlier, the SBE and N.C. General Assembly had removed graduation projects as a statewide requirement for a high school diploma. When the state eliminated these requirements, it was with the stipulation that local school boards could keep the exit standards and graduation projects as local graduation requirements. That is what the Henderson County Board of Education has chosen to do. Assistant Henderson County Superintendent Kathy Revis believes keeping graduation requirements allows for a more holistic assessments of student proficiency. “The principals had a discussion about the gradu-
Would you rather make up days on a Saturday or lose Spring Break?
Saturdays 79%
Spring Break
ation requirements and decided to keep them within the county. They wanted to hold students accountable for demonstrating mastery of the curriculum content,” Revis said. “About half of the school systems in Western North Carolina made former state requirements into local standards and requirements. This was also done with requirements applying to grades three through eight.” In the past, if a student didn’t meet the exit standards after two test administrations, he or she had to go before a district level review committee that evaluated portfolios of the student’s work. This was always conducted at the end of the semester when schedules were full and there was a lack of time, Revis said. “That (review committee) was a huge time-consuming process, so we no longer have that. Now at the individual schools for the local standards they are going to do a review process in-house,” she said. “Basically, they will look at a student’s work and basically decide if they feel that the student’s work demonstrates competency or proficiency on the curriculum standards, or whether the student needs to go to summer school for 45 extra hours of instruction, or
• See “Exit standards,” Page 2
• See “Unplugged,” Page 2
21% (based on a survey of 261 students)
Heard Hall in the
“I wish I could get a quote in the newspaper.” Chris Burnett, senior (on “Heard in the Halls”) “There’s no way I could ever coach theater.” Brian Brewer, U.S. History teacher (discussing career changes) “If she had been wearing pants, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt.” Amy Zalevskiy, chemistry teacher (on acid and base burns) “I don’t understand how you can ‘make’ babies. It’s not like you put them together with screws.” William Bayless, sophomore (on human reproduction)
Alcoholic energy drink proves to be a dangerous combination
I
t was a Friday night at Central Washington University. What had started out as a typical off-campus college party turned into a close rendezvous with death for nine students. As police arrived on the scene, they discovered young adults passed out all over the property with empty cans of Four Loko strewn about. Following fatal and nearly fatal incidents involving caffeinated alcoholic beverages, drinks such as Four Loko, Joose, Core High Gravity HG and Moonshot have all been under intense scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA began an extensive evaluation of the beverages in November 2009, but incidences such as the Central Washington party, where students’ blood alcohol contents (BAC) ranged from 0.12 percent to as high as 0.335 percent, have attracted the public’s attention. The FDA contacted manufacturers of the drinks, giving them 15 days to either remove the risky ingredients or face possible seizure by the government, according to the agency’s principal deputy commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein. “FDA does not find support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is ‘generally recognized as safe,’ which is the legal standard,” Sharfstein told CNN reporters. “To the contrary, there is evidence that the combinations of caffeine and alcohol in these products pose a public health concern.” Phusion Projects recently announced that it had made the decision to produce only non-caffeinated versions of Four Loko. Even though the company agreed
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Home in Asheville helps victims of sex trafficking
to reformulate their products, Chris Hunter, Jeff Wright and Jaisen Freemen, the three cofounders and current managing partners, said they do not agree with the FDA’s position. “We have repeatedly contended - and still believe, as do many people throughout the country - that the combination of alcohol and caffeine is safe,” Hunter, Wright and Freeman said in a media release on their company’s website. “If it were unsafe, popular One 23.5 oz drinks like rum and colas or Irish coffees that have been consumed can of Four Loko safely and responsibly for years would face the same scrutiny that our products have recently faced.” Four Loko, dubbed “blackout in a can” and “liquid cocaine” by some consumers and critics, previously contained caffeine equivalent to a tall Starbucks coffee and an alcohol content comparable to four cans of beer according to the company’s website. The vibrantly colored 23.5-ounce cans had an alcohol volume of either 6 or 12 percent, depending on state regulations. Both the appearance and contents of the products led many individuals and officials such as Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, to believe the drinks promote excessive drinking. Kerlikowske supported the FDA for taking a stand against products that are “designed, branded and promoted to encourage binge drinking.” From the time the FDA issued warning letters to the four manufacturers, United Brands, Charge Beverages
A night with Four Loko
Rachel Shoemaker Feature Writer
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or 4.7 shots of 40-proof vodka
4.7 bottles of beer
4.7 glasses of wine
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and New Century Brewing also have all ceased production and shipping of beverages. School nurse Kim Berry is more than aware of the dangers of drinking excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages combined with high levels of caffeine. She believes the drinks were marketed toward college-age and even high school students, but she hopes that people will become more aware of the dangerous effects of caffeine and alcohol consumption after the attention the drinks have received nationwide. “They’re a bad idea,” Berry said. “The caffeine counteracts drowsiness from the alcohol, which depresses the central nervous system. The caffeine counteracts the depression, and you don’t realize you’re getting as much alcohol into your system. With the caffeine, they don’t get that warning and keep drinking. That’s where people have been hospitalized.”
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Winter sports wrap up seasons