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wildcat ales plano senior high school
plano, tx 75025
A worthy cause:
www.wildcattales.com
volume 57
issue 1
august 21, 2012
PALs raise money for Wounded Warriors
To vote in Texas, you must be registered. Simply pick up a voter registration application, fill it out and mail it at least 30 days before the election date. Last day to register to vote for the November General Election is October 9, 2012. Register online at: www.sos.state.tx.us You can also register to vote at local libraries, post offices, the DPS and Collin College Campuses. Photos by Cristina Seanez
A banner is decorated and signed by students to be sent to Eric Zastoupil, who is currently recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland after stepping on an IED. He graduated from Plano in 2006. “The banner shows that the Wildcats are wishing him the best in his recovery,” senior PALs member Megan Rund said. “The community as a whole hasn’t forgotten about him and appreciates his service.” Story on page 7
A light in our world Student explains passion for helping others By Rachel Chen It was the first week of school. Posters and announcements were plastered across walls advertising the junior class president election. Junior Timothy Hughes was considering running because he had always been committed to helping others, but he was not sure if he had enough popular support to win. His friends encouraged him to run, and he eventually made his choice. A mere seven days before the actual election, Hughes became a candidate for junior class president. “I wasn’t surprised by the support I got,” Hughes said. “But I was surprised at the magnitude and the intensity of the support.” His vision for the school was to have an open, transparent system of leadership based on honor, diligence and insightfulness. Since childhood, caring for others had been integral in his life. “My parents have ingrained in my identity that I have a responsibility to help other people to the fullest I can,” Hughes said. “I think we can better ourselves and move to the next generation of excellence.” Throughout his life, Hughes, an active participant at his local church, has been on mission trips with his church to locations across the country and even to Asia. In addition to going on mission trips, he has also helped serve people meals on weekends in urban San Diego when he lived in California several years ago. “My personal beliefs have affected my principle,” Hughes said. “Every time I go on mission trips and serve other people, I realize the true nature of why I am here. I am here to serve others to the best of my ability and make this community a better place so I can be a light in this school.” Continued on Page 3
Stitched into the same fabric Muslim students reflect on 9/11 By Kimberly Mei
It only takes three or four minutes to put on each morning. Her favorite one is blue. When senior Khadeeja Miandara began wearing it, some wondered if she was a different person. It was the July before her junior year and she started off easy – just two hours a day in the mall at Sears, no big deal. She wore it while she learned about right-ofway and parallel parking. She wore it while she actually gave right of way and parallel parked. She was wearing her hijab when she graduated driver’s ed, and it’s been on ever since as a symbol of her Islamic faith. “It’s just a different piece of cloth on my head,” Miandara said. “My hair is still there, I’m still Khadeeja Miandara. I believe the same things, I say the same things. I make the same dumb jokes. The hijab to me is this legacy, like you’re handing a torch down. Sometimes people treat you differently – they think you’re oppressed, or you don’t get to choose if you wear the scarf or go out in public. That’s false.” Eleven years earlier, Miandara is 7. Her birthday is coming up on Sept.
21, but she won’t be having a party. “After 9/11 I cancelled my birthday party,” Miandara said. “I remember someone had a family member who was lost in the crash, and it was out of respect as a mourning period. I had my birthday in October. Some people in my class didn’t come. But a lot did come, and that’s what I focused on: who’s a good friend, and who maybe doesn’t know as much, or their parents didn’t know as much.” A week after 9/11, Miandara’s father, a consultant for a pharmaceutical company, lost his job. He was detained for three days in Canada, where he was on a business trip. “I don’t think his company did it out of discrimination,” Miandara said. “It was just they couldn’t have a Muslim flying in the air frequently at the time. It was very difficult with Homeland Security cracking down on so many families, and they weren’t always fair or right, but it was understandable. It was one of those sad things that had to happen.” At the time, Miandara’s mosque was under construction. Service was relocated to a smaller facility next to a vacuum store at a local
An unexpected turn
strip mall. However, after a brick was thrown through their window and their building was vandalized, Miandara and the rest of the children had their classes at a fellow mosque member’s house instead. Still, the members of the mosque wasted no time in working to raise funds for the victims of 9/11, and at school, Miandara donated in drives. “They did their best to try and raise a new image of Islam because immediately it became clear that this was going to be a problem for our community,” Miandara said. “It’s still a problem for some communities, not like Plano – Plano’s awesome in that respect. I remember donating teddy bears and feeling like, ‘Oh, this is something that affects me’ even though I was 7 and didn’t get it as much as maybe I could have. I felt like something had happened to hurt my country, and I wanted to make it feel better. We did a lot of things – we did canned drive, we did medical supplies, teddy bears. I saw my teddy bear on the news, I remember.” It was six months before Miandara’s father could find another job – this one in Continued on Page 6
Student battles CML leukemia By Hannah Kohn
Photo submitted by Kara O’Neil
It wasn’t until after volleyball practice in March 2011 that she first began to notice the change
in her health. “My body was feeling weak, but I thought it was because I stopped playing volleyball,” senior Kara O’Neil said. “I had surgery on my knee in October, so I was out of volleyball until it healed. I just blamed it on not playing volleyball and just not being as active as I was. I just couldn’t keep anything down and I was becoming very dehydrated.”
O’Neil dismissed the problem, trying to not overreact. But that night her health took a sudden turn for the worse. She was then quickly admitted to the Plano Medical Center and the doctors began administering the usual tests. “They checked all the normal stuff and said I had the flu,” O’Neil said. “They told me I had swine flu, but that was before they checked my blood count.” O’Neil’s white blood cell count was 2.5 million. The average is around 100,000. She was then admitted to Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, where doctors gave her a bone marrow biopsy. “When I was first diagnosed with CML leukemia, I had the
option of being homeschooled, but that was nothing I was interested in because I wanted to feel like everybody else,” O’Neil said. “To go to school and be able to do daily things that everyone else gets to do, which is something people take for granted.” She explained that having cancer has given her a new view of the world and gave her a greater understanding of all the things people take for granted every day. “People take health for granted so much because they don’t realize how easy they have it,” O’Neil said. “Even before I was diagnosed I used to feel completely Continued on Page 3