volume 48, issue 4 NON-PROFIT ORG. U. S. Postage PAID Permit #6754 Bethesda, MD
November 17, 2009
Walt whitman High school
7100 whittier boulevard
Bethesda, maryland 20817
Loss of credit policy reexamined
Inside Look
2 NEWS
Maryland lawmakers propose changing high school dropout age from
MCPS administrators propose eliminating loss of credit penalties for unexcused absences
16 to 18. 6 OPINION
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bY James Dionne
Students can’t access the Wikipedia page for sex but can visit Sex and the City’s homepage.
7 IN-DEPTH
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Technology and Communication
10 FEATURE Rachel Nussbaum’s climate guide says which rooms are hot and which rooms are not.
14 ARTS
The show must go on! Churchill puts on “Chicago” after censorship battle plagues production.
theblackandwhite.net
photo by
SARAH KLOTZ
Director Christopher Gerken and members of the tech crew put the finishing touches on the set for ‘Into the Woods’. This musical is one of the most difficult to perform and produce, according to producer Erin Pearson, a junior.
‘Into the Woods’ opens Nov. 19 by YASMEEN Abutaleb “Into the Woods,” the long-awaited fall musical, opens this Thursday with performances running Nov. 19, 20 and 21. “Into the Woods” is a combination of fairytales that intertwine to form an entirely new story. Act One shows Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Bean Stalk and other fairytale favorites having their dreams come true, while Act Two follows the characters after their “happily-everafter.” The show stars seniors Molly
Bennett, Haruka Nakawaga, Mark Herschfeld, Noah Gavil, Tori Sharbaugh and junior Emily Madden. An impressive set design, which includes paper mache trees made out of wood and chicken wire, creates the rest of the scene. Junior Erin Pearson, the producer of the show, says “Into the Woods” has one of the most complicated set designs a Whitman audience has seen. Tickets cost $8 for students, $12 for adults and $20 for reserved seating and can be purchased at both lunches or at the door.
Starting next year, sleeping in might not be a problem. A group of MCPS administrators, known as the Loss of Credit Project Team, is attempting to revise the loss of credit policy for the 2010-2011 school year. The proposed policy would eliminate the loss of credit system. Currently, students lose credit for a class after five unexcused absences or 15 unexcused tardies. Instead, students could make up the work they miss with a 10 percent penalty. “A big reason why the county is looking at throwing out the LC policy is because in the grading and reporting policy, misbehavior can’t influence a student’s grade,” assistant principal Jennifer Webster said. “The current LC policy is in conflict with this.” The current policy disproportionately affects schools with students who have lower attendance rates than ones with more privileged students, Webster added. “Some schools have such an issue with attendance that if they were to LC every student who missed five classes, they would have an astronomical number of students who would lose credit,” she said. The team sent a preliminary memorandum May 28 to the BOE to encourage the creation of a policy that could work for both low- and highachieving schools. The group met to revise the submission Nov. 5 before sending a final draft to the BOE for official review. BOE member Patricia O’Neill said that she will more than likely support a change to the LC policy. “Over time it’s been something that principals, teachers and students say doesn’t work,” she said. “It’s a problem not matter where you are.” The proposal will most likely come to a vote at the BOE meeting in January. Some other aspects of the proposed policy include disciplinary action—like lunch detention—against students for see
POLICY page 2
Forensics expanding in the classroom, streets Both students and police benefit from new interest, new technology by Nalini Tata Another frantic call. Another crime. The police pull up to the scene and begin dispersing the crowd of spectators, trying to reduce the chance of contamination. Lights flash as an officer snaps photos of almost everything. Another officer puts on gloves, removing a broken cigarette butt and a half-drunk glass of water for DNA analysis. No, this isn’t last night’s episode of “CSI.” It’s a potential crime scene investigation for this year’s new forensics class. In response to high demand from students and with enthusiasm from the faculty, science teacher AnneMarie O’Donoghue and science department director Donald DeMember added a forensics course to the science curriculum this year. O’Donoghue, who teaches the class two periods a day, says she was encouraged to start the program by other MCPS schools, which have integrated the class into their curricula in recent years. Students in forensics have learned about finger printing and have studied identification methods through DNA analysis. In the third week of school, they even
participated in a mock investigation, exploring a “crime scene” for clues and testing results. Senior Eileen Nalls thinks that such interactive labs make forensics more enjoyable and interesting than other science courses. “It’s not like you’re just sitting in class and taking notes,” she says, “It’s new and happening.” Nalls was initially drawn to the course because it combined her strong interest in science and her love of forensics shows like “CSI.” However, CSI may not have taught her as much as she thought. “[Students] only have a basic awareness, but they might think they know it all; we get a lot of that from people who watch CSI,” explains Montgomery County Police Department forensic specialist David McGill. McGill notes that real life forensics has nothing to do with the investigations that are misrepresented in hit shows like “NCIS,” “CSI” and “Law and Order.” In reality, forensics is more specialized, with teams of people performing different tasks, as opposed to one person undertaking 20 different jobs on the shows he calls “outrageously ridiculous.” see
FORENSICS page 12
Boys soccer advances to State Finals at UMBC Nov. 20. See theblackandwhite.net for updates.
photo by
LOUIS WOLFF