TROY INVOICE Volume 44, Issue 4

April, 2013Auburn High’s Student Voice Since 1969 253.931.4880 │mwasserman@auburn.wednet.edu

The Auburn High School

Our generation: success or failure?As the end of the 2012-2013

school year looms, Auburn High tries its hardest to prepare its se-niors for their journey into the “real world”. This isn’t a scenario unique to AHS. Students, parents, and teachers all across the nation are be-ginning to feel the heat of America’s pressure to “move forward,” and not just in terms of graduation. Our country has seen colossal change in terms of social, technological, and economic circumstances in the last two centuries. But the question of today is: where do we go from here?

That, my friends, is all in the hands of us young people. Accord-ing to the Pew Research Center, the young people of today, also known as the Millennial generation, in-cludes everyone born after the year 1990 (today’s teens and twenties). So here we are in 2013 (already?), and whether we like it or not, the hopes of the nation are on our shoulders.

Because we Millennials are in our prime, it is very important that we make use of our resources and consider the advice of our elders.

“If we are going to keep up with other countries’ technological ad-vances then we need this generation and future generations to focus on quality over quantity of knowledge,” said AHS language arts teacher, Mrs. Asfour. She was quick to point out that this responsibility doesn’t rest solely on us youth though. “Our education system needs to consider this as well,” she added. Our gener-ation seems to know a little bit about

everything. Indeed, we have Google at our fingertips, but this doesn’t mean all information is good infor-mation. An inch deep and a mile wide will no longer be enough. We have to go more in depth.

We’ve also had the opportunity to live through some pretty enor-mous history, like the first President of color being elected, the econom-ic downturn, and the recent mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. What’s most crucial is if we use these experiences as opportunities to im-prove the condition of our country.

“I hope that you will care more about not letting what happened with our economy happen again and become a more informed gen-eration--and therefore become more political,” said math teacher Mrs. Anderson. “No one wants to run for office, but many of your generation will hopefully step up to the plate and change the way government does business,” she added. The fu-ture is in our hands, Auburn High. Generations that have come before us have paved the way for our free-doms, and we should do the same for those to come. Education is a key factor in how well we will progress.

Mrs. Anderson obviously loves math and thinks it’s important. But she’s quick to point out that learn-ing math is about more than just being able to crunch numbers. “It’s about the learning of math and how that makes your brain that much smarter. The better you are at thinking, the better problem solvers you become. Whether that means you cure cancer or you don’t look

like an idiot putting your son’s or daughter’s bike together in the fu-ture –that’s the point,” she said.

Of course learning does not only take place in school. Opportunities to learn are all around us. Family, friends, peers, tradition, media, pub-lic affairs, art: all can teach us. Lis-ten, observe, create; be opinionated. There is no such thing as “dumb” or “smart”. Intelligence is just a matter of how well you exercise your abil-ity to think for yourself. And while it may seem that teachers are just cramming their own thoughts down our throats, in reality they’re trying to arm us with our own ability to think about things on a deeper level.

“I feel that my job is to teach students how to see the world from multiple perspectives… I want students to consider all points of view before coming to their own, unique and individual

opinion,” Mrs. Asfour expressed.Though there is much po-

tential for our youth to do well, there are also pitfalls.

“I have a very optimistic out-look on the future of America,” says Adam Luk, senior, “but I hope that in the future we will learn to sepa-rate our needs from our wants.” It has become apparent that today’s youth are becoming more and more dependent on materialistic items such phones and shoes and shiny cars. And while we think things like this improve our lives, just as surely they distract us from what is really important. Pop culture has taken a toll on what young people put their energy into. Leann Pele, a junior, stated that, “Everyone flaunts the wrong things like smok-ing, drinking, partying, sex, and getting everything you want. We’re advertising the wrong things.”

STephanie MastermanREPORTER

Courtesy of Katie HenryLeadership students exhibit potential of our generation at We Day in Seattle

Tolo has been a dying tradition for a few years now. Many believe it’s because there’s a lack of good theme ideas. Some think it’s too expensive.

Others don’t know why we have dances in the first place. Could it be that some of the naysay-ers don’t know the his-tory of Tolo and where it came from? Most know that it’s the one dance

where the girl gets to ask the guy, but not many know why that is. Prepare yourself for some knowledge.

In 1937 a popular com-ic strip featured a girl named Sadie Hawkins who was a very unat-tractive young lady. So unattractive, in fact, that no one would marry her. Her father got upset, so he organized a race for all of the eligible bach-elors in the town. At the first shot the men ran as fast as they could. Shortly

after Sadie’s father fired again, at which time his daughter took off run-ning after the men. Her father declared that any man caught by Sadie had to marry her. This fiction-al story captured the pop-ular imagination at the time, and soon schools started having dances called The Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girl

got to “chase down” her choice of boy to accom-pany her to the dance.

How exactly the word tolo entered into the equation isn’t so clear. David Robertson, a scholar from the De-partment of Linguistics

Origin of Tolo based on girl who was soloMonica sanseri

REPORTER

Continued on page 4

News….... ......2Sports.............3

Features.... ..4INDEX

The Seattle versus Sac-ramento showdown is set.

Will the Sonics come back? Or is this just another disap-pointment, with the Kings staying in their hometown, and Seattle left empty hand-ed? And if the Sonics do come back, will they be any good?

“I used to watch the Son-ics, so it would be nice to have them back, because I enjoy watching basketball,” said freshman Cameron Link.

At least basketball will be back in Seattle. The Kings have good players and a lot of young talent. And remember Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who retired after the 2010-2011 season? It’s rumored that he could return and be in the front office for the team.

“It’s really exciting, having an NBA team, and me hav-ing four children, it would be fun to take them to a game,” said PE teacher and bas-ketball coach Mr. Hansen.

As far as players on the Kings,

five out of their thirteen players have either a year or two of ex-perience in the NBA. There’s Isaiah Thom-as, coming out of University of Washing-ton, and Jim-mer Fredette from BYU, both with only one year playing pro-fessional bas-ketball. The oldest player on the team is John Salmons, with ten years of experience.

Of course, not everyone is excited about the pros-pect of the Sonics returning.

“I’m not a fan of basketball, and I find it as a waste of mon-ey,” said junior Jacob Minten.

Despite some peoples’ mis-givings, with all this talent coming, and all the hype about

the Sonics coming back, there is another major thing in-volved with this plan. Where are the Sonics going to play? Key Arena? Yes, technically it will be Key Arena, but it will be a whole new Key Arena.

“I went and watched the trailblazers play once and it was a great experience, watching a home team play

would be even better,” said senior Pett Khongkhangam.

A group led by Chris Han-sen, the founder of private in-vestment partnership Valiant Capital, is the main investor for the project. Hansen grew up in Seattle, and as part of the deal has agreed to rebuild Key Are-na. The total price of the Kings is supposedly $525 million.

Troy InVoice

news APRIL 2013PAGE 2

There has been an uproar from the senior class as rumors have spread that this year’s yearbook won’t have the coveted Senior Su-perlatives. One of the longest traditions in yearbooks is to have a section where mem-bers of the senior class are recognized for the great qualities that they have. The Troy Invoice staff decided to advocate for the up-per classmen and talk to Mr. Kaup, 1st year advisor of AHS’s Invader Yearbook, and lay the rumors to rest. However, Mr. Kaup wasn’t the newbie advisor we were expect-ing to persuade. With fifteen years of ex-perience advising yearbook, a Master’s in Journalism Education, a member of multiple journalism associations, and even co-author-ing a book on student journalism, he’s more than qualified to be the yearbook advisor.

As the yearbook advisor, Kaup is responsi-ble for making sure the yearbook’s content is both legal and ethical. In other schools across the country, district law suits have appeared after students, and parents of students, were

unhappy seeing their child awarded ‘Most Likely to Become Homeless’ or ‘Most Likely to Become an Alcoholic’ in their school annu-al. Being sued for libel, although unlikely, is “not worth the risk” according to Mr. Kaup. The entire district’s yearbook advisors have decided to cut these pages out of yearbooks; Mountain View has never had them, Auburn will join Mountain View in not including them, and Riv=erside will be removing them next year. There is also the concern of being ethical. The yearbook’s job is to include the entire student body, and the senior superla-tives tend to turn into a popularity contest, even to the point of students campaigning for these “Best Of” accolades. The people that tend to win the superlatives are likely already featured elsewhere throughout the book. To give coverage to other students, the senior superlatives have been replaced with a “Student Spotlight” which will give other student’s the chance to represent themselves and the diversity they bring to Auburn High.

Although Kaup and the rest of the staff have sensible motives, and weren’t just try-ing to be mean, many bitter comments have

been made about the replacement of what many feel is the best section in the yearbook.

“We’ve been looking forward to vot-ing for these since freshmen year,” said senior Kathleen Newsom.

“Seniors enjoy choosing who fits best into each category. Not being able to take part in this is a disappoint-ment,” senior Sydney Johnson added.

Although the yearbook staff had good in-tentions, they could have handled this dif-ferently. It is understandable that the year-book staff fears lawsuits, but they could have tweaked the awards that addressed the past problems. Yearbook Staff could have made only positive, fun categories, allowing the seniors to still vote and have that enjoy-able read to look back on, instead of doing away with the whole section. So the rumors of senior superlatives being cut are true.

There is another rumor: this year’s year-book will be exceptional. Only 500 books will be printed, the least amount in decades at Au-burn High. This, in turn, will save the year-book staff approximately $5,000, which could lead to lower yearbook prices in future years.

Seniors sour about yearbook sans superlativesRylee Lewis

REPORTER

TROY INVOICE REPORTING INTERNS

Austin LaneLibby Herrell

Liliana Ocegueda Juana PradoJorge Escutia

Bryan SaldonaNeko Reynon

Cody Sage

EDITORIAL STAFF

Co-Editor ….......…..…................Holly LaneCo-Editor ….............. .…..…..Justina BrownAdvisor..........................Michael Wasserman

REPORTERSStephanie Masterman

Samara ChapmanGabrielle Dozier Monica Sanseri

Rylee Lewis

EDITORIAL POLICYTo maintain a high standard of journalism, the Troy InVoice adheres all AP news writing standards. All members of Troy InVoice staff have agreed to this policy, and it will remain posted in the newsroom throughout the year. The Troy InVoice will strive toward excellence in every issue. It will aim to be a vital part of Auburn High School’s student body, and staff.

Auburn Senior High800 Fourth St. NE, Auburn, WA 98002

Newsroom: 253. 931. 4880 ext. 1309Fax: (253) 931-4701

Sonics return to Seattle a possiblityAustin LaneREPORTER intern

Couresy of nextimpulsesports.comRendering of proposed new stadium

Slam dunk season

After finishing the season 13-7 overall, 12-4 in district play, the Trojan basketball season has come to a close. We finished the season tied with Tahoma for first place in the 4A SPSL league, and had two wins against cross-town rivals, Auburn Riverside.

Now it’s time to reflect. “I think our best game was at Riverside because we fought as a team and over-came adversity after being down 14 to 2 early in the game”, said senior and start-ing point guard Harold Lee.

Lee returned for his “se-nior campaign” after battling through his junior year with injuries. According to his teammates, Lee has the abil-ity to change a game’s tempo and can score in a variety of ways. His floor vision is great, and he can hit from the pe-rimeter. Lee is a multi sport athlete; he had a great football season as well as basketball.

Some fans feel we needed to do a couple things better. “We passed efficiently, and we had good teamwork, but we could work on driving to the rim”, says freshman fan CJ Boyd.

Of the 12 wins in district play, eight of them came by six points or less. So while our boys did lose leads, they also found ways to win. “There were a lot of exciting games. Anytime you’re playing a league game it’s important to come out on the winning end”, said Coach Hansen.

This year was Coach Han-sen’s 11th season as coach of the Auburn Trojans.

“It was a great year, and the kids came with the mindset to improve, they were a competitive group,” said the coach. Coach Han-sen was the state’s all-time leading scorer in basketball from 1992-1996. The Auburn Trojans have had much suc-cess under Coach Hansen.

Fans were happy with how the basket-ball team did this year.

“They did a pretty good job this year, excel-lent effort. It was great to see the fan base, with our student section and band at every game”, said senior Arlo Paton.

The varsity basketball team did great this year, but we can’t forget about JV and freshmen. The JV team had 8 wins and 12 losses, led by Head coach Sam Oliver. The freshmen team had 10 wins and 10 losses, led by Head coach and world studies teacher Abe VanDerPuy.

“I think we’ll do great next year. We have a lot of young talent and even though we’re los-ing key players this year, we’ll still be a pretty good team”, said Paton.

The Trojans ended the sea-son in a loss against Jackson one game before the quar-terfinals by a score of 58-53. We had three wins and two losses in the playoffs.

austin laneREPORTing intern

Troy InVoice

SportsAPRIL 2013 PAGE 3

Baseball captain adjusts to role on teamAuburn’s baseball play-

ers have always been pas-sionate and dedicated to the game of ball. But where are they going to play this year when the baseball fields are torn down to make room for the new school? Matt Seeley, a senior base-ball player and the captain of the team this year, an-swers that question with “Brannon Park.” Brannon Park is located by Cascade Middle School in north Au-burn. Matt says that he is not looking forward to hav-ing to leave his field at Au-burn High because the field at Brannon is not as nice. The infield is bumpy and has many faults. The Tro-jans share the field with the

Green River Community College Gators who plan on bringing in a tarp and fixing up the infield. One of his goals this year was to make first team but sadly during the first game Matt was in-jured. Matt went to catch a ball during the game and right as he went to catch it the ball hit his fingers in just the right spot to break them. Matt still continues to cheer on and coach his teammates from the side.

Matt Seeley is the only re-turning senior coming back this year. Outside of school Matt plays for Damage Inc. His baseball days all started out playing with his broth-er in the front yard. They would play pitcher and catcher and Matt was al-ways the catcher. He would put on his back pack back-

wards as a chest plate, grab his glove, and put on his favorite team’s hat. Then he moved on to Auburn Parks and Recreation but decided to step up his game to Au-burn Little League because he “wanted the cool num-bers on the back and parks and rec. did not have num-bers.” After rec and little league he took the climb on to club and high school ball. On the field Matt was a key player as the short stop. Back in his sophomore year Matt took the spot of four different starting players as the team’s second base-man. This was his favorite year because he enjoyed all

the other players and being around such good players improved his game. In his junior year of playing Matt replaced Jordan Berens as the team’s short stop. After his first game he made no errors and received honor-able mention. Matt has also received the Golden Glove Award which is given for being a superb defense player. Junior Conner Mc-Coy says that “Matt is a very accomplished indi-vidual and is one of the best short stops I’ve had the chance to play with. He is very helpful to the younger players and knows that game very well”.

As senior year ap-proaches Matt says that he is still going to make it his goal to teach the younger kids all the lessons he has learned from the players before him. He also wants to teach them all the old traditions. Matt says that he is in contact with schools all across the USA and wants to play college ball. He would like to go to a two year community col-lege first and start out there.

When asked what his all time favorite baseball team was he said “the Mariner’s! Always has been and al-ways will be. It’s all about having hometown pride.”

Libby HerrellREPORTing intern

Troy InVoice

featuresPAGE 4 APRIL 2013

at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, believes that the etymology of tolo re-sides in the Chinook jargon word “tulu,” meaning “to win.”

But there is more to Tolo than tradition and word ori-gins. The sophomore class is in charge of planning Tolo and all proceeds go to the sophomore classes’ budget. The money is then used as a budget for the next year’s Homecoming. Many students aren’t aware that their attendance is important and that it actually contributes to some-thing. Once students were told

that their Tolo tickets helped out the sophomore class their attitudes towards attend-ing the dance changed. For example junior Maggie Elston said, “I would be more en-ticed to go knowing that it would help the sophomore class!” Other students pro-posed that the ad-vertisement for Tolo is being done

incorrectly, and that if the student body

was aware that Tolo is more

of a char-ity event, the atten-

dance rates would increase. Then there are

other students that think ad-vertisement isn’t the problem, but rather the actual theme itself. Sim-ply asking people

generates a pretty good mix of ideas for themes. Senior Sara Alba pitched the idea of hav-ing a masquerade themed Tolo. Emma Akervold, a freshman, likes the idea of a Super Hero themed dance. And these are just a few of the ideas I was given.

Senior, Sami Balander thinks that if the student body was given the chance to pitch their ideas to the sophomore class, more students would attend the dance. She said, “We would have more fun and save mon-ey because we know what’s in our closet and what isn’t.”

FashionFlashbackBy Monica Sanseri

It’s easy to think that the past was drastically differ-ent than the present. We look at those old photos in our history books and think “We are so much more ‘with it’ than those fools.” Turns out, though, that the past didn’t actually unfold in black and white. Nope, folks from 1850 and 1925 and 1980 lived colorful lives just like us. Times haven’t changed as much as we think they have, especially when it comes to fashion.

What’s old is new again. The bright colors, crazy patters, and strange ward-robe combinations have re-turned. While we used to think these styles were out-dated, today’s youth would beg to differ.

As we walk through the halls at Auburn High School we see these “out-dated styles” becoming the new hot fads. In the picture to the left you see a trendy outfit from 1982; this picture came straight from the news-

paper at Auburn High School in April of 1982. Clearly you can see that high-necked shirts, blazers, and high-wast-ed pants were in style. To your right you can see a picture of a 2012 senior at Auburn High School wearing something similar, with just a little twist, aka “modernized.” The 2013 style is very similar to that of the 1982 style, with just a little more flirt.

But why did the 80’s come back? “The 80’s are timeless. They had a good sense of fashion and we like it!” said Thalia Kirst, a senior at Au-burn High.

Leah Thueringer, also a se-nior, concurs with Kirst. “I think 80’s fashion came back because girls these days get bored really easily with what they wear, and introducing ‘new’ styles and varieties keep them happy,” Thueringer said. “I like the simple ad ditions to style such as floral shirts and colored pants,” she

added. Photo on left taken by Christopher Papritz in the April,1982 issue of the Troy Invoice

Photo on right courtesy of Monica Sanseri

Courtesy of youthcast.orgComic from Li’l Abner cartoon strip, drawn by Al Capp in 1937

Other

names for Tolo:

MORPs Spinsters’ Ball

Vice-Versa Dance Sadie Hawkins Dance

W.P.A. (Women Pay All)TWIRP (The Woman Is Re-

quired to Pay)

Continued from cover....