news 8 14 thesoutherneronline.com15lifestyledining

HENRY W. GRADY HIGH SCHOOL, ATLANTA March 20, 2013 VOLUME LXVI, NUMBER 6

Miles Barreto is a member of a group of freshmen who bike to school each day. For them, biking is more than just a mode of transportation–it’s a lifestyle.

The Grady Gearbox Gangstaz, known as G3, competed in the 2013 FIRST Palmetto Regional competition and received accolades and awards.

Seventeen APS-owned buildings, each valued at millions of dollars, sit unused, creating an eyesore for those in their surrounding communities.

Ponce de Leon dessert hot spot HoneyBubble appeals to Grady students and the Poncey-Highland community alike with bubble tea.

By Troy KleBer

Last May, Grady alum Nally Kinnane sat among her graduat-ing class anxiously anticipating the conclusion of the cere-

mony. Before she could leave, however, Cecily Harsch-Kinnane, her mother and APS board member for Grady’s district, had to formally certify the graduation of her class. Harsch-Kinnane was already crying when she arrived at the podium.

Harsch-Kinnane said her emotions resulted partly because her daughter was graduating but more so because “it’s hard to see a class graduate, always.”

“It’s an unbelievably emotional thing,” Harsch-Kinnane said. “I know it’s supposed to be an exciting thing and a happy thing, but to me it’s a very sad goodbye to a group of people … who are very important to me.”

For the last eight years, Harsch-Kinnane has been serving APS students as the board member for District 3, which contains Grady and Alonzo Crim High School as well as all their feeder schools. Soon, however, it will be time for APS to say goodbye to Harsch-Kinnane since she has announced her intention not to run for a third term. Her last day on the job will be Dec. 31.

After spending two terms of four years each on the board, Harsch-Kinnane sees it as the right time to step down. Dur-ing her tenure, she worked through projects such as the transformation of high schools into small learning com-munities, the dismissals of APS employees after an investi-gation into standardized test erasures, the hiring of a new superintendent, the resolution of conflict between board members, the reinstatement of full accreditation to APS

see HARSCH-KINNANE, page 7

After two terms, board member declines re-election

CHANGES FOLLOWING GUN SCAREBy J.D. CapelouTo anD Quinn MulhollanD

Every morning, a long line of students extends from the entrance of the caf-eteria as students funnel through metal

detectors, and their bags are checked before be-ginning the school day. This process is all part of the modified security procedure at Grady that has been implemented following the two recent school shootings within the district.

Senior Jenny Moody, however, never takes part in this measure when she enters school.

Moody arrives at Grady late every day be-cause she dual enrolls during first period. Since she arrives during a transition phase, Moody merges with the large crowds of students mov-ing to their second-period classes.

“I usually just walk up to the entrance near the courtyard,” Moody said. “I never have to go through the cafeteria or the metal detectors.”

Currently, students such as Moody who arrive late do not go through security checks when entering the school.

At a community meeting at Grady on Feb. 28, APS director of security Marquenta Sands

identified this ability for students to circum-vent the security process as a serious issue since it allows students to enter campus un-monitored, one factor that contributed to the incident on Feb. 27 in which a Grady senior brought a gun onto campus.

Because of the issues highlighted by this inci-dent, Sands and Grady principal Vincent Mur-ray both said policy changes are in the works for Grady. They are not yet certain, however, how exactly the change will occur.

Sands and Murray have identified two major “gaps” in the security procedures that allow students to bypass security: tardy stu-dents and students who, because of the loca-tion of their first-period classes, do not en-ter school through the cafeteria. Sands and Murray both said they are looking into ways to fix these gaps.

‘I WAS TRAINED TO BE A TEACHER’

Currently, teachers perform the morning bag checks and work the metal detectors.

Murray said two weeks before the incident, teachers were “re-trained” with respect to searching students’ bags for weapons and using the metal detectors. Even so, Latin teacher Scott Allen said he does not feel comfortable doing the security checks since the recent training was the first time he was taught how to perform metal-detector duty.

“I was trained to be a teacher; I don’t know anything about being a security guard,” Al-len said. “I wouldn’t feel adequately trained until I did metal-detector duty for a couple of days with an officer there to show me ex-actly what I am supposed to do.”

Junior Marie Godiers does not think teachers should be the ones checking bags.

“There are a lot of duties and qualifica-tions involved in securing our school, and teachers just aren’t trained to do that,” Godi-ers said. “If we are really concerned about security then we should invest in people that actually know what they’re doing.”

see COMMUNITY, page 6

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Food group aids poor Georgians, farmers marketsBy Darriea ClarK

What if you could help local farmers prosper and fight urban poverty at

the same time?That’s exactly what Wholesome Wave

Georgia is all about. Since 2009, Wholesome Wave Georgia has been offering food stamp recipients double the value of their benefits when used at select farmers markets.

Wholesome Wave, a national nonprofit organization, strives to build a connection between local, sustainable agriculture and communities that suffer from poverty. Their goal is “a more vibrant and equitable food system for all people.”

Judith Winfrey and Gina Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene and Holeman and Finch brought this idea to Georgia.

Georgia’s Wholesome Wave is different than the Wholesome Wave programs in other states because in most states, Wholesome Wave is not a statewide campaign. In other states, individ-ual markets chose to partner with Wholesome Wave. Georgia organizers created Wholesome Wave Georgia and formed a network of mar-kets ranging from Rock Spring to Bluffton to Tifton to Savannah.

Wholesome Wave Georgia relies entirely on private funding, beginning with donations from the Ellis Hotel in 2009. They also col-lect donations from individuals, families and through fundraising at events. The funding is then distributed to farmers markets.

When a food stamp card is swiped at the market information booth, the market manag-er or volunteer exchanges the food stamp card swipe for twice the value in wooden tokens. The tokens are used as if they were cash.

In 2012, there were about 115,000 swipes. The average swipe was valued to be $18.50.

see PROGRAM, page 16

STUNNED STUDENTS: Kids walk to class after the shooting. The gun was recovered from the grass area near the practice gym.

Indiana, because I like Zeller.”

Emily Ferris,junior

Editorial Board

Rachel citRin

Sammi Dean

tRoy KlebeR

Diana PoweRS

alex SteaRnS-beRnhaRt

iSabelle taft

Editor-in-Chief: Isabelle TaftManaging Editors: Sammi Dean, Troy KleberAssociate Managing Editor: Diana PowersDesign Editors: Lauren Ogg, Gracie WhiteNews Editors: Olivia Kleinman, Olivia VeiraComment Editors: Rachel Citrin, Alex Stearns-BernhartDouble-truck Editor: Carson Shadwell Lifestyle Editors: Jolie Jones, Hunter RustA+E Editors: Grace Power, Megan Prendergast

Marks, Rebecca Martin, Caroline Morris, Quinn Mulholland, Axel Olson, Allison Rapoport, Ben Searles, Ryan Switzer, Olivia Volkert, Josh Weinstock, Alex WolfeAdvisers: Kate Carter, Dave WinterThe Southerner, a member of GSPA, SIPA, CSPA and NSPA, is a monthly student publication of: Henry W. Grady High School 929 Charles Allen Drive NE,Atlanta, GA 30309

To our readers,

The Southerner welcomes submissions, which may be edited for grammar, inappropriate language and length. Please place submissions in Mr. Winter or Ms. Carter's box in the main office. Subscriptions are also available. For more information, please contact Mr. Winter, Ms. Carter or a member of the staff.

Sports Editors: Kate de Give, Joe LavineWeb Master: Simon McLaneOffice Manager: Gracie WhitePhoto Editor: Ciena LeshleyCartoonist: Will StaplesStaff: Emma Aberle-Grasse, Ryan Bolton, Hanna Brown, J.D. Capelouto, Zac Carter, Darriea Clark, Mary Condolora, Riley Erickson, Declan Farrisee, Zac Garrett, Deborah Harris, Orli Hendler, Archie Kinnane, Eli Mansbach, Ansley

An upbeat paper for a downtown schoolSoutherner Staff 2012-2013

Southernerthe

c o m m e n t2

The incident that occurred on Feb. 27 was one that no one ever thought would happen. The good thing that came out of it, however, was the response of our overly criticized administration. While ru-mors were flying, they responded diligently in an orderly fashion. Not only were they able to assure that all students were safely locked in their classrooms, but they also were able to respond gracefully to the concerns of frantic parents, media and the APD.

Given the circumstances, our administration did the best job they could to calm students and deal with the incident effectively. A lot of parents have come forth criticizing the administration for what they believe is a lack of security. Given the scarce resources and the open architecture of Grady it is almost impossible to eliminate the risk of a student bringing a weapon to school—unless we want to detract from education by implementing an unrealistic security standard.

Grady’s architecture makes it especially hard to secure every en-trance. Besides having two gyms, two theaters and trailers, the main building has a multiplicity of entry points. The ratio of students to administrators is quite high, and it is unreasonable to expect teachers to patrol at every entrance. Furthermore, teachers and administra-tors work during the day to educate students; they cannot continue to monitor every entrance throughout the day. They have other jobs to do. Sure, more security would be nice, but how far are we willing to take security before our school becomes a prison that babysits us instead of educating us.

We appreciate the swift and appropriate responses of Dr. Propst, Dr. Murray, Mr. Howard as well as all the other administrators and teach-ers who kept us safe. They were able to help us feel secure in a tense and scary situation. We know that our safety is your top priority. p

We are in a changing world. Technology has been becoming a more and more essential aspect of our lives. In most situations, many com-plain and question the increasing role that technology plays, but it cer-tainly played a fundemental role in the incident at Grady on Feb. 27.

Within minutes of the accidental gunshot, the media was on the scene actively and for the most part accurately reporting the events that had transpired. This allowed the outside world, especially parents, to find out what was happening inside the school. Many parents were left questioning what was going on because of the automated message they received from APS, but thankfully, the media disseminated more information quickly to calm parents.

Inside the school, technology allowed students to learn about the event as well. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and texting allowed images and information to spread quickly.

Of course, some may argue this allowed many of the rumors to be started and quickly circulate through the student body, but it also al-lowed connections to be made between students in different classes in various parts of the school. And some of this information kept stu-dents calm as they learned more about what happened in the tense hours during homeroom.

If we think back to a time that did not have the technology we cur-rently have, the situation would have been handled in a very different manner. Technology allowed the news, false as well as true, to move from person to person resulting in a timely spread of information. p

uestionf the month

No lives were at risk

What team are you rooting for in March Madness and why?

“

In ‘social media’ res

March 20, 2013

Tennessee. I love Southern accents and

their colors are awesome, and they have a good

defense this year.”

Morgan Jackson,senior

“

Alabama, because they won the BCS Bowl last

year.”

Deranta Benton,freshman

Louisville, because they’re my favorite team, and I like

their coach. He is putting the team in a position

to win.”

Marcus Sims,sophomore

“C O R R E C T I O N S

In the teaser “Shooting at APS Price Middle shocks system, city,” (Feb. 8, page 1) Telvis Douglas’s name was mispelled.

The caption about the thumber (Feb. 8, page 18) incorrectly referred to the throw as a hammer.

In the story “Ross brings Armaggedon to stage in new production,” (Feb. 8, page 16) Dream Girls is only one word. It should have read Dreamgirls.

In the photo credit for the photo illustration going along with the story “Johnson charged in murder of former schoolmate” (Feb. 8, page 9) Allison Rapoport’s name was mispelled.

In the story “Chicken rotisserie dishes out flavor” (Feb. 8, page 14) the correct name for the dish that we referred to as pork pchnitzels is pork schnitzel.

The article “Weave pats down self-esteem” (Feb. 8, page 3) patted me the wrong way. It wasn’t the writing or the content; it was the fact the writer never considered putting the oppos-ing view into her article. Yes, weave costs a fortune, and it could feed a low-income family for a few months but what about how the girl wearing weave feels. I’d say that if someone took the time and money to apply something so “heavy” to their head that they actually enjoy it. Weave is something that boosts self-esteem. It isn’t used to hide some deep mean-ing. People love having the option of long hair one day and short hair the next. It could possibly be one of the best cosmic inventions. Not only does it come in different pat-terns, colors, lengths and styles, but it holds the power to make someone feel beautiful. So why do we value hair so much? It’s because without it, someone somewhere can’t look in the mirror without feeling horrible, can’t walk out of their house feeling confi-dent and powerful. Don’t be so quick to pass judgment on something you don’t understand or something you can’t quite grasp. Take the time to

step into the other side’s shoes.Koya Siebie

junior

I enjoyed the article about the fire drill at the end of last semester “Last-minute drill fires up students,” (Feb. 8, page 5). It said everything that was on my mind regarding the drill. I needed to go inside after school ended, and my last class was in the trailers. I couldn’t just go through the halls because I was not in the build-ing in the first place. It was good to know that I wasn’t the only one who was slightly bothered by the timing of the fire drill.

Sydney Wolfe

freshman

I just wanted to give my opinion about the security changes that were written about last issue, “School shooting stuns nation, inspires APS changes,” (Feb. 8, page 7). The arti-cle talks about an increase in security

precautions; however, the lockdown we all experienced (Feb. 27) was no drill. There was a gun in the school, it was fired, and someone was hurt. This incident came immediately after these new policies were put in place, with the metal detectors turned on and bags being “checked.” Clearly, these policies do not achieve what they aim to. Unless Grady can put a metal detector and security guard at all entrances, the security provided is really only for show. Even in this sce-nario, teachers are checking bags, and I doubt teachers have any training on security measures. All these new poli-cies are doing is making kids late to class and giving people something to try to prove they can get past. I guess the real point is to make parents feel better about safety, but if we are go-ing to see longer lines and more acci-dents like this one, is it really worth it?

Harrison Wilcofreshman

Weave more than just an accessory

Fire drill disrupts student’s last class

Security strategies seem unsuccessful

We want to know what you think! Love an article? Hate one? Find an error? Tell us about it! The South-erner welcomes letters from any and all of our readers. Contact us at www.facebook.com/gradysoutherner.

“

I never thought that I’d be able to say “Yeah, I went mud-ding in my Volkswa-gen Beetle today.” But thanks to Grady, I say it quite often. That’s because we students have our

very own mud bog, right in the parking lot at the corner of Charles Allen and 10th Street. The lot has been through quite a few name changes over the past year: “the lacrosse field,” “the gravel lot,” “the grass lot,” “the dirt lot,” “the mud lot” and now I’m going to go ahead and change its name to “the liquid lot.”

For anyone who is unaware of the may-hem that is parking at Grady, let me give you a synopsis: basically, we have a student lot. It’s nice and cemented with actual, identified parking spaces. Unfortunately, it’s too small for all student drivers to park there. Seniors don’t get priority, and often times, students don’t even have priority when it comes to parking in the student lot. With students and parents filling up the lot, the overflow was moved to a valley that was once a grass lacrosse field on the other side of campus.

This accommodation is less than ideal. Driving through the parking lot is like driv-ing through swampland, but replace the freshwater with mud water. Multiple cars have gotten stuck, and every car that enters the parking lot is splattered violently with red Georgia clay. The lack of clearly marked spaces has proven challenging for some of the student drivers. I’m talking to you, driver of the black two-door sedan with a huge dent in

the passenger side who chooses to block mul-tiple cars into their spaces by parking in the middle of the lot and/or anywhere else that makes it impossible for cars to exit the lot.

But I veer off course. It’s not the abuse to our cars that causes students’ sanity to boil over the edge; it’s the assault on our persons. Our shoes are permanently soaked through, and the bottoms of our jeans are stained brown. Until one admirable student helped to build a plywood bridge over the mud to the entrance, students were climbing over makeshift walkways of street signs, electri-cal box covers, plastic fences, small pieces of scrap wood and whatever else they could find to prevent their feet from being muddy

and wet for the remainder of the day. I appreciate the effort that Grady has put

into providing its students with extra park-ing. They graveled about one fourth of the field, allowing parking for about only one fourth of the students who need to park there. The school has not provided students parking in the dirt lot with a convenient entrance to the school. From the liquid lot, the students have to walk a block around the school to the student parking lot or walk in through the trailers with no security check. I appreciate all of this exertion put forth by Grady, but I’d really appreciate if they would just gravel the entire “liquid lot” and put us out of our muddy misery. p

c o m m e n tMarch 20, 2013 3

By Alex SteArnS-BernhArt

In the last six weeks, I have paddled seven times, and for six of these times, I showed up to the river alone. For four out of those six times, I have managed to find a group of paddlers at the put-in who went down river with me or at the minimum helped me to set shuttle. That is a pretty good record considering it is winter, and most people don’t consider winter the most ideal time to paddle. I have found, however, that through rain, wind, snow or sunshine, you can always count on boaters to be at a river paddling if there is water.

This is just one of the things that makes the paddling community so different from all other communities in the world.

In most situations, paddlers don’t have any ob-jections to someone just tagging along with them down river. If they do turn me down, it is usually for a good reason, so I never take it personally. For example, the only times I have ever been turned down by anyone is when I have attempted to tag along with private groups of paddlers who are in workshops they paid to attend.

The paddling community is more than just a group of folks who will pick me up when I’m hitchhiking, but I have yet to go to a river and not get picked up while hitching to set shuttle. In fact, I am still good friends with a group of guys that picked me up about a year ago. It is a community that has your back on and off of the river. It is such a great feeling to know that while I am going down a rapid on an unfamiliar river, there are people at the end of the rapid waiting with ropes to catch me if I take an unplanned or potentially dangerous swim. The person that throws the rope is not always someone in my group or even someone I have met before.

Keep in mind that most boaters don’t want someone who can offer nothing on the trip or who will be a liability. It is important to give back to the community by being that person on the other end of the rope every once and a while. Believe me, I have been that person on the throwing end of the rope, and it is a great feeling to know that you just saved that person a lot of time and possibly pain by doing the simple deed of tossing them a rope.

There are those who standout in the communi-ty who are known for their friendly personalities and deep knowledge of paddling. These gems are the old grizzled paddlers who have been paddling for a long time and are happy to pass their knowl-edge on to the next generation of the paddling community. As I go down river, they throw little bits of helpful hints at me to help me improve my form or technique.

This is just one of the communities that I have chosen to be a part of, but there are so many out there waiting for people to join. Communities are vital because they build strong bonds. So if you find a community you fit in with, accept it with open arms and dive right in. p

Community made unique by diverse boaters worldwide

Our differences should not divide us

Students’ woes grow as mud expands

If one were to head up 10th Street for two blocks, one would hit Peachtree Street.Considered the “main street” of Atlanta, Peachtree hosted the parade of the 1995 World Series Champion Braves, is the home of the Fox Theater and the corner at 13th is ...

Each and every year, Congress approves a budget for the Department of Defense dic-tating the year’s defense spending. The National Defense Authorization Act sets guide-lines for the year’s planned military action which is then pushed through Congress and ...

Indefinite detention of Americans unconstitutional

EXCLUSIVELY @ theSoutherneronline.comGentrification poses threat to Grady’s diversity

Yes, I took the picture of the gun that was left behind in the Grady High School courtyard last week, minutes after one of my classmates accidentally shot herself and labo-riously limped off to the nurse’s office. Yes, I had the courage to tip-toe down the monkey grass and bend over, within inches of that abominable, life-ruining object that is, ironi-cally, also minuscule and pink.

And, yes, the photo and my story got a lot of attention.But now is the time to forget the photo and forget my name and

focus instead on the transformation that this whole unfortunate inci-dent could inspire -- if we are willing to be inspired.

First of all, I believe that Grady is an amazing school. Its ability to provide valuable real-world experiences, balanced with the opportu-nity for a great education and involvement in countless prestigious extracurricular activities and sports, is unrivaled by most schools.

Over the past month, however, an appalling truth about Grady has become more evident. The interaction between black and white stu-dents is being suffocated by two conditions: fear and misunderstand-ing. In general, we are afraid to venture out of our comfort zones, preferring to stay within the sheltered circle of our own race. Black eighth-grade students coming to Grady typically check the box for one of three small learning communities, that will dictate their classes all four years: Biomedical Science and Engineering, Business and En-trepreneurship or Law and Leadership, while most white eighth-grade students check the box for Communications and Journalism.

In addition to segregated classes, the scene at lunch is divided. For the most part, black students sit in the cafeteria and white students sit in the upper courtyard. Because of this, we learn and grow separately, limiting our perspectives and tunneling our vision of the world.

Interracial relations at Grady are also governed by misunderstand-ings. I became more aware of this in the aftermath of The Southerner’s first issue of 2013. Our lead story concerned former Grady student Antonio Johnson, who was recently charged with murder.

Isabelle Taft, our editor-in-chief who wrote the story on Johnson, spent countless hours uncovering the facts to allow others to better

understand his mistakes; she did not, nor was she attempting to, villainize him. But several black students responded with disgust to our coverage, angered in thinking that The Southerner was out to get Johnson. This accusation is baseless. We were simply reporting facts.

Looking back, however, I believe the staff failed to appreciate the sensitivity of many students have regarding this issue and probably should not have printed six pictures of Johnson, includ-ing four mug shots.

One of the reasons that students misinterpreted our motives is that they know a vast majority of The Southerner staff is white. As a result, black students think that, in regards to the grim circumstances in which that Johnson and many other Grady students live, we are as-tonishingly and shamefully blind. And they are absolutely right.

This instance illustrates the lack of understanding that fuels the disturbing racial divide at Grady. To be clear, this divide is not caused by racial discrimination; it is caused by a drastic socioeconomic dis-parity. While many Grady students live in communities dominated by soccer moms, PTA presidents and book clubs, many others are submerged in neighborhoods of gang activity and crime.

While many students struggle to find where their cleaning ladies moved the waffle maker, others struggle to walk down the street safe-ly. The difference manifested itself on Wednesday in the aftermath of the gun incident. Some students were frightened after learning there was a gun on campus. Some were just going about a normal day.

One thing is clear. We are extremely different. But do our differences have to divide us? Are we not all just humans

on this earth, questing for happiness and for love? And aren’t we all so desperately tired and frustrated with the difficulties of this quest?

So, let’s ask ourselves, do we have to continue hopelessly trekking through the cavernous trenches of misunderstanding, judging, fear and hate? Or can we come together, knocking down those pesky, stubborn walls in our mind that divide us, and change our lives and the lives of the people around us?

Can we make a difference? Can we show the world that we can come together, despite the odds, despite our differences?

Can we join arms and love each other as brothers and sisters?We shall see. Come to me if you want to try. I have ideas. p

CienA leShely

Joe lAvine

Nature with

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When discussing whether Congress should legalize marijuana, the debate always centers on one question: do I personally agree with using cannabis? This question is irrelevant, however, as the real question should be the fol-lowing: do I want the government involved in this aspect of human life?

We are forgetting that government was created only to secure and defend our rights, not play the role of a babysitter or moral arbi-ter. I highly doubt the Founding Fathers, especially the three of them that grew cannabis on their property, created the government to punish us for recreational use of plants. They created the American government to be a safeguard against tyranny, in a land where disagreement does not lead to con-flict and where autonomy rules supreme.

It may very well be unhealthy to breathe in the smoke from plants or other objects, but it is not always illegal. So what is it about cannabis that sets it apart from the plants you can smoke legally?

There are a few factors that set it apart, and each is important in understanding the issue. Cannabis has psychoactive properties; it can cause mild euphoria and change the way the brain processes thoughts. This altering effect can cause paranoia, but it can also en-hance creativity and the ability to empathize with others. Whether the effects are harmful or beneficial, they are relatively trivial com-pared to the more profound harmful effects of alcohol or tobacco.

Only the female cannabis plant produces the tetrahydrocan-nabinol-containing flowers that receive all the attention. The male plant produces a fibrous substance known as hemp, which has no psychoactive properties but has been used for centuries to make paper, rope and food. One acre of hemp can produce as much pa-per as four acres of trees. Switching paper production from trees to hemp would increase efficiency and decrease the reliance on harmful chemicals. Scientists have also discovered how to make fuel and build-ing materials from hemp, which can be harvested up to twice a year instead of waiting decades for a tree to grow. The hemp industry could eliminate deforestation entirely and help provide cheap food, tools and energy to impoverished regions. The foes of marijuana legalization don’t want you to consider the utility of hemp, and they also don’t want you to know of the countless studies done in Western Eu-rope showing how beneficial cannabinoids can be in treating cancer. Cannabinoids are isolated chemicals with no harmful effects, and no psychoactive properties. So why are they not used here? I would argue that it’s because medical research is more privatized than ever before, and cancer treatment, especially minimally effec-tive treatments, provide billions of dollars to the government and the private sector. Marijuana is much more of a threat to the profit margin of pharmaceutical companies than it is to your health.

We have cannabinoid receptors in our brains. Our brain is tuned specifically to ben-efit from chemicals our government has taken away from us. These receptors developed be-cause human breast milk contains derivatives of THC, used to calm the baby and let it know that suckling is the correct thing to do. It is irresponsible for the government to prohibit marijuana use without identifying another plants that provides this benefit. Even if these benefits did not exist, marijuana should still be legal. Do you really want your government, a col-laboration of strangers, to decide what plants you are allowed to cultivate and enjoy? p

Many Grady students support the legalization of marijuana. They support fun times getting high, dope and doobies, the great ganja, passin’ the joint around, 4:20 all day every day. But these students are also supporting the legalization of a hazard-

ous drug with harmful effects that are incredibly understated.Recently, voters in Washington and Colorado, going against

federal law, passed legislation to become the first states to de-criminalize the recreational use of marijuana. These referen-dums have reignited a smoldering debate: should federal legis-

lation be changed to legalize marijuana?Marijuana is a dangerous, mind-altering drug. The same

could also be said about alcohol and tobacco, both of which can be purchased by a person of legal age. Are we really going to benefit by adding a third harmful substance to the mix?

Where there is drug use, there is a direct correlation with higher crime rates but not because drugs are ille-gal. Scientific studies show that drug users not only harm

themselves but also those around them. According to a 2004 survey of inmates in state and federal correctional facilities, 32 percent of state prisoners and 26 percent of federal prisoners said they committed their offense while under the influence of drugs.Supporters of legalization claim users commit crimes to obtain

drugs and that by legalizing marijuana the crime rates would go down. If marijuana were legalized, however, there would still be a black market for users under the age of 18 or 21. Drug traffickers

would also continue to sell heroin, cocaine, PCP and methamphet-amine. Should these be legalized as well?

On balance, the United States has certainly seen no economic bene-fits from alcohol and tobacco. Each year more than 100,000 Americans

die from alcohol-related causes, the third leading cause of death. Sub-stance abuse and the resulting problems cost our country an estimated

$200 billion each year, which is a far higher dollar amount than alcohol taxes collected during the same time frame.

Making marijuana use legal does not mean that its negative effects are any less dangerous. A study at Yale University found that marijua-na causes brain damage. A study published in the American Academy of Neurology scientific journal found that memory, speed of thinking

and other cognitive abilities weaken after use of marijuana over time. Marijuana also has been linked with depression, suicidal thoughts and schizophrenia.

Many studies have linked smoking marijuana to a variety of ill-nesses including lung cancer, chronic bronchi-tis, testicular cancer, bladder cancer and other cancers. Researchers from the French National Consumers’ Institute found that smoking three marijuana joints will cause you to inhale the same amount of toxic chemicals as a whole pack of cigarettes.

Why are we spending time, energy and money attempting to pass laws to legalize a toxic substance with so many unhealthy side effects? Instead of putting our efforts toward finding solutions to the big problems pres-ently facing our nation, we waste our time trying to legalize a substance that leads to self-inflicted brain damage.

Marijuana is not dangerous because it is illegal; it is illegal because it is dangerous. p

c o m m e n t March 20, 20134

by aeron attwooll by Mary claire MorriS

Police usage of taser on adolescent girls unnecessary Two girls on an Inman Mid-

dle School bus were tasered by a policeman on Feb. 8. When I first heard about this incident, I thought it was a lie.

Upon discovering the truth, my emotions quickly changed from surprise to a mix of horror and anger. I could not believe people younger than me could be tasered

near a school property by a policeman—the very person we are supposed to trust to keep us safe.

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the two seventh-grade girls were fighting on the parked bus, and a school resource officer broke up the fight with a taser.

The administration at Inman declined to comment on the situation, saying “The incident is still under review so we can-not discuss it at this time.” They declined to elaborate further.

Now, I understand that the girls were getting into a fight, which could potentially harm other students. Since the altercation took place on a bus, there is even more of a chance someone could get hurt. And I do understand that the role of the police is to keep us safe and protect students. But the police officer certainly fulfilled his role in the wrong way.

At Grady, it isn’t a huge surprise to see a fight happen-ing during lunch, in between classes or after school in the courtyard or at Piedmont Park, but I have never seen the police break up a fight by using any sort of weapon, let alone a taser. If police officers and administration can break up fights without the use of weapons, why on earth did an officer need a taser to break up a fight between middle school students? It doesn’t seem to be necessary in any way.

Tasers are extremely dangerous. Certainly using a de-vice that could potentially kill the two girls should not be

the solution. It is not only ironic but inexcusable that the policeman, in trying to protect the students, could have killed them.

If I was a bystander on the bus, I know that watch-ing someone being tasered would not make me feel safe. Rather, the image of the tasing would haunt me for quite some time. The use of tasers, therefore, probably trauma-tized student bystanders.

As I wasn’t at the scene and many of the details of the event have not yet been released, there may have been events that required the officer to use a taser, but I fun-damentally believe a taser should never be used on young students, especially in an event like a fight that could be stopped without the use of tasers. Even if the school does deem the officer innocent and rule that his actions were justified to protect other students, the potentially cata-strophic effect of the taser make its use on middle school students unacceptable. p

Rachel citRin

Government should not control our pot

Do you think marijuana should be legalized?

legalizing weed too high a price to pay

By Archie KinnAne

When junior Kether Griffin went onto the APS website on Jan. 30, he was surprised to see the ‘Nyan Cat’—a cat head with a poptart body and a rainbow trail that has be-come an Internet sensation.

A hacker whose identity re-mains unknown compromised the APS website on Jan. 20, put-ting the feline Internet image on the front page. The hacker also released a Microsoft Excel docu-ment with 18,444 individuals’ names along with their Infinite Campus usernames and other personal information.

The hacker, under the Twitter handle @1Byt3 or the name ‘Oops. Did I do that?’ updated his 10 fol-lowers of his progress from 11:13 p.m. on Jan. 29 until his last tweet at 3:13 p.m. on Jan. 30.

“Miss me?” the hacker tweeted on Jan. 29. “I’m back b*****s.”

At 6:52 a.m. on Jan. 30, the hacker tweeted “How long can you NYAN?” with a link to the APS website.

APS then quickly shut down the website.

At 7:21, APS’s twitter page, @apsupdate, tweeted “Our district website is down at the moment, so reach out directly to @apsup-date for questions/help/phone#’s etc. #aps.”

“@apsupdate Why is it down? :(,” responded the hacker, “Oops. Did I do that?”

At 8:08 a.m., the hacker put a

link to a site where an Excel doc-ument could be downloaded on his Twitter account.

The document included the In-finite Campus username, email ad-dress, home address, position and time of last log-in to Infinite Cam-pus for many of the 18,000 names.

According to the APS Wiki-pedia page, however, only 3,860 people are currently employed at APS. The identity of the remain-ing 14,000 names is unknown.

Many current and former Grady teachers were included on the list of names. Most of the Grady-affili-ated names, however, did not have accompanying home addresses on the document.

At 1:19 p.m., the hacker

tweeted that Infinite Campus pass-words would be coming soon.

No passwords, however, were released by the hacker.

Because of the security breach of the APS website, all teachers and ad-ministrators were immediately forced to change their usernames and pass-words for Infinite Campus, media specialist Brian Montero said.

“They also dis-abled all website editors f r o m b e i n g able to l o g - i n

because of this,” Montero said. “Now we are waiting for them to reactivate the website log-ins from the web-service.”

In his last tweet, the hacker ad-dressed APS.

“You might wanna meet on Friday to discuss the lack of se-curity,” the hacker tweeted at 3:13 p.m on Jan. 30. “Or maybe

how long you nyaned this morning?” p

n e w sthe Southerner March 20, 2013 5

Anonymous hacker ‘nyans’ APS websiteNews Briefs

The Atlanta City Council voted on March 18 to use tax dollars to cover $200 million of the cost to build a re-tractable roof stadium for the Atlanta Falcons. The vote ensures the project will move forward, with private in-vestors covering the remaining cost of the $1 billion project. The new stadium is expected to be completed in time for the 2017 NFL season.

City council votes to fund new stadium

Mock Trial advances to semifinals at state

The Mock Trial team competed in the State Competition on March 16-17, ending their season in the semifi-nal round against the Middle Georgia Christian Home School Association. Senior Troy Kleber won two out-standing attorney awards and junior Archie Kinnane won three. Seniors Olivia Kleinman and Miller Lansing and junior J.D. Capelouto won out-standing witness awards, and senior Ciena Leshley won two. The team won their region for the fifteenth consecutive year on Feb. 12.

City council may strip Cheshire Bridge of adult clubsBy ZAc cArter

Two miles from Grady, Cheshire Bridge Road plays host to a stretch of neon lights, flashy signs and a number of unconven-tional shops. Along with the late-night at-tractions, Cheshire Bridge houses a wide variety of restaurants, auto shops and retail businesses, making it a truly diverse and unorthodox place. The city of Atlanta’s zoning review board has suggested a new proposal to make Cheshire Bridge Road a more family-friendly area.

In 2005, the zoning review board rezoned this area to allow only the establishment of businesses that followed the board’s rezon-ing standards. This prevented new strip clubs from being opened along Cheshire Bridge Road. Some businesses, however, such as the Dollhouse and Onyx strip clubs, were grandfa-thered in and not uprooted. The new legisla-tion under consideration aims to force all adult businesses out of the area but will also affect other businesses in the same districts. The busi-nesses would have a period of two years to re-coup losses and either to apply for an extension or leave the area completely.

City council member Alex Wan, who de-signed the proposal, said this plan is necessary to follow up on the law passed in 2005.

“The purpose of the proposed legislation is to remove barriers that prevent the realiza-tion of the vision that the community care-

fully and thoughtfully crafted more than a decade ago for the Cheshire Bridge Road corridor,” Wan said. “There has not been any meaningful movement towards seeing that plan come to fruition.”

Some residents near Cheshire Bridge believe the adult businesses give the neighborhood a negative reputation, harming the community.

“That perception then prevents businesses, developments and other uses from moving to the corridor and helping it realize its full poten-tial,” Wan said.

Some of the Cheshire Bridge residents, how-ever, disagree with the proposal.

“The popularity of the clubs attract so many people that without them, most of the restau-

rants would be empty,” said Mitchell Zastrow, a 20-year resident of Cheshire Bridge.

Zastrow believes the adult entertainment businesses do more good than harm for Cheshire Bridge. He thinks they bring in more business and increase the market potential of the area rather than decrease it.

Wan’s ordinances pursue the abolition of the grandfathered businesses by 2015 unless they yield to the 2005 rezoning standard. If they do not comply with this standard, Wan believes the two-year window gives businesses enough time to recover any losses.

Attorney and Grady graduate Alan Begner, who represents Dollhouse, believes the two-year interval is hardly enough time for the

businesses to reimburse themselves for their investments. Because of this, Begner said the businesses will more than likely be forced to close instead of relocate.

“The landlords will not be able to rent their property for even close to as much as now,” Begner said. “Some club workers would be able to work at other adult clubs, but these adult club owners and most workers will find their financial affairs and lives ruined.”

Begner believes the adult entertainment busi-nesses have as much right to stay on Cheshire Bridge as any other business, and Wan’s pro-posal is both unconstitutional and unjust.

“The U.S. and Georgia Constitution[s] prohibit the taking of property by a city without paying for it and using it for a pub-lic purpose,” Begner said. “Adult businesses should be allowed to stay for the same reason any business should. It is illegal and immoral to steal someone’s business and cause them to suffer financial ruin.”

Begner said the adult clubs and businesses that would be hurt by the zoning plan pro-vide jobs for about 800 people and bring neighbors and other visitors to patronize all the other businesses in the area.

Board members chose to defer any de-cisions pertaining to the proposition until early March. During this interlude, the board will meet with councilman Wan to review public concerns. p

YEAH, YOU DID: The hacker updated Twitter as he placed the ‘nyan cat’ on the APS website and released APS employees’ information.

ON(YX) THIN ICE: Atlanta’s zoning review board is evaluating a proposal to get rid of clubs on Cheshire Bridge Road.

Atlanta finalist for Green City Award

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Atlanta was selected as a finalist for a Waste and Recycling News Green City Award, which is presented to cities working to reduce waste and boost recycling efforts. Finalists will be honored at the Green City Awards ceremony on March 21 in Chicago, where winners will be decided.

continued from front page

Both Sands and APS superintendent Erroll Davis, however, said it is normal for teachers to be the ones running the security checks in the morning.

“It is not standard practice to have school resource officers run those [checks]; we want them elsewhere,” Davis said at a press conference directly after the shooting.

In addition, multiple people complained at the Feb. 28 meeting that the bag checks students undergo at the begin-ning of each school day are insufficient. One parent said her two children at Inman and Grady had described the metal detectors as “kind of a joke.”

Another parent expressed concern that the students’ backpacks are not checked thoroughly since they do not go through the metal detectors. Senior Lauren Alford, president of the Student Government Association, emphasized that teachers do thorough-ly check students’ bags as they go through the security process.

At the teacher-training session, a police officer told the teachers to open all of the pockets of the backpack, but “basically just to kind of just feel around for [a weapon],” Allen said.

“The officer who was doing the training said that there wouldn’t be enough time to go through every little nook and cranny of a person’s bag,” Allen said.

Speech and debate teacher Mario Herrera said the teacher-training session lasted about five to 10 minutes.

‘A COMMUNITY PROBLEM’

Another major source of concern for parents is whether the Feb. 27 gun scare was an isolated incident.

Many students refused to comment about whether other stu-dents have brought guns to school in the past, and some, includ-ing juniors Kyle Cobb, Erin Fallen and Jada Luckett, said they have never heard of someone bringing a gun on campus before.

At the community meeting, one parent asked if Grady had ever recovered guns from students in the past.

“The honest answer to that is yes,” Murray responded. “Over the period of time that I’ve been here, there have been two weapons that we’ve recovered, and one was never discharged.”

Herrera said the culture that promotes guns is not spe-cific to Grady.

“It’s a community problem, not just a family or school or in-dividual problem,” Herrera said. “Everyone has to be involved to change or to sway the culture in another direction.”

Elizabeth Rogan, whose daughter is a sophomore at Grady, agrees the “culture of guns” has to be addressed. Ramping up security measures at Grady, she believes, is not going to help.

“I did not believe that this is a metal detector issue,” Ro-gan said. “This is an issue, as [an earlier speaker] just so eloquently stated, about this girl, her family and the world that she lives in.”

SCHOOL OR FORTRESS?

Despite the admitted gaps in Grady’s security, one of the most common refrains from parents at the meeting was that the inci-

dent did not reflect a failure of Grady’s security measures and that the administration does the best it can in securing the school. Multiple people, including parent Anna Foot, said they do not want substantially increased security at Grady.

“Nobody wants [extreme security],” Foot said. “Nobody wants 7-foot, 8-foot fences with barbed wire around them. That’s not an option. But there’s got to be a medium between what we have now, which is the sense that there’s sort of free range going on, and that.”

Jonathan Peterson, another parent, said there would not be a way for Grady to completely guard against every single security breach.

“I have a technology background and know enough about computer security to know that a perfectly secure system is impossible,” Peterson said. “And all efforts to lock things down and make them more secure comes with tradeoffs in cost and ease of use.”

In a press conference after the shooting, Davis echoed these sentiments. He said trying to completely prevent any security breaches would be impossible without making radical changes.

“Our schools were not designed to be fortresses,” Davis said. “They were designed to be places of learning.”

‘THE MAIN INGREDIENT THAT WILL MAKE THE PIE RISE’

Instead of beefing up security and turning Grady into a for-tress, many parents argued incidents like the Feb. 27 gun scare could be prevented in the future by keeping an open line of com-munication between students, parents and administrators.

At the meeting, Sands emphasized students are an essential part of Grady’s security system.

“One of the things we know that we have to do is a better job at educating our students so that they understand that they are an integral part of the safety plan,” Sands said at the Feb. 28 meet-ing. “They are the main ingredient that will make the pie rise.”

APS is now working with the Atlanta Police Department’s Crime Stoppers program, which “provides an anonymous way for people to report incidents and provide information,” Sands said. This tip line is available for the district. Starting Feb. 28, Grady implemented its own anonymous tip program, in which students can leave information in a tip box located in the discipline office.

At the meeting, Grady parent Candice Smith argued parents need to communicate with their children openly and honsetly.

“The right thing for us to do is to address ourselves, to address our children, to talk to them seriously, and say, ‘Look, if you have a problem with a student at school, you don’t bring a gun, you don’t bring a knife, you don’t do anything else. You need to talk to somebody,’” Smith said.

Smith said she moved to the district because she thought Gra-dy would be a good fit for her daughter, who is now a freshman. She hopes other parents will take the responsibility of preventing another incident like the one on Feb. 27.

“I don’t have a fabulous job. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a lawyer. I work at Walmart. I make minimum wage,” Smith said. “But I fought for my daughter to go to a good school, so she could have a good future. Talk to your kids, seriously.” p

By Sammi Dean, Lauren Ogg anD aLLiSOn rapOpOrt

Grady locked down for almost three hours on Feb. 27 after a pink, .380 caliber gun was brought on campus and accidentally set off by a senior student.

Despite the uniqueness of the situation, firearm pres-ence may not be so rare on Grady’s campus.

A Southerner survey of 188 students revealed that 38.8 percent of students have heard of or seen a gun brought to school, other than the incident on Feb. 27.

For Grady parent Candice Smith, the most pressing question is why this incident took place.

“It could have been a lot worse, and I think that the issues leading to her bringing that gun, those are the things that we really need to be having a conversation about,” she said.

The senior who brought the gun did not have a his-tory of disciplinary problems.

“She is not a troublesome kid,” Principal Vincent Murray said at a community security meeting. His state-ment was in response to a question concerning previous disciplinary problems witht he student. “If anything, I would say she is just not focused. … There is nothing wrong with her behavior.”

Junior Alex* does not believe students looking for trou-ble are the only ones who carry weapons on campus.

“Students bring guns to school because it is seen as safety for them,” Alex said. “People are so quick to judge people for having a gun, but [people] have no idea what goes on outside of school.”

The reason why this particular senior brought a gun on campus remains unclear. Junior Brianna*, a friend of the senior, believes the gun was not on campus to be used against other students. She thought the weapon’s presence had no violent purpose at all.

“I think it was more of a ‘Oh look what I got,’” Bri-anna said. “Especially something like that, and it was pink. I overheard a lot of other students saying, ‘Oh, I wish I had that. That would have been a nice thing to have.’ I think it was the color, her wanting to show it off. I don’t think she had other intentions.”

Junior Jada Luckett identified a possible reason why the senior felt the need to carry a weapon. She said the senior was receiving threats after an incident took place at a party a few weeks ago.

“She was being threatened,” Luckett said. “I guess it was a party last week, and there was a shootout or some-thing, and ever since they’ve been threatening her, so she brought a gun I guess to protect herself.”

A Grady student was shot in the leg at this party, and although the senior was present, it is unclear whether she was actually involved in the incident. Brianna said the victim identified a male, not the senior, as the one who shot him.

Following the party, one anonymous post on the se-nior’s ask.fm account read, “Ima Light Yo Shit Up For Shootin My Boy.” Another read, “Lie again, I knw u did. Flks say u did, his ma comen fa u.” A handful of other posts addressed the incident.

According to Brianna, prior to the incident guns had not played a large role in the senior’s life. She said the se-nior was not exposed to them at home.

In light of the incident, many have become more aware of a norm of violence in the Grady and Atlanta community. Grady social worker Uraina Scott was not surprised by the incident.

“It’s a huge student population right smack dab in the middle of the city,” Scott said. “I think that we can try to do our best, but I do think that there are some situ-ations that slip between the cracks because of the large size [of the student population] and where we are.”

For some, the incident also served to emphasize a so-cial gap at Grady.

“I think the way they district the school, you have different ‘hoods,’” Luckett said. People from Kirkwood, you know dif-ferent hoods, they dont get along like at all.”

Scott hopes the actions of law enforcement and the administration will serve to prevent further incidents.

“I do think that it is a huge wakeup call knowing that this is very serious because [students will think] if I [bring a gun to school] then I can potentially go to pris-on. I would hope that it is a deterrent,” she said. p

*At their request, sources were given anonymity

6 March 20, 2013n e w s

COMMUNITY reacts with discussion

Many question incident’s cause, culture of guns

CAMPUS CRISIS: On Feb. 27, a senior brought a small, pink gun to school (lower center) and accidentally shot herself in the leg with it. Immediately after the incident, administrators locked down the school, and the senior now faces criminal charges. Superintendant Erroll Davis held a press conference that afternoon (lower left) and district officials hosted a community meeting the next evening (lower right) to communicate the details of the event and discuss possible security changes. So far, Grady has started more thorough security checks, leading to longer lines in the courtyard for students entering school (top).

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By J.D. Capelouto

Physics teacher Jeff Cramer remembers Matt Westmoreland as a “serious, conscientious and steady” student. There was one additional fac-tor, however, that Cramer said made Westmo-reland stand out even more: his email address, potus36@bellsouth.net.

Cramer explained how it stood for “Presi-dent of the United States in 2036,” which is the first year Westmoreland will be old enough to run for president.

Westmoreland said he has always been inter-ested in politics, and now he has the chance to live his dream of helping the community. The 2006 Grady grad and current Carver Early College history teacher recently announced his candidacy for the APS Board of Education position currently held by Grady parent Cec-ily Harsch-Kinnane, who plans to not run for reelection after this year. The district governs Grady, Crim and all of their feeder schools.

Kristina Weems attended Grady with West-moreland and participated in Teach For Amer-ica with him. She remembers how all of his friends were confident in his abilities to fill a leadership role later in life.

“It wasn’t like this childhood dream, or this far-fetched idea, everybody was like ‘No, Matt … you’re gonna be in a leadership position, you’re gonna be in politics,’” Weems said.

After graduating, Westmoreland attended Princeton University, where he majored in his-tory. While at Princeton, he was the editor of the Daily Princetonian, a student-run newspa-per with a 150-person staff and a half-million-dollar budget. That is when his interest for public education took off, and he got involved in Teach for America.

“I knew after college I wanted to come back to Atlanta, and I knew I wanted to be involved in education, and Teach for America kind of fit that bill perfectly,” Westmoreland said.

Teach for America trains prospective teach-ers and helps them get employed in low-income communities. In 2010, Teach for

America helped Westmoreland land a job as a history teacher at Carver. Westmoreland said he enjoys being a public school teacher.

“Teaching is all sorts of emotions thrown into one,” he said. “It’s so much fun to work with kids every day and to know that it’s your job to try and get them excited about some-thing that they might not be excited about.”

Westmoreland said his time at Grady and Carver is what inspired him to run for the board.

“I started to see that Grady itself had some pretty significant divides within the student population, and I saw those divides extend to other schools around the system and also just all across the city,” Westmoreland said. “I’ve seen that during my time at Carver, too.”

Cramer also believes Westmoreland’s APS experience can help him in his campaign.

“I think Grady is a place where he has seen how a community working together can sup-

port the educational structure,” Cramer said. “It has been better for him to teach [at Carver] in that he understands now, probably a lot bet-ter, what the real needs are of students.”

Westmoreland’s plan to improve the district involves fixing three main issues. The first is-sue Westmoreland wants to improve is the way APS treats its teachers.

“We need to rethink the way that we recruit teachers, we need to rethink the way we train teachers continuously, and we need to look at the way that we keep teachers,” he said.

The next issue is early childhood education. Westmoreland believes the earlier APS students can begin their education, the better.

“Every piece of research suggests that the earlier you can engage children in meaningful learning, the deeper and more solid their foun-dation is for school and later in life,” he said.

The final issue Westmoreland would focus on as a board member is increasing the direct

contact between him and community mem-bers. Westmoreland said that right now, many people feel like their voice is not heard. Any-one who wants his email address can have it, Westmoreland said.

Weems thinks these are three important issues that could make a big difference in the school system.

“[Matt] being the intuitive person that he is, I think those three things are just excellent choices to focus on,” she said. “Those are three things that we most definitely need in the edu-cation system right now.”

Cramer believes if Westmoreland is elected on Nov. 5, his job as a member of the board will be harder than expected. He and Weems both think Westmoreland will need to work hard to find a middle ground with his fellow board members.

“In politics you really have to learn how to give and take, how to compromise, and espe-cially compromise with people you don’t agree with,” Cramer said.

Cramer added that because Westmoreland is so young, he is setting himself up for a lot of criticism. He is curious to see how Westmore-land handles it.

Harsch-Kinnane, who also had to deal with criticism during her terms on the board, feels confident in Westmoreland’s ability to help the district as a board member.

“I admire Matt greatly,” she said. I think he’s a remarkable young man. If he ends up [on the board], I think he’ll do an excellent job.”

Westmoreland has similar feelings about Harsch-Kinnane and stays enthusiastic about running to take her place.

“Cecily has worked really hard, and I know that I will have to work just as hard and harder, but I’m ready for that challenge because the kids in our schools are worth it,” he said. “Making sure they get a quality education is the most important thing that we can be doing as a city, and I am ready to commit whatever time and energy necessary to making that a reality.” p

n e w sMarch 20, 2013 7

Alum, APS teacher begins promising political career

continued from front page

and the redistricting of schools.“It just felt like this was the right thing to do,” Harsch-Kin-

nane said. “I think there are a lot of people that could do a good job [in my position] also, and it just felt like the right time to let someone else do it. It was not because I haven’t liked it. I’ve loved it, even when it was hard.”

Harsch-Kinnane believed her role on the board was as a par-ent, but soon she will no longer have children in APS schools. Her two daughters, Jamison and Nally Kinnane, have already graduated from Grady, and her third child, Archie Kinnane, is a junior. For this reason, too, Harsch-Kinnane said it is a good time to step down.

Yolanda Johnson, who became an APS board member at the same time as Harsch-Kinnane, has also expressed her own inter-ests in not running for reelection.

“As with myself, eight years is a long time, and I think that’s a significant commitment,” Johnson said. “I think that should be recognized as a significant commitment. So it’s not stepping down; it’s just going on with the other parts of your life.”

Harsch-Kinnane is not certain what her job will be once she leaves the board, but Nally Kinnane is confident her mother will remain involved in the school system and community.

Before Harsch-Kinnane joined the board, she was already much involved in APS. At the time, she was, in her own words,

“being a mom in different advocacy roles and parent organiza-tion roles.” Her work in these positions inspired her to run for the school board.

“I am a very strong believer in the public school system,” Harsch-Kinnane said. “It was through my role as advocate for schools that I got the idea about running for school board. I had always been interested in education and educational policy.”

As soon as she joined the board, Harsch-Kinnane realized the job required both a lot of work and a lot of patience.

“The hardest part about being a board member is your respon-sibilities are huge on one hand, but on the other hand, they are very limited,” she said. “There are things that happen at schools; there are things that don’t happen at schools that you may feel one way or another about. It’s not under your responsibilities as a board member to necessarily do anything about that.”

Instead, Harsch-Kinnane said her primary role was to “bring the voice of the public to the administration and make certain that this voice is respected and responded to.” She said this as-pect of the job—working directly with people in APS—was what she enjoyed most about serving on the board.

Harsch-Kinnane said the work, although enjoyable, was also often difficult and stressful. Her daughter noticed this as well.

“There were lots of nights when she would come home at 1 or 2 [a.m.] and still be on the phone with someone discuss-ing a meeting, so it definitely took up a lot of her time,” Nally Kinnane said. “But I think overall, even though it was hard and

stressful on her, I think she enjoyed that part of it. The work paid off. … She was glad to put in the hard work.”

Harsch-Kinnane said her second term was even more stressful and characterized by turmoil. She said it was extremely pain-ful for her when she learned employees had been changing stu-dents’ answers on the Georgia Criterion Reference Competency Test. Additionally, regarding the conflict between board mem-bers leading up to the time of APS’s accreditation probation, Harsch-Kinnane considers the conduct of herself and other board members to blame.

Furthermore, one decision has bothered Harsch-Kinnane since the very beginning of her term of service. During her first board meeting, Harsch-Kinnane allowed an abandoned build-ing located next to the Eighth Street parking lot, which Grady owned, to be sold to the neighborhood for residence.

“Now, I realize that we should have saved it for when Grady got overcrowded,” she said. “I did have an issue. I regretted it a lot of times. I don’t know if we could have ever done anything with it. It wasn’t necessarily a mistake, but I regret it.”

But despite these difficulties, Carver teacher Matt Westmore-land, who is running for Harsch-Kinnane’s position next year, appreciates her work during these last several years.

“I think she has worked incredibly hard to represent the kids in our district during some very tumultuous years,” Westmore-land said. “I appreciate all the work that she’s done and all the effort that she’s put in.” p

August 2002: Westmoreland enters Grady as a freshman.

January 2006: Harsch-Kinnane joins APS board.

May 2006: Westmoreland graduates from Grady and prepares for Princeton.

January 2011: SACS puts APS high schools on probation.

August 2010: Westmoreland starts teaching at Carver.

HARSCH-KINNANE survives ‘tumultuous years’

November 2009: Harsch-Kinnane is re-elected to the APS board.

December 2013: Harsch-Kinnane to step down as board member.

ON BOARD TO TEACH: Matt Westmoreland laughs with his students at Carver Early College while teaching them history. Westmoreland would have to leave his teaching position if he is elected as board member this fall.

February 2013: Westmoreland announces his candidacy.

Westmoreland’s experiences since Grady compared to Harsch-Kinnane’s time on board

August 2004: Harsch-Kinnane’s oldest daughter starts at Grady.

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ILLUSTRATION BY J.D. CAPELOUTO AND TROY KLEBER

By Ryan Bolton

The Georgia Governor’s Honors Program (GHP) is scheduled to be reviewed by the Georgia General Assem-bly within the next month to decide whether or not the program will lose funding for the 2014 fiscal year. The program is on the cut list once again, after struggling to receive sufficient funding from the state since the state’s budget crisis in 2009.

These cuts could lead to the re-duction of the number of GHP fi-nalists for the upcoming 2013 sum-mer by up to 110 students.

Designed for rising juniors and seniors, GHP allows students to specialize in a specific subject area and learn from a different perspective than they normally would during the school year. Over the past three years, the program has taken a number of cuts, including a reduction from six weeks to four weeks in 2011. GHP, which is fully funded by the Georgia General Assembly, has been provided to students at no cost since its founding in 1963 by then Gov. Carl Sanders. It began as an eight-week summer program at Wesleyan College in Macon and expanded to include a site at North Georgia College in

1976. North Georgia College co-hosted GHP with Valdosta State University from 1980 to 1983 before Valdosta State became the only campus used for GHP in 1984, where the program is still held today.

The main threat to the program comes directly from the state, which is combating a budget shortfall from the past year caused by overspending and a sluggish economy.

“The state has been going through budget changes year after year, and it’s normal for states to undergo a shortfall every now and then,” Jenni-fer Hartley, a parent of two students who formerly attended the Gover-nor’s Honors Program, said.

GHP, which currently accepts 690 finalists each year, could be changing to only accept 580 finalists in the near future. This proposal has caused a tre-

mendous amount of backlash from many around the state.Junior Adam Schatz, who attended GHP as a Math ma-

jor in 2012, thinks the cuts are a bad idea.“It’s a shame that the cuts could keep some of my friends

and other kids from the great experience I had this sum-mer,” Schatz said.

Other students have similar opinions.

“It is just ridiculous to me that cutting funding from a program like GHP is even considered,” Myles Willis, a GHP candidate for Communicative Arts from North Atlanta High school, said. “Out of all the things to cut, it seems like a program for successful high school students would not even be considered.”

GHP coordinators around the state were notified that no progress could be made in selecting finalists until after a deal had been agreed on in the state General Assembly. All of the current semifinalists were told they would know whether they were accepted by March 8, but that has now changed to an indefinite date due to the budget issue. Shaketha Blanken-ship, the GHP coordinator for Grady, sent out emails to each of the semifinalists from Grady to alert them of the situation, despite the uncertainty behind the delay.

As the General Assembly continues to convene on the task of solving the fiscal budget issues, some parents feel as if the integrity of the program is threatened simply be-cause of the controversy around the program’s future.

“I feel that the program may not be seen as a true oppor-tunity to students if this continues,” Hartley said. “These students work really hard to get to the point where they are, and if 110 students are cut from the program, they are cut off from an amazing opportunity that will prepare them for the future.” p

8 March 20, 2013n e w s

Budget cuts impact state-funded summer program

Empty buildings crowd district, distress communityBy Sammi Dean anD olivia Klenman

Scattered throughout the APS district are 17 aban-doned properties each valued in the millions of dollars, 11 of which have been unused for more than a decade.

The buildings have declined for various reasons. One of these is the David T. Howard School, which has not been used as a school since 1976. According to the website of the Education Committee of Fourth Ward Neighbors, Inc., the school closed due to declining enrollment. Mat-thew Garbett, the President of Fourth Ward Neighbors, Inc., said the school was partially used as administrative Atlanta Police Department offices for a time, and currently the prop-erty houses a daycare in an un-attatched trailer on the side of the building.

The building, however, has been sitting unoccupied for about eight years now.

The unused campus has a less than desirable effect on the community surrounding it, he said.

“It has an economic impact; it has a safety impact; it has a liveliness and vitality impact,” Garbett said.

In addition to being unsafe, the empty building under-mines the recent programs to revitalize the Old Fourth Ward community.

“It’s just kind of slightly disheartening,” Garbett said. “That school would have been the public building in the heart of the neighborhood, and it would have connected a lot of the families around there, and so [it is dishearten-ing] just to have a big vacant building sitting like that right in the middle of the neighbor-hood, surrounded by really ugly fencing with rusty barbed wire on the top.”

Although there are plans to get rid of the unattractive

fencing, plans for the build-ing to be once again used as a school died last spring as the APS redistricting shifted away from the idea of locating a sixth-grade Inman academy on the campus.

“[The David T. How-ard School] is unique in the schools of Atlanta,” Garbett said. “Maynard Jackson went there and Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] went there; it's in the heart of the historic Fourth Ward. … It really is a golden opportunity to reopen as a school that doesn't just teach history but is history. It’s a golden opportunity regardless, and I just hope that we figure out a way to use it instead of letting it just sit there, falling apart slowly.”

APS executive director of facilities services Alvah Hardy said a repurposing committee is working on the disposition of the vacant buildings. One way APS puts the millions of dollars of extraneous real estate to work is by leasing buildings to charter schools or indepen-dent education groups. Allen Mueller works to ensure these facilities are accessible to out-side groups. Officially titled the director of innovation at APS, he works to merge unique or unconventional education options with available APS re-sources and programs.

“Some charter schools have been located in the past in buildings that were not built as schools,” Mueller said. “That is a possibility, although we really want to make sure that the buildings we locate them in are safe and designed for education.”

According to Georgia law, if a school district has unused facilities, approved charter schools in the district have the first right to the building with the school board’s consent, Mueller said.

There are 11 former APS school buildings that are cur-

rently housing charter schools. Additionally, the Atlanta In-ternational School leases an APS building in North Fulton and Metro Atlanta Respite & Developmental Services, Inc., a group that treats children’s developmental issues, occupies a building in West Atlanta. The Atlanta Fire Department and Police Department are also leasees.

State codes on charter schools tend to leave out the crucial ele-ment of facility funding and op-tions, Mueller said.

"Basically there is no funding mechanism in the state or locally to be able to provide for the fa-cility for a [charter] school, and facilities are highly expensive," Mueller said. "A facility for a school could be anywhere from $30 million, $20 million to $50 million or more."

According to the 2011 Facil-ities Assessment of APS Vacant Buildings, of 14 former APS schools currently unoccupied and up for leasing, the nec-cesary renovation costs range from approximately $1 million to more than $16 million to be suitable for educational use. Mueller said these approxima-tions are already out of date because unoccupied buildings fall apart quickly.

“I don’t think that we would locate a school in a building that needed that much repair work because there is no mon-ey to pay for it,” Mueller said. “That’s the simple truth.”

Some unused APS buildings are on the list to potentially receive funding from SPLOST IV, a one-cent sales tax to raise money for local school improvements. Mueller, how-ever, said there are no plans to spend SPLOST dollars on these facilities as of yet.

“Anytime you have an empty building, there is a negative im-pact,” Garbett said. “It just makes it look like we're an abandoned neighborhood. You want some-thing like that to be vibrant.” p

SCHOOL’S OUT: English Ave. Primary (top) is located in the neighborhood of English Avenue. Closed in 1976, it sits on Kennedy Street. Walden Middle (middle) lies in the Old Fourth Ward. A pile of trash guards the back entrance. David T. Howard (bottom), also in Old Fourth Ward, appears to have several broken windows, boarded up doors and “No Trespassing” signs.

“ It is just ridiculous to me that cutting funding from a program like GHP is even considered.”

Myles WillisGHP nominee

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By DeBorah harris

In her 1895 Official Guide to Atlanta, Margaret Severance ex-tolled the merits of Boulevard. “Its height, width and number of magnificent homes, with their spacious lawns, assure every observer a boulevard that any city may point to with pride,” Severance wrote.

Today, the Boulevard Corridor, the stretch of intown Atlanta running from Ponce De Leon Avenue to DeKalb Avenue, is no-torious for its abundance of drug dealing, street crimes and the largest concentration of Section 8 housing in the Southeast.

Atlanta City Council member Kwanza Hall wants to change that image. In January, Hall announced he would extend the Year of Boulevard initiative into 2013. YOB be-gan a year ago as a revitalization and cleanup project for Boulevard, focusing especially on the Village of Bedford Pine apartments, the Section 8 apartments located by the Atlanta Medical Center.

“Everything around the Boulevard Corridor is under development,” Hall said. “It’s the lowest point in the community.”

Hall’s agenda calls for economic de-velopment, education reform, crime pre-vention, job training and summer youth programs. Beginning with a community cleanup, the program gathered momen-tum with the opening of an Atlanta Police District mini-precinct and processing unit, a $50,000 grant from the Atlanta Hawks to renovate basketball courts in Central Park and a $1 mil-lion grant from the Atlanta Regional Commission to improve the streetscape. A partnership with TEDxAtlanta committed $100,000 to summer programs and to a branding campaign, “YoBoulevard!”

“[Year of Boulevard] is about cleaning up the [Old] Fourth Ward, keeping drugs out of the community, keeping kids in school and giving them something to do in the summer,” said freshman Raekwon Moffet, who has lived in Bedford Pine since kindergarten. His face is one of several residents’ images hanging on banners along Boulevard as part of the campaign. Moffet took part in the first Operation P.E.A.C.E. (Positive Education Always Creates Elevation) summer camp for teen entrepreneurs last summer.

The 2013 extension of the Year of Boulevard—nicknamed “Mo’Boulevard” by Hall’s office—expands on last year’s goals by adding public safety initiatives and summer camps for the approximately 700 youths living in the community. Hall hopes to launch new partnerships for seniors, new preservation efforts and new job-training programs.

Year of Boulevard’s ultimate goal is to increase resident in-come, which currently averages $3,000 annually, according to Hall. Over time, Hall hopes the area will have a diversity of housing and a combination of mixed and high-income units. Continental Wingate Properties Management, which manages the Village of Bedford Pines, plans on building new apartments, which will include both Section 8 and other units.

Revitalization will not be easy for an area that has been in dis-repair for 30 years. In the 1960s, much of the land surrounding

Boulevard was razed for mas-sive urban renewal projects carried out by the city but re-mained underdeveloped until the 1980s. Wingate arrived in the late 1970s and early 1980s, renovating “boarded-up and shut-down” build-ings and converting them into Section 8 housing, said

regional Wingate manager Gene Lockard. Wingate has spent up to $300,000 annually over the past five years to control the crack epidemic which has debilitated the community.

“Atlanta has been good at building housing,” Hall said, “but not good at building people.”

Boulevard is literally the spine of the Old Fourth Ward neigh-borhood, a North-South connector from Grant Park and Cabbagetown to Virginia-Highland and Morningside. In recent years, the Old Fourth Ward has experienced a wave of revitalization and gentrification.

“[The Old Fourth Ward] went from a community kind of teetering on the edge of exploding into something great, into a neighborhood exploding,” said Matthew Garbett, president of Fourth Ward Neighbors, Inc. “The BeltLine has been a tremen-dous catalyst, putting millions [of dollars] along our stretch.”

The developments have shifted demographics. According

to the Atlanta Bureau of Planning, the Old Fourth Ward used to be one of the densest residential neighborhoods in Atlanta, with a population exceeding 22,000 in 1960. Be-tween 1960 and 1970, the population plummeted to just over 6,000. By 2025, and possibly before, the population is expected to surpass its 1960 levels.

“[The Old Fourth Ward] has attracted a lot of young peo-ple—graduates from Spelman, Morehouse, Georgia Tech and Emory—who wouldn’t have relocated five years ago,” said Kit Sutherland, president of the Fourth Ward Alliance. Sutherland herself moved into the neighborhood 11 years ago, because she “knew things were changing.”

Before there was the Ponce City Market or the BeltLine, however, small nonprofits struggled to keep the community afloat. Raekwan’s grandmother, Edna Moffet, has worked to avert Bedford Pine’s decline. As the community was inun-dated with drugs, Moffet asked the management to market some apartments to local college students.

“Moving college students into the low-income community showed residents ways that they could improve their lives,” Moffet said. “[The college students] provided a positiveness that had not been seen before.”

Moffet, along with 33 college students, founded a homework club in the community. The program blossomed into the after-school and summer program Operation P.E.A.C.E. In 2001, Mike Johnson paid a visit, donating computers so that parents could earn their general education diplomas, or could take com-puter and workforce development classes. But in 2005, a fire devastated the program, destroying everything except one bus.

Operation P.E.A.C.E found a temporary shelter in Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church until 2012, when Wingate helped move the nonprofit back onto Boulevard. Last summer, 40 boys and girls participated in the teen entrepreneurial program.

Operation P.E.A.C.E plans to increase enrollment in this year’s summer program. Moffet is hoping for a field trip to Vir-ginia this year. Much of the trip will be a heritage tour, where participants will walk the trail slaves walked when first entering the country, tour a local college, and, finally, go to the ocean.

“Many of the kids have never seen the ocean [in per-son],” Moffet said. “For them to see the ocean, and where their forefathers were brought in—it adds dimension to the story we’re trying to tell them.” p

9March 20, 2013 n e w sSeeking to steal ATM, thieves ram car into tavern wall

Extended ‘YOBoulevard’ seeks to end years of blight

By isaBelle TafT

Elizabeth Landers, a waitress at the West Midtown Corner Tavern, walked into work the morning of Feb. 5 expecting a normal day. Conditions inside the restaurant, however, were anything but normal.

“I was like ‘Wow, it’s really bright in here and kind of cold,’” Landers said. “Then I walked up the stairs [to the main floor of the restaurant] and saw half the front of the store missing.”

At approximately 6:45 a.m., three men drove a stolen dark sedan into the side of the Corner Tavern facing Huff Street, about three miles from Grady. The men were ap-parently attempting to break into an ATM located just inside.

The West Midtown location is one of four Corner Taverns owned by Mike Rabb, father of sophomore Max Rabb. Despite significant damage to the building, the restaurant remains open as usual, but Mike Rabb said business at the West Midtown location has suffered

“Business is down about 20 percent,” Rabb said. “It doesn’t make your patrons feel safe either, when there’s this kind of activity going on. There’s a lot of people that will go somewhere else.”

Immediately after the accident happened, Mike Rabb’s brother Frank Rabb and friend Marty Perkins went to the Corner Tavern to help him clean up. They boarded up the dam-aged wall of the restaurant with plywood and spray-painted it with a bit of dark humor: “Corner Tavern open. Please use side door. Drive thru closed today.”

Mike Rabb said he is waiting for the insur-ance company and landlord to provide an esti-mate of repair costs. The thieves, who had to move several 200-pound planters to maneuver their car onto the patio, were completely unsuc-cessful at accessing the ATM, despite ramming the car into the building at least three times.

“An ATM is the worst thing in the world to steal,” Rabb said. “They have dye packs all in them, so once you get in all the mon-ey’s marked.”

Landers has worked at the Tavern for two months. She said she and her colleagues have adapted well to the circumstances. While some potential customers may have been dissuaded by the plywood sign, others have continued to patronize the Tavern and ask questions about the involuntary remodeling.

“Everybody wants to know what happened. We used to have a door there,” Landers said. “Kind of like, ‘So, you got a haircut?’”

Landers said customers have expressed their sympathy for the staff and management.

“It was a bad thing that happened to good people,” Landers said. “It’s not like we had a blood drive because of it, but people are of course supportive.”

Max Rabb, who works at the Edgewood Corner Tavern, said he was startled when he learned on the morning of Feb. 5 that a car had slammed into one of his father’s restaurants. The timing of the incident, immediately before the Rabbs were to leave town for an annual ski trip, caused additional stress.

“My first thought was really that I was scared that we weren’t going to go on our ski trip,” Max Rabb said. “We had this huge dis-cussion about how my dad was going to fix it. I was just hopeful that it was going to be fixed quickly and that it didn’t really harm our future in the business.”

Ultimately, the Rabbs were able to go on their ski trip, and Max Rabb said he is confident of the Corner Tavern’s ability to bounce back and rebuild the damaged area of the restaurant. He said his father built the Corner Tavern establishment from scratch,

starting with the East Point Corner Tavern in 2002, located near the airport.

Mike Rabb had previously owned two other restaurants that failed to get off the ground financially. Before that, he was a musician who worked as a waiter because the job offered a flexible schedule so Rabb could tour.

“My family brought ourselves up from the ground with the business, basically,” Max Rabb said.

Mike Rabb next opened a Corner Tavern in Little Five Points in 2005, followed by another in the Old Fourth Ward on Edgewood Avenue in 2007 and finally the West Midtown location in 2011. The car accident at West Midtown is just one more bump in the road of a long career in the restaurant business.

“Basically, you can’t stop Mike Rabb,” Max said. p

SORRY, NO DRIVE THRU: Thieves drove a stolen car into a wall of the West Midtown Corner Tavern in an attempt to break into the restaurant’s ATM. Mike Rabb, Corner Tavern owner and father of sophomore Max Rabb, spray-painted a plywood sign to let customers know that the restaurant remained open despite the involuntary remodeling.

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“ Atlanta has been good at builing housing, but not good at build-ing people.”

Kwanza Hall Atlanta City Council member

out ofthree2 Georgia students graduate high school compared to the national average of three out of four.

10 11

Though he doesn’t like the term “dropout,” under the Georgia De-partment of Education’s rules, lead singer of the Atlanta-based band the Black Lips, Cole Al-exander is considered one. Featured on NPR’s “Faces of Metro Atlanta Dropout Rate,” the for-mer Dunwoody High School student relives his dropout experience: “In an act of rage I started trashing the school. I just start-ed walking into classrooms with my cigarette, taunting the teachers.” Alexander was asked to leave high school following the Columbine massacre, after being labelled a “subculture danger.” Following the tragedy, several dozen students across the nation were suspended or asked to leave high school in a similar manner. Alexander eventually got his GED (“which was easy”) and is currently working on a new album. The Black Lips just completed a tour of the Middle East. p

Cole Alexander

Georgia’s dropout rate recalculated, DOE attempts to make curriculum more relevant to students

“The decision to drop out wasn’t exactly mine,” Devon Hamil-ton said. After being expelled from Grady in 2012 for attendance issues, Hamilton de-cided not to continue his education else-where. But he wasn’t concerned.

“High school just wasn’t my place,” he said. Hamilton’s “place” was Golden Ink, the tattoo shop near Downtown he owned and operated. “I had my own business at 18,” Hamilton said. “I was following my dream.” Though he had the passion and talent, Hamilton’s lack of business knowledge hurt his shop. When Golden Ink closed, Ham-ilton was forced to recognize that in order to pursue his dreams, he needed help. “When I come back to Grady to see my teachers,” he said, “they know I’m fine.” Hamilton is currently a licensed tax-preparer with his father’s busi-ness, Golden Financial. p

Some students need more individual atten-tion that Grady cannot accommodate. When Natasha Shellhouse was 13, she was sent to a boarding school for two years. “I was in a eight to nine student class,” she said. “Along with that the classes were not co-ed which I felt made a huge dif-ference in my ability to focus and pay atten-tion.” Shellhouse wasn’t ready for the large, co-ed classes at Grady and her grades began to drop. “School should have been my outlet but it became a piece of stress,” she said. She left in her 10th grade year and now lives in Louisville, KY. Though she’s struggled to find a job and just received “a fourteen hundred dollar hospital bill for having pneu-monia,” she maintains a positive outlook. “I know that if I try hard enough and apply myself I can get exactly where I want to go!” p

After becoming pregnant in the spring of her junior year, Powell could have joined the 30 percent of the total dropout population that cited pregnancy as their reason for leaving high school. But in-stead, Powell contin-ued to attend Grady after having her son, Malakhi, in April of 2010. In the months following her son’s birth, she had her EOCT’s administered at home and wrote a column for The Southerner on the ex-periences of being a young mother. When asked about the possibility of dropping out, Powell said, “The thought never crossed my mind. Not even once.” Powell instead became part of the 49 percent of teen mothers who earn a high school di-ploma. She is currently taking classes at Georgia State and will soon celebrate her son’s third birthday. p

Tywanda Powell

Natasha Shellhouse

Devon Hamilton

By Grace Power

“I was honestly tired of everything,” former Grady student Morgan Rutledge said concerning her withdrawal from school. “Most of my good friends left the school anyways, so it just got really old and boring for me.”

After making the decision to drop out, Rutledge joined the one million students—a quarter of the total high school stu-dent population—who drop out of high school annually in the United States.

The graduation rate at Grady released in the 2011 Annual Yearly Progress Report was 88.5 percent. This calculation took into account only the number of students receiving a diploma divided by the size of the senior class at the start of the year. Students who leave school before their senior year are not ac-counted for in this calculation.

In 2012 APS began a transfer to a new, federally mandated graduation rate calculation. According to the state DOE, this new graduation rate will take the number of students who earned a regular high school diploma by the end of the school year and divide that by the number of first-time ninth graders in the fall four years prior, plus students who transfer in, minus students who transfer out, emigrate or die during that time.

This change caused the Georgia graduation rate to drop from 80.9 percent to 67.4 percent. Grady’s 2012 graduation rate has not been calculated at this time.

The old calculation is the only one applied to the breakdown of minority students in the AYP report. According to the re-port, out of the 236 African-American seniors at Grady, 85.6 percent graduated at the end of the year and out of the 76 Cau-casian seniors, 96.1 percent graduated at the end of the year.

Statistics for other races were not provided, although they col-lectively make up 5.5 percent of the 2010-2011 senior class.

DOE spokesperson Matt Cardoza said one reason for the decrease from the 80.9 percent figure to the 67.4 percent figure is the new graduation calculation’s consideration of how long it takes a student to earn a diploma.

The new graduation rate counts students who take longer than four years to graduate in the denominator of the frac-tion, thus never counting them as graduates. This caused much of the dip in the graduation rate because of the high number of students in Georgia taking five years or more to earn a di-ploma, he said.

Before this new mandate Georgia had possessed a graduation rate higher than its Southern neighbors. This new calculation, however, places Georgia almost 10 percentage points behind states such as Alabama and Mississippi and just above New York and Nevada.

School LifeAccording to a report released in 2009 by America’s Prom-

ise Alliance, “The high school dropout crisis in the United States claims more than one million students each year, costing individuals who drop out potential earnings and the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, lower economic activity and increased social services.”

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia schools superintendent John Barge said, “Students drop out of high school because it bores them and doesn’t

seem relevant to the jobs they want.”The Georgia Department of Education will begin a pro-

gram next school year in which each student in Georgia will enter into a career pathway as a freshman that will guide them through high school, Cardoza said. Similar to Grady’s SLCs, students will begin their pathway in their freshman year and continue until they are seniors. The career pathways, however, will offer more options than Grady’s four SLCs.

These pathways would follow the National Career Clusters model set out by the National Association of State Direc-tors of Career Technical Education Consortium already be-ing used in schools around Georgia and the United States. The model includes 16 independent clusters, and each of the clusters would contain about10 distinct careers for students to choose from in their freshman year. There will be one ad-ditional cluster added to address the energy sector, which is growing in Georgia.

“Once you get through the core classes in freshman and sophomore years, you will have opportunities for apprentice-ships and internships,” Cardoza said. “Let’s say you want to be a teacher, what we’re really going to work towards is [to] place a student in a classroom with another teacher and [so they can see] ‘Do I really like working with kids; Do I want to teach?’ Even if they find out what they don’t want to do, it may save lots of time, energy and money.”

This new program is a direct initiative to control the drop-out situation.

“Local systems have the bigger play in actually educating students, but the main responsibility is to make education relevant, especially in high schools, so students can make a

connection between what they are doing in class and in the future,” Cardoza said. “The point of pathways is to make school relevant.”

Home LifeStudents dropout due to boredom, but also problems at home

such as evictions or parenthood, said Neil Shorthouse, president and state director of Communities in Schools Georgia.

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Preg-nancy, 30 percent of teenage girls who dropped out cited par-enthood as a reason for their dropping out of high school. Girls, however, are not the only ones at risk for dropping out after this kind of life-changing event.

“Boys who are young fathers drop out at almost the same rate as pregnant girls,” Shorthouse said. Communities in Schools Georgia works with students dealing with issues such as these, referred to as the “noncognitive forces” that lead students to dropout.

“[Communities in Schools Georgia] considers] there are two forces to make a person successful in life: the instructional side … then there is another side: their family, their income, if they get involved in drugs, their friends. In order for these kids to be successes, we can’t ignore these noncognitive forces,” Shorthouse said. Communities in Schools works with schools around the United States to deter students from dropping out once they are deemed to be “at risk.”

“We have kids who aren’t even sleeping on beds, kids whose household is in total chaos.…well that is going to decrease

one’s ability to focus in schools,” Shorthouse said. Commu-nities in Schools Georgia has staff members in hundreds of Georgia schools and is always looking to expand, Shorthouse said. CIS also engages many other organizations in its effort to lower the dropout rate.

“[CIS] get as many other organizations involved as possible. For example, in middle school we would like all students to be involved in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or something like that,” Shorthouse said.

CIS works to keep students’ home lives on track with their school lives. This can include assistance at school or at home with issues with friends or parents. On Feb.18, a member of the Athens CIS staff prevented an eviction of one of their at-risk students.

“Education takes a less important role in one’s life when you are wondering where to live,” Shorthouse said. “We put stu-dents into some very positive, life-building stuff.”

There are not CIS employees stationed at any APS schools. They are, however, looking to expand their spread throughout schools in Georgia.

Dropout FactoriesAccording to a Johns Hopkins study published in 2007, 12

percent of schools in the United States are “Dropout Facto-ries.” This term, coined by Johns Hopkins University research-er Robert Balfanz, applies to any school that retains 60 percent or fewer of the students who began at that school as freshmen.

According to the Associated Press, 38.87 percent of schools

in Georgia were considered “dropout factories” in 2006. In APS, schools labeled as dropout factories include Carver High, South Atlanta, Therrell and Washington high schools, based upon their retention rates from freshman to senior year. Al-though the graduation rate is not a direct complement of the dropout rate, the two are closely related. Belfanz was cited in an Associated Press article stating that “While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out.”

According to the U.S. Department of Education website, “these dropout factories are unacceptable and devastate the communities in which they exist.” The Obama Administra-tion, which passed the Blueprint for Reform of the Elemen-tary and Secondary Education Act in 2010 and incorporated funding for education in the 2013 budget request, is working toward a goal of a lower dropout rate and a lower rate of drop-out factories.

On the RiseNationally, the graduation rate is improving. According to

the report “Building a Grad Nation,” high school graduation rates are improving across the nation, with Georgia as one of the leaders in improvement between 2002 and 2009. In addi-tion, initiatives such as the one put forth by CIS and the state DOE are attempting to lower this number further.

“The main responsibility [for schools] is to make educa-tion relevant, especially in high school so students can make a connection between what they are doing in class and in the future,” Cardoza said. p

The Dropout Dilemma: Causes and Solutions

“Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates and more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated.”

- Fight Crime: Invest in Kids

“The median income was for a high school dropout and for a person with at least a high school diploma or its equivalent.”

- The U.S. Department of Education

$25,000$43,000APS

Fifty-two percent of

students graduate.

48this ranked

in the country for graduation rates.

Georgia

“Georgia is expected to see a 7.2 percent increase in

high school enrollment compared to the national

average of 1.6 percent.”

-Atlanta Magazine

These include Washington (55 percent), Therrell (48 percent), South Atlanta (44 percent) and Carver (43 percent) based on statistics from the 2010-2011 school year.

Dropout Factories

Schools in which fewer than 60 percent of students graduate are considered...

“The percentage of students at public high schools who graduate on time has reached its highest level in nearly 40 years.”

- The Washington PostThe Exception:

Profiles by Ryan Switzer

out ofthree2 Georgia students graduate high school compared to the national average of three out of four.

10 11

Though he doesn’t like the term “dropout,” under the Georgia De-partment of Education’s rules, lead singer of the Atlanta-based band the Black Lips, Cole Al-exander is considered one. Featured on NPR’s “Faces of Metro Atlanta Dropout Rate,” the for-mer Dunwoody High School student relives his dropout experience: “In an act of rage I started trashing the school. I just start-ed walking into classrooms with my cigarette, taunting the teachers.” Alexander was asked to leave high school following the Columbine massacre, after being labelled a “subculture danger.” Following the tragedy, several dozen students across the nation were suspended or asked to leave high school in a similar manner. Alexander eventually got his GED (“which was easy”) and is currently working on a new album. The Black Lips just completed a tour of the Middle East. p

Cole Alexander

Georgia’s dropout rate recalculated, DOE attempts to make curriculum more relevant to students

“The decision to drop out wasn’t exactly mine,” Devon Hamil-ton said. After being expelled from Grady in 2012 for attendance issues, Hamilton de-cided not to continue his education else-where. But he wasn’t concerned.

“High school just wasn’t my place,” he said. Hamilton’s “place” was Golden Ink, the tattoo shop near Downtown he owned and operated. “I had my own business at 18,” Hamilton said. “I was following my dream.” Though he had the passion and talent, Hamilton’s lack of business knowledge hurt his shop. When Golden Ink closed, Ham-ilton was forced to recognize that in order to pursue his dreams, he needed help. “When I come back to Grady to see my teachers,” he said, “they know I’m fine.” Hamilton is currently a licensed tax-preparer with his father’s busi-ness, Golden Financial. p

Some students need more individual atten-tion that Grady cannot accommodate. When Natasha Shellhouse was 13, she was sent to a boarding school for two years. “I was in a eight to nine student class,” she said. “Along with that the classes were not co-ed which I felt made a huge dif-ference in my ability to focus and pay atten-tion.” Shellhouse wasn’t ready for the large, co-ed classes at Grady and her grades began to drop. “School should have been my outlet but it became a piece of stress,” she said. She left in her 10th grade year and now lives in Louisville, KY. Though she’s struggled to find a job and just received “a fourteen hundred dollar hospital bill for having pneu-monia,” she maintains a positive outlook. “I know that if I try hard enough and apply myself I can get exactly where I want to go!” p

After becoming pregnant in the spring of her junior year, Powell could have joined the 30 percent of the total dropout population that cited pregnancy as their reason for leaving high school. But in-stead, Powell contin-ued to attend Grady after having her son, Malakhi, in April of 2010. In the months following her son’s birth, she had her EOCT’s administered at home and wrote a column for The Southerner on the ex-periences of being a young mother. When asked about the possibility of dropping out, Powell said, “The thought never crossed my mind. Not even once.” Powell instead became part of the 49 percent of teen mothers who earn a high school di-ploma. She is currently taking classes at Georgia State and will soon celebrate her son’s third birthday. p

Tywanda Powell

Natasha Shellhouse

Devon Hamilton

By Grace Power

“I was honestly tired of everything,” former Grady student Morgan Rutledge said concerning her withdrawal from school. “Most of my good friends left the school anyways, so it just got really old and boring for me.”

After making the decision to drop out, Rutledge joined the one million students—a quarter of the total high school stu-dent population—who drop out of high school annually in the United States.

The graduation rate at Grady released in the 2011 Annual Yearly Progress Report was 88.5 percent. This calculation took into account only the number of students receiving a diploma divided by the size of the senior class at the start of the year. Students who leave school before their senior year are not ac-counted for in this calculation.

In 2012 APS began a transfer to a new, federally mandated graduation rate calculation. According to the state DOE, this new graduation rate will take the number of students who earned a regular high school diploma by the end of the school year and divide that by the number of first-time ninth graders in the fall four years prior, plus students who transfer in, minus students who transfer out, emigrate or die during that time.

This change caused the Georgia graduation rate to drop from 80.9 percent to 67.4 percent. Grady’s 2012 graduation rate has not been calculated at this time.

The old calculation is the only one applied to the breakdown of minority students in the AYP report. According to the re-port, out of the 236 African-American seniors at Grady, 85.6 percent graduated at the end of the year and out of the 76 Cau-casian seniors, 96.1 percent graduated at the end of the year.

Statistics for other races were not provided, although they col-lectively make up 5.5 percent of the 2010-2011 senior class.

DOE spokesperson Matt Cardoza said one reason for the decrease from the 80.9 percent figure to the 67.4 percent figure is the new graduation calculation’s consideration of how long it takes a student to earn a diploma.

The new graduation rate counts students who take longer than four years to graduate in the denominator of the frac-tion, thus never counting them as graduates. This caused much of the dip in the graduation rate because of the high number of students in Georgia taking five years or more to earn a di-ploma, he said.

Before this new mandate Georgia had possessed a graduation rate higher than its Southern neighbors. This new calculation, however, places Georgia almost 10 percentage points behind states such as Alabama and Mississippi and just above New York and Nevada.

School LifeAccording to a report released in 2009 by America’s Prom-

ise Alliance, “The high school dropout crisis in the United States claims more than one million students each year, costing individuals who drop out potential earnings and the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue, lower economic activity and increased social services.”

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia schools superintendent John Barge said, “Students drop out of high school because it bores them and doesn’t

seem relevant to the jobs they want.”The Georgia Department of Education will begin a pro-

gram next school year in which each student in Georgia will enter into a career pathway as a freshman that will guide them through high school, Cardoza said. Similar to Grady’s SLCs, students will begin their pathway in their freshman year and continue until they are seniors. The career pathways, however, will offer more options than Grady’s four SLCs.

These pathways would follow the National Career Clusters model set out by the National Association of State Direc-tors of Career Technical Education Consortium already be-ing used in schools around Georgia and the United States. The model includes 16 independent clusters, and each of the clusters would contain about10 distinct careers for students to choose from in their freshman year. There will be one ad-ditional cluster added to address the energy sector, which is growing in Georgia.

“Once you get through the core classes in freshman and sophomore years, you will have opportunities for apprentice-ships and internships,” Cardoza said. “Let’s say you want to be a teacher, what we’re really going to work towards is [to] place a student in a classroom with another teacher and [so they can see] ‘Do I really like working with kids; Do I want to teach?’ Even if they find out what they don’t want to do, it may save lots of time, energy and money.”

This new program is a direct initiative to control the drop-out situation.

“Local systems have the bigger play in actually educating students, but the main responsibility is to make education relevant, especially in high schools, so students can make a

connection between what they are doing in class and in the future,” Cardoza said. “The point of pathways is to make school relevant.”

Home LifeStudents dropout due to boredom, but also problems at home

such as evictions or parenthood, said Neil Shorthouse, president and state director of Communities in Schools Georgia.

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Preg-nancy, 30 percent of teenage girls who dropped out cited par-enthood as a reason for their dropping out of high school. Girls, however, are not the only ones at risk for dropping out after this kind of life-changing event.

“Boys who are young fathers drop out at almost the same rate as pregnant girls,” Shorthouse said. Communities in Schools Georgia works with students dealing with issues such as these, referred to as the “noncognitive forces” that lead students to dropout.

“[Communities in Schools Georgia] considers] there are two forces to make a person successful in life: the instructional side … then there is another side: their family, their income, if they get involved in drugs, their friends. In order for these kids to be successes, we can’t ignore these noncognitive forces,” Shorthouse said. Communities in Schools works with schools around the United States to deter students from dropping out once they are deemed to be “at risk.”

“We have kids who aren’t even sleeping on beds, kids whose household is in total chaos.…well that is going to decrease

one’s ability to focus in schools,” Shorthouse said. Commu-nities in Schools Georgia has staff members in hundreds of Georgia schools and is always looking to expand, Shorthouse said. CIS also engages many other organizations in its effort to lower the dropout rate.

“[CIS] get as many other organizations involved as possible. For example, in middle school we would like all students to be involved in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or something like that,” Shorthouse said.

CIS works to keep students’ home lives on track with their school lives. This can include assistance at school or at home with issues with friends or parents. On Feb.18, a member of the Athens CIS staff prevented an eviction of one of their at-risk students.

“Education takes a less important role in one’s life when you are wondering where to live,” Shorthouse said. “We put stu-dents into some very positive, life-building stuff.”

There are not CIS employees stationed at any APS schools. They are, however, looking to expand their spread throughout schools in Georgia.

Dropout FactoriesAccording to a Johns Hopkins study published in 2007, 12

percent of schools in the United States are “Dropout Facto-ries.” This term, coined by Johns Hopkins University research-er Robert Balfanz, applies to any school that retains 60 percent or fewer of the students who began at that school as freshmen.

According to the Associated Press, 38.87 percent of schools

in Georgia were considered “dropout factories” in 2006. In APS, schools labeled as dropout factories include Carver High, South Atlanta, Therrell and Washington high schools, based upon their retention rates from freshman to senior year. Al-though the graduation rate is not a direct complement of the dropout rate, the two are closely related. Belfanz was cited in an Associated Press article stating that “While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out.”

According to the U.S. Department of Education website, “these dropout factories are unacceptable and devastate the communities in which they exist.” The Obama Administra-tion, which passed the Blueprint for Reform of the Elemen-tary and Secondary Education Act in 2010 and incorporated funding for education in the 2013 budget request, is working toward a goal of a lower dropout rate and a lower rate of drop-out factories.

On the RiseNationally, the graduation rate is improving. According to

the report “Building a Grad Nation,” high school graduation rates are improving across the nation, with Georgia as one of the leaders in improvement between 2002 and 2009. In addi-tion, initiatives such as the one put forth by CIS and the state DOE are attempting to lower this number further.

“The main responsibility [for schools] is to make educa-tion relevant, especially in high school so students can make a connection between what they are doing in class and in the future,” Cardoza said. p

The Dropout Dilemma: Causes and Solutions

“Dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested than high school graduates and more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated.”

- Fight Crime: Invest in Kids

“The median income was for a high school dropout and for a person with at least a high school diploma or its equivalent.”

- The U.S. Department of Education

$25,000$43,000APS

Fifty-two percent of

students graduate.

48this ranked

in the country for graduation rates.

Georgia

“Georgia is expected to see a 7.2 percent increase in

high school enrollment compared to the national

average of 1.6 percent.”

-Atlanta Magazine

These include Washington (55 percent), Therrell (48 percent), South Atlanta (44 percent) and Carver (43 percent) based on statistics from the 2010-2011 school year.

Dropout Factories

Schools in which fewer than 60 percent of students graduate are considered...

“The percentage of students at public high schools who graduate on time has reached its highest level in nearly 40 years.”

- The Washington PostThe Exception:

Profiles by Ryan Switzer

By Caroline Morris

Grady’s spring musical performance of Any-thing Goes, the oldest mainstage musical ever performed in the school’s theater, will be live on the Grady stage March 21-23.

“It promises to be something that’s unlike anything that we’ve done at Grady before, I can guarantee you that,” said history teacher Lee Pope, director of the musical.

Auditions for the musical were held in De-cember and attracted many of Grady’s thespi-ans. Among them were a few students new to the theater scene.

“There were a lot of people,” sophomore Hannah Martin said. “[Pope] really adver-tised the auditions, and we had more than enough once casting was over.”

Because the musical has many dance numbers, the first auditions focused pri-marily on dance.

“There were auditions for dancers who wanted to just dance, and we chose from that,” Pope said. “The dancers that didn’t make it had the opportunity to audition in the second round, which was singing, cho-rus and principles.”

The second round was standard for an audi-tion: a combination of acting and singing.

“I auditioned because I get so much joy out of theater, that is, collaborating with others, sharing an experience with an audience, and letting go of myself,” junior Eliza Renner said.

Martin said auditions were intense, but ev-eryone who auditioned was cast.

Anything Goes takes place in the 1930s on the S.S. American sailing from New York to London. Hope Harcourt (Renner) is a debu-tante sailing with her mother, Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt (senior Lucy Bradley), and her fian-cée, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (sophomore Carter Guensler). Elisha Whitney (freshman James Winer) is a businessman traveling to England to make a business deal. Billy Crocker (junior Axel Olson), his business assistant, receives an extra ticket from Moonface (junior Ryan Swit-zer), public enemy number 13, and his friend Erma (junior Saharah Jimenez), and boards the ship in hope of winning Hope Harcourt’s

heart. Billy helps Moonface and Erma hide, and Reno (senior Miller Lansing), a nightclub singer, helps Billy win Hope.

“The main thing we need to work on is act-ing in the present moment on stage,” Renner said. “Yes, this is a bit of a fluffy [comedic] musical with hokey jokes and overblown dra-ma, but the fact is that everyone needs to feel the ocean air on their face, or hear the jazz from the ship’s bar. It’s not about pretending. It’s [about] being.”

The cast learned how to act as if they’re from another era, and also how to tap dance.

“My favorite part is the tap dancing because it’s challenging and fun,” Winer said. “It’s been pretty difficult just to get the steps down, but then once you get it, it comes easier.”

“We offer a class called triple threat; this is a show that offers triple threat,” Pope said.

Rehearsals for the show take place in Grady’s theater after school. According to Winer, re-hearsals vary between dance and tap rehearsals and acting rehearsals. During earlier rehears-als the cast focused primarily on blocking the scenes, but now, since they have become famil-iar with their lines, whole scenes and acts are run during rehearsals.

“To make a good show, and I mean a pro-fessional, high-quality show, a busy rehearsal schedule is a necessity,” Renner said.

In addition to afterschool rehearsals, the cast often practices on weekends. “We have rehears-al most Sundays but are also beginning to have them on Saturday as well,” Kathryn Claffey said. Claffey is a former professional dancer for the Joffrey Ballet in New York, who has worked with Pope to choreograph the show. “These last two-to-four hours depending on what needs to get done/cleaned up/run through.”

Claffey worked previously on the show, Footloose, with Pope for the youth at First Presbyterian Church.

“When he asked if I could help with Anything Goes, I was more than happy to do so,” Claffey said.

The triumvirate of singing, dancing and act-ing has proved enjoyable for some.

“I like dancing, and I’ve never actually

been in a musical before, singing, acting and dancing,” Martin said.

Because of the cast’s success in tap, Pope has decided to incorporate it into his cur-riculum and future shows.

“The tap dancing has been amazing, I’m re-ally shocked,” Pope said. “So next year we’re going to add that as a component to triple-threat class. We’re going to actually have kids learn how to tap so that we can do a bigger tap dance musical next time.”

Not only has the acting cast been working hard on the musical, but the tech crew has been working behind the scenes. Art teacher John Brandhorst said there are about 80 students working on set, lighting and sound. Some members of the crew, including the stage man-ager, the student tech director and the prop master, are considered members of the cast.

“Making a large set like this is a very major task in terms of carpentry, engineering, prob-lem solving, safety issues, timing, cost and per-formance integration,” Brandhorst said.

Because of the many scenes in this show, the tech crew has had to build pieces that are double-sided so they can serve more than one purpose. There is a piece that is also two stories,

a challenge in set construction that “poses spe-cial problems,” according to Brandhorst.

“This particular set is difficult due to its curves and multifunction pieces,” Brandhorst said. “Large parts of the set have to move and fit in a variety of different ways.”

Despite difficulty, the crew found a way to make the different components work together.

“We are intending for the set changes to be a part of the visible choreography of the perfor-mance,” Brandhorst said.

Anything Goes was written and set in 1934. The time period in which the story takes place influences both the acting and the scenery. Brandhorst explained that the set is based in Art Deco design “which was all the rage during the time of the story.”

“So we need to research all the elements of the set just like the actors have to research and rehearse their roles,” Brandhorst said. “Noth-ing can be accidental.”

As opening night for the musical gets closer and closer, the cast is working hard to perfect its performance.

“My goal for the show is to set the standard for future shows, that we only get bigger and better every time we do a show,” Pope said. p

March 20, 201312

Anything Goes promises to display true triple threats

Foreign student steals show in Atlanta drama sceneBy orli Hendler

A white-faced, bloody doctor shoved a soccer player down onto the wooden table that served as his operating table. The soccer player’s face contorted in pain as the doctor twisted his injured knee back and forth. Senior Felipe Casanova, in his soccer uniform, laid back on the table as the doctor, played by Josh Ortega, called for toxic gas.

When the lights went down, the audience seated around Grady’s Black Box theater applauded. This was one of seven short plays written, directed and performed by Grady students over the span of three days. The writers began the pro-cess Wednesday, Feb. 20 after they received pictures of actors in a cos-tume with a prop. During the next day and a half, the directors chose a play to direct, and the actors saw their scripts for the first time. After rehearsing Thursday and Friday af-ternoons, actors performed the play Friday night, Feb. 22—hence the name Three-Day Plays.

“I really like the concept of it. I’ve never seen something like that before, so when I heard about it I was like ‘Yeah, I should do that,’” Casanova said.

Casanova was born in Switzerland, but moved to Brazil as a baby. At 9 years old, he moved back to Switzer-land, and attended a French school. For the first semester of this school year, Casanova lived with a family in Iowa, but he said it was too boring there so he moved in with the Ga-lonsky family in Atlanta. Casanova’s host brother, Phillip Galonsky, goes to Paideia. Casanova said he didn’t know why he was staying with a Pai-deia family and not a Grady family, but the host family chose him, not the other way around.

English is Casanova’s third lan-guage–after Portuguese and French–but he said language was not too much of a barrier for him, though it did pose minor obstacles.

“There is sometimes something that I don’t know what it means, or some words that I have problem saying it,” Casanova said. “Like, the word unsuccessful, I had a problem with it during the rehearsals at first, but then I got it.”

Although this was his Grady de-but, Casanova has been acting since junior high school in school plays as

well as after-school drama classes. As a foreign exchange student in At-lanta, Casanova actively searched for bigger acting challenges.

He uses a website called love2act.com where he posted his own profile for potential directors to see. Direc-tors and writers also post on the web-site to announce auditions for plays, musicals, short films and even some commercials, though Casanova said he mostly looks at short films. Some of the posts even offer payment.

“Maybe [the offer of payment] makes me more excited, but it doesn’t

affect my decisions,” Casanova said. “I do acting because I love it.”

Casanova reads through the de-scriptions of characters, and finds ones that match his description: 17-year-old caucasian boy. When he finds one that interests him, he emails the directors. He said he always tells the directors he is a foreign-exchange student. It only posed a problem once.

“I saw one that was a main char-acter that would fit me, but he has a young brother, so I couldn’t play him because my young brother wouldn’t have the same accent that I have,” Casanova said.

Instead, he auditioned for the lead’s best friend character and was chosen for that part in the short film.

Although Casanova is attending Grady this year, he said his Swiss school doesn’t acknowledge this year of school. When he returns to Switzerland, he will still have to go to school for two more years in or-der to finish high school. After that, he wants to return to the United States to attend college in Southern California. His dream is to one day be a movie director.

“Movies are my passion and I re-ally like being part of it,” he said. p

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PLAYING THE PART: Exchange student Felipe Casanova lays on a table acting out the injured soccer player in his Three-Day Plays scene.

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DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY: Juniors Eliza Renner and Axel Olson rehearse “Delovely” with director Lee Pope in the Grady theater. During this scene, Hope Harcourt (Renner), a wealthy debutante, and Billy Crocker (Olson) meet in secret.

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By Olivia Kleinman

For years, math teacher Jeremy Green’s work could always be found at Grady, currently in his C323 classroom. But since Dec. 17, Green’s creative ventures have attracted a nationwide audience on iTunes.

Beyond the halls of Grady, Green is a freelance music pro-ducer. During his 10 to 11 years of music production experi-ence, Green said he produced songs and sold them to differ-ent artists and producers but never worked directly with a celebrity, until recently.

Kenya Moore, Miss America of 1993 and a current star of Real Housewives of Atlanta, called Green on Dec. 9 to ask for his help in producing her first single. Green said a friend of his gave Moore his contact information.

“She wrote a song and needed music to it,” Green said. “She sung it to me on the phone. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and she said it had to be ready by Tuesday, so I went home and tried to put something together.”

Green said all he needs to create the soundtrack is his computer with the programs “Protools” and “Reason” and a two-foot long keyboard, which attaches to the computer through a USB drive. He also has a recording booth in his home, complete with a microphone and a reflection board to block out excess sound.

“I played the keyboard and kept singing the song in my head,” he said. “I got together the chorus in the computer, then on another interface put together the drums, and it kept getting better and better. I got the voices down, then the key-board to find something that worked.”

By that Monday, Green had created 10 different musical tracks, which he sent to Moore to choose her favorite.

“She wanted a pop beat, like a club sound,” he said. “[On the different tracks] I used different instruments and different sounds. My brain was going in different directions. I had to put every idea down.”

Wednesday, Moore went to Green’s house to record her new song.

“It was funny,” Green said. “She brought her little dog in, and the dog was jumping around and making noise.”

Instead of blocking out all the noise Moore’s dog made, how-ever, Green incorporated it into the song. The jingling of her dog’s collar can be heard in the background of the track.

The song, named “Gone with the Wind Fabulous,” was cre-ated in just four days. Green said this was the fastest he has ever produced a song.

“I was surprised by the reaction,” he said. “This was the first time I had a direct link to a song. I got popular on Twitter, and I got a lot of likes and dislikes on YouTube, so that’s pretty cool.”

Emmanuel Cook, a vocal arranger, songwriter and music pro-ducer who has worked with several national recording artists, works with Green every Thursday and Friday at Faith Christian

Center in Smyrna, Ga. Both play the piano in the church’s six-piece band for an audience of more than 5,000 members. Cook also has worked with Green outside of the church with national recording artist B. David Stevens.

“I’ve shared some very great experiences with Jeremy,” Cook said. “He’s a great guy to work with, which is why opportunities are flooding him.”

Green said his interest in producing music began when he was 18 because he wanted to do film scoring.

“I play music. I like music, and on the radio music is either really bad or really good or in between, and I felt like I could do it, too,” Green said.

Green has never worked with a company; he has taught him-

self the ropes of the producing industry. “I figured it out on my own, but I read magazines and ask

for help,” he said. “It’s mostly by trial and error. I haven’t taken classes for it, but I want to.”

Green plans to go to school at the Atlanta Institute of Music beginning in July and continue through the APS school year, earn a certification and gain connections through his classes and certification. Although Green does not think it will be too dif-ficult to balance his work as a teacher and student, he said time management will be his biggest concern.

“[Green’s music production work is] great quality,” Cook said. “There are a lot of music producers here in the Atlanta area. What sets him apart is the quality that he presents.” p

Math teacher produces song for Real Housewife star

March 20, 2013 13

Frida and Diego show draws crowd, paints love storyFeb. 14 is con-

sidered by most to be a day of love and passion. It is fitting then, that the largest collection of works ever compiled from perhaps the most no-table couple in the art

world, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, opened to the public at the High Museum of Art on Valentine’s Day. Talented, provocative and dis-tinctive, Kahlo and Rivera were and remain highly recognizable artists as individuals and as a pair. Therefore, it was not surprising to see a congregation of thousands eager to enter the museum when I arrived for a first glimpse at the exhibit on opening night.

Women flounced around the atrium in traditional Mexican dresses and unibrows, honoring Kahlo’s fondness for her heritage and iconic facial hair. Crowds pushed to-ward the elevators that would take them to the exhibition. There was an air of intense anticipation uncommon for a museum. The elevators took me up and opened to reveal four simple portraits, two of Kahlo and two of Rivera, establishing the tone of identity as well as the unity of the exhibit. People poured in, adding to the flood of viewers already filling most of the gallery. Some

donned headphones for self-guided tours; others stood pensively in front of paintings; still others chatted animatedly in the midst of the action.

I was slightly starstruck by the paintings. Seeing the trademark vivid colors and almost boneless human renderings of these artists was like seeing a famous actor walking down the

street. I had seen them virtually before, but never face to face. It was exciting and unset-tling. By the time I reached the more iconic surrealist pieces by Kahlo, I could tell others felt the same way. I could sense everyone’s urge to touch the surface of the paintings, to lean in close enough to see the brush strokes. Protec-tive glass prevented us from doing either.

Quotes, replicas and artifacts were scattered around the exhibit and allowed patrons to al-most enter the artists’ lives. Kahlo’s back brace worn after her almost fatal bus crash lay in a case, painted with symbols of the communist and socialist parties. Both Kahlo and Rivera expressed their intense political beliefs in their paintings. In addition, a replica of the bed in which Kahlo spent time healing after the ac-cident was open for people to lay on. It was strange to imagine Kahlo, unable to move, using a mirror rigged above her mattress to paint many of her self portraits. The exhibit included pictures of Rivera’s frescas enlarged to huge sizes and plastered to the wall. Alongside each painting hung a pair of descriptions, one in English, one in Spanish.

All aspects of the exhibition seemed in-tended to immerse people in the political and personal landscape of these artists who found a tumultuous love with each other. Their re-lationship, although tainted with frequent in-fidelity, appears strong from the modern per-spective. Many of their paintings are of each other. They shared a deep pride in Mexico, similar revolutionary beliefs and a passion for the well-being of the common man.

The show will be open until May 12. High school students can view all the ex-hibits for free during the museum’s Teen Night on March 23. p

CarsOn shadwell

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KAHLO ME CRAZY: Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato con Monos (Self-Portrait with Monkeys), 1943, oil on canvas (left). Frida Kahlo, Retrato de Diego Rivera (Portrait of Diego Rivera), 1937, oil on masonite (right).

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Students bubble with excitement over local tea bar By Gracie White

Grady senior Devina Jones-Vargas did not know what she was getting into when she took a sip of her classmate’s drink. Think-ing she was simply having a taste of milk and honey tea, Vargas was shocked when she tasted the “gooey” texture of the coffee jellies that filled the bottom of the cup.

Unbeknownst to Vargas, Prendergast had recently visited Honey Bubble, a tea bar located at 798 Ponce de Leon Ave. to the right of Java Jive. But this was no ordi-nary tea restaurant. Honey Bubble special-izes in a type of tea called “bubble tea.” Bubble tea originated in Taiwan in the 1980s. It consists of a tea mixture, some-times infused with milk and additional flavors, and an optional variety of chewy tapioca “pearls” that sink to the bottom of the drink. Senior Hannah Meachin said the straws are large enough to suck both the tea and pearls at once, creating an “interesting” and “cool” sensation.

Despite several obstacles concerning the

tea bar’s opening, including construction is-sues and city planning delays, owner Doug Hines said the location was perfect for the restaurant he wanted to establish.

“[Ponce has] busy traffic and the area is diverse,” Hines said. “We were able to find a site that also had parking in both the front and the back.”

Ranging from imported leaf tea to gelato to pastries, Honey Bubble offers a variety of selec-tions from which its customers can choose.

“Honey Bubble is one of the best bubble tea restaurants I’ve been to,” Meachin said. “They have a really wide array of bubble options and teas, and they make their tapioca bubbles in house daily so everything tastes really fresh. Not many places do that.”

Meachin also raved about Honey Bubbles’ baked goods and pastries,

which are provided by Atlanta-based com-panies including Alon’s, Honey Suckle and Atlanta Cupcake Factory.

Hines said Honey Bubble’s range of cus-

tomers mainly spans from 18 years to 55, with the average being late 20s. Though the estab-lishment is suitable for all ages, its free Wi-Fi access, “relaxing ambiance” and “trendy” product make it a prime spot for young adults to unwind or focus on their studying.

“The atmosphere at Honey Bubble is very calm and welcoming,” senior Chris Williams said. “I love the distinct sense of relaxation and contemporary look, not to mention the fantastic customer service.”

While customers enjoy traditional cof-fee shop activities such as sipping tea and munching on local pastries, senior Nara Smith said Honey Bubble goes above and be-yond other eateries by providing additional entertainment options. She said Honey Bub-ble’s accessible chalkboards, placed around the shop, are fun to draw on and provide yet another exciting thing to do while visiting the tea bar. In addition to getting people’s creative juices flowing, the shop projects a movie every night on one of the building’s walls. There is no sound, maintaining a

study-friendly environment while providing another source of entertainment for curious movie connoisseurs.

The reasonable prices, quick service and novelty of the product make it appealing to many high school students in the area. The tea bar has already attracted a crowd of regu-lars, said staff who have seen many of the same people since its opening.

“I’ve been almost every day in the last two weeks … I can’t help it,” Meachin said.

Many have high hopes for the restau-rant’s future. One of the restaurant’s staff, Lin Mei, believes Honey Bubble will be-come so popular that other places will soon mimic its concept.

“I believe Honey Bubble will be a suc-cessful business now and in the future,” Williams said. “It brings a new unique trend surrounding tea, creating a drink al-most everyone loves. It’s a restaurant that will appeal to a large amount of people. For me, it’s the only place to get such a great variety of tea on the go.” p

March 20, 201314 d i n i n gBurritos, gyros and barbecue ribs fill holes in the wallBy MeGan PrenderGast

Hole in the wall: a small and often unpretentious out-of-the-way place. Atlanta is home to a variety of dives offering a wide array of cuisines.

MI BARRIO

Decorated with a plethora of gen-uine Mexican artifacts, Mi Barrio sits at the intersection of Memorial and Boulevard. Co-owners and cousins Blu and Elisa Lopez bring the flavors of their hometown of Guadalajara, Jalisco, in Mexico to Grant Park.

The name, Mi Barrio, Spanish for “my neighborhood,” fits perfectly as the majority of its employees live in the area. The family began serv-ing Mexican cuisine in 2004 and has enjoyed serving customers ever since, Blu said.

Complimentary chips and salsa are brought to tables upon arrival. Mi Barrio serves classic Mexican favorites such as tacos, quesadillas, tamales and burritos. Elisa claims the menu’s must-try item is the beef tongue taco served in either a soft or hard taco shell.

Mi Barrios also offers Barrio Plates, Barrio Sandwiches and Huevos.

The selection of Barrio Plates in-cludes birria, which is a beef stew, chile relleno, which is a poblano stuffed pepper, and the most popu-lar Barrio plate, carne asada, which is steak, rice, beans and salad en-cased in the restaurant’s homemade corn tortilla.

“[We make our own tortillas] be-cause it’s more traditional, and it’s authentic,” Elisa said. “It’s like proper mommy’s cooking.”

Elisa recommends the adoboda, a Barrio sandwich that is filled with spicy stew-marinated pork. The hue-vos, Spanish for eggs, are served with a variety of add-ins including chori-zo, rice and beans.

NICK’S FOOD TO-GO

In a gravel lot on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Hill Street sits the 20-year-old Greek takeout joint Nick’s Food To Go.

In 1993 husband-and-wife team Heleni and Nick Poulos started cooking up food in the blue-and-white building. As the neighborhood changed, so did the original menu.

“At that time this area was not what it is now,” Nick Poulos said. “It was more like a ghetto area, so we had a different menu back then.”

Today, Nick’s most popular item brings in customers from all over.

“Lamb gyros, that’s our number one seller,” Nick said.

The gyro wraps are filled with let-tuce, tomatoes, onions and cucum-ber sauce with your choice of meat—lamb, grilled or fried chicken, beef or souvlaki (pork)—or you can choose the vegetarian option.

Customers also enjoy other favor-ites such as Greek salad and Nick’s spin on hummus. The selection of side dishes ranges from spanakopita, fresh spinach baked with feta cheese wrapped in Nick’s homemade dough, to Greek-style fries. The restaurant also offers Greek plates including the lamb meat plate, the grilled chicken plate and the souvlaki plate. Pastitsio, Greek lasagna, is served as a special.

Greek food, however, is not the only cuisine the Poulos family serves. In addition, the Greek to-go restau-rant dishes up chicken wings as well as burgers and fries.

Heleni Poulos owns the takeout joint, while Nick serves as manager and their daughter Evangelia Poulos serves as assistant manager.

“It’s the way my wife and I prepare the food [that makes us unique],” Nick Poulos said. “We [are] just mom and pop, and we like people to think of us as mom and pop.”

SGT. WYATT’S COUNTY BBQ

Since its establishment in 1973, Sgt. Wyatt’s Country BBQ has set up six more locations. In 1986, however, the business downsized to its current location on Memorial Drive.

“[Sgt. Wyatt’s Country BBQ’s] mission and goal is to become the premier barbecue and southern-style -cooking restaurant in the Atlanta area by maintaining our family tra-dition, which spans over two genera-tions,” owner Oscar D. Wyatt said.

Wyatt believes the food’s quality will guarantee the joint will be an Atlanta favorite for years to come.

After 40 years in the restaurant business, the Wyatt family has formed a strong relationship with its customers.

The staff prepares all items fresh daily and maintains high quality

seasoning and ingredients for bast-ing, marinating and cooking, Wyatt said. He describes the joint as “fine Southern cuisine.”

The menu, which is divided into barbecue dinners, fried dinners, oven-cooked dinners, ribs, sand-wiches, sides and desserts, gives diners a wide selection of southern cuisine to choose from. The bar-becue dinners selection includes beef rib and chop pork; the fried dinner allows customers to choose both their chicken size and color of meat. Both the barbecue dinners and fried dinners are served with a choice of two sides including col-lard greens, black-eyed peas, mac and cheese and the must-try side item, candy yams, among others.

The oven-cooked dinners are served with rice and gravy and in-clude oxtails, neck bone, turkey

wing and beef stew. The secret to Wyatt’s ribs lies in the vinegar-based basting sauce Oscar Wyatt and his brother created years ago.

Wyatt’s Diner offers an assort-ment of sandwiches including pork rib, beef link sausage, dark meat and white meat chicken and pig ear, which are all made to order.

The menu, however, does not end there. Wyatt’s Diner serves up a selection of desserts including ba-nana pudding, peach cobbler and Ann Wyatt’s favorite dessert, the lemon pound cake.

Although the Kirkwood joint is strictly takeout, just a walk across the parking lot sits a covered patio where customers may dig in to its Southern cuisine.

Wyatt’s Diner hopes to continue serving its loyal customers for many, many more years. p

DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER: Dives across the city appeal to food lovers despite outside appearances. Mi Barrio serves special Mi Barrio sandwiches (top right), and customers at Wyatt’s BBQ may enjoy chop pork sandwiches (bottom right), among others. Gyro lovers indulge in lamb gyros filled with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and cucumber sauce at Nick’s Food To Go (left).

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Scoutmob provides customers with motive to spend

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By Lauren Ogg

As senior Abby Orlansky listens to the grumbling of her stomach, she knows it is time for dinner. She contemplates her op-tions in the refrigerator: leftovers from the night before, frozen pizza and a plethora of yogurt. She decides her best option is to go out to eat, so she grabs her iPad and opens up the Scoutmob app.

Founded in January 2010 by Michael Tavani and Dave Payne, Scoutmob aims to promote local businesses by featuring restaurants, retail locations and services on its website. The website offers deals such as 50 percent off meals, free products and discounted services. Scoutmob originated in Atlanta but has spread to large cities nation-wide, such as Austin, Texas.

“We are all about local, featuring the best things happening locally from restaurants to experiences to events to local content,” Tavani said. “We’ve created one of the big-gest media brands in the city that has con-siderable clout amongst the local explorers in Atlanta.”

Orlansky first heard about and down-loaded the app during her sophomore year. Before she had an iPhone, she used the app on her iPad only.

“I use it a lot more now that I have it on my phone because it is easier to use at res-taurants and other places,” Orlansky said. “I’ve brought my iPad to dinner a couple of times, but it was embarrassing. I had to use their Wi-Fi.”

Since discovering Scoutmob, Orlansky said she has expanded her horizons and branched out from her typical restaurant choices. Literature teacher Deedee Abbott has had a similar experience.

“[Scoutmob is] beneficial to me,” Ab-bott said. “I’ve used it for haircuts for my

kids, restaurants and retail at Fab’rik and the Lucky Exchange. The best deal [I’ve used] was Babette’s Cafe.”

Like Orlansky, Abbott searches for new places without worrying about burning a hole in her wallet.

“It has caused us to find an excuse to go out when we couldn’t have because we can use a Scoutmob,” Abbott said. “[We’ve] tried new places because they have a Scoutmob.”

Tavani said both Scoutmob and the par-ticipating business profit from their promo-tion on the app.

“Merchants pay Scoutmob a flat fee ($3 on average) per deal redemption when a cus-tomer uses a Scoutmob deal in a location, and the customer pays the merchant as they normally would for their meal or experi-ence,” Tavani said.

This business model has found enormous success in Atlanta and has spread to many other large cities. Tavani said their list has grown from 8,000 users in 2010 when they first launched the app to 360,000 today, sim-ply from word of mouth. He also said they accomplished this growth without spending any extra money.

“If we list a business on Scoutmob, it will be put on the map in a significant way,” Tav-ani said.

Tavani is grateful for the positive atten-tion that Scoutmob has received from the Atlanta community.

“[We are] building a brand that people trust to delight them,” Tavani said. “It’s amazing to see people wearing our logo on their shirts.”

Tavani is not the only thankful person. Abbott and Orlansky recognize how Scout-mob has eased their dining-out experience.

“Now everytime I go out to eat, I check Scoutmob first,” Orlansky said. p

Biking to school, freshmen find freedom in fixie fad

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“It really wakes you up in the morning,” freshman Skylar Brillante said. One might think he was referring to coffee, but to Bril-lante and his friends, biking is a more re-freshing start to a morning routine.

While the majority of grady students take the bus, carpool or drive themselves to school, a small minority chooses a different set of wheels. Brillante is part of the group of freshmen that includes Miles Barreto, Nicolas Lyman, Jack Ericson, Avery Bur-ton and Drake Stephens who try to keep to a bike-only lifestyle.

“We bike everywhere,” Burton said. “No cars involved.”

Each of the cyclists bikes to school and has roughly a 10-minute ride. Barreto said one of the pros of biking is it gives you extra time to sleep in the morning. If it weren’t for their bikes, many members of the group would have to ride the bus or

depend on someone else for a ride, which would require them to wake up earlier.

“I usually wake up around 7 a.m., take a shower, fall asleep again, eat some breakfast and leave my house around 8 a.m. and get to school around 8:10 a.m.,” Barreto said.

Biking gives them the independence that is usually gained only with a driver’s license. For those who are either not old enough to have one or cannot buy a car of their own, it is an excellent alternative. It frees them from relying on their parents or siblings for rides and allows them to go where they want when they want.

“Bikes are very affordable. In traffic they can be much faster than cars, and there are lots of places to lock up a bike,” Lyman said. “If you cannot drive, it is the fastest form of transportation that you can use.”

His chariot of choice is a chrome Bianchi Pista frame equipped with a pristine white Velocity Deep-V rim set. Each bike build

is like a snowflake, individual to the rid-er’s style. While the majority of this fresh-men bike crew sport bullhorn handlebars, some choose to ride with drop bars or ris-ers, which are both more standard for road bikes in general.

Burton feels his bike allows him to ex-press his unique personality.

“My bike is colored with different colors that don’t really match, showing that I’m spontaneous and weird,” Burton said.

Stephens feels a similar connection with his bike.

“I’d say my bike has personality,” Ste-phens said. “It’s pretty beat up and worn compared to other people’s bikes.”

The freshmen’s bikes are ever-evolving re-flections of themselves. Parts are constantly traded to tweak their bicycles in subtle ways. Barreto is overhauling his bike, changing it from an 18-speed to a fixed gear. He enjoys the simplicity fixed-gears offer.

One can find the plethora of bicycles any day after school locked up near the tennis courts. As most grady students know from experience, cell phones and most electron-ics are at a constant risk of being stolen. The boys feel the same way about their bicycles, into which they put hundreds of dollars. Lyman said he is not worried about the bike being stolen itself, but rather being damaged or pillaged for parts.

Hanging up on a fence on the opposite side of the student parking lot, one can find a different collection of bikes. These belong to students ranging from freshmen to juniors. Sophomore Connor Loveless has been biking for two years and made friends with the other kids in this group. When asked if there is a rivalry between the two bike gangs, Loveless sarcastically responded yes, but then shrugged off the question. Loveless, like the freshmen, tries to bike as much as possible. He has even expanded the length of his rides, going on 20- to 30-mile rides, and he is planning a 100-mile ride this summer.

For all these grady students, biking plays a key role in their

everyday life, whether it’s riding to school or hanging out. It grants them the freedom they otherwise would not have, and it serves as an opportunity to express themselves. p

BIKE SQUAD: Bikes line the fence near the stadium creating an impromptu gallery of wheels. Miles Barreto is one of many freshmen who usually rides his bike to school.A

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(SCOUT)MOB MENTALITY: Fab’rik (top), Willy’s Mexican Grill (above) and Five Continents Boutique (right) are three local stores promoted by Scoutmob. The app offers an easy way for customers to browse local restaurants, stores and events by cuisine and neighborhood. When customers find a deal they like, they save it in “My Stash” and Scoutmob reminds them to use the deal later.

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March 20, 201316

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When that is doubled through Wholesome Wave Geor-gia turns that amount into $37 of spending power at farmers markets.

Currently, all of the partner markets accept Supplemen-tal Nutrition Assistance Program and Electronic Benefit Transfer support, but only select markets accept Women, Infants and Children and Senior Farmers’ Market Nutri-tion Program assistance.

For program director Jan Kozak, the opportunity to reach underserved communities is essential. He also serves as the market manager with Athens Farmers Market.

“We are trying to change behaviors,” Kozak said. He and his team wanted to use Wholesome Wave as an in-centive program for healthy living, focusing on health in a preventive sense rather than a treatment.

“I think that most people’s No. 1 excuse for not buying healthy foods is that it costs more and that organic farmers markets are only accessible to the wealthy,” Grady envi-ronmental science teacher Korri Ellis said. “It helps bridge the gap between the rich and the poor if we make healthy foods more accessible.”

Wholesome Wave Georgia users have swiped their gov-ernment benefit cards more than 200,000 times.

“Wholesome Wave Georgia is the most valuable program at our markets,” said Katie Hayes, the executive director of Community Farmers Markets. “It allows customers to have double the purchase power and farmers to have double the income.” Community Farmers Markets consist of Grant Park, East Atlanta and both Decatur farmers markets.

Hayes has managed the markets at Community Farm-ers Market for two years. She said revenues at Community Farmers Markets has doubled from 2011 to 2012.

“Before, there was a stigma about using food stamps,” Hayes said. “Now, I believe people feel more comfortable using their benefits.”

Besides helping underserved communities afford health-ier food, this system also helps local farmers grow their business. Instead of patronizing national chain grocery stores or fast-food restaurants, customers are buying food directly from farmers—cutting out the middleman.

“Local farmers markets stimulate our local economy,” Ellis said. "A local farm is a business. The more we can support them and contribute to their income and taxes, the more we can support our local economy."

According to Ellis, supporting local farmers markets also aids the environment by reducing the pollution and fuel use caused by transporting food over long distances. Farm-ers markets also use more sustainable methods, Ellis added. On smaller farms, typically farmers use more compost and less big machinery and commercial fertilizers. Small farm-ers usually cultivate multiple crops simultaneously on the same area of land. According to Ellis, crop diversification has less of an impact on the environment. Smaller farms also usually use more efficient irrigation methods.

“Conventional agriculture is not a sustainable model be-cause there is no biodiversity,” Kozak said.

There are 10 markets in metro Atlanta that have a Whole-some Wave Georgia association: Clarkston, Decatur, East Atlanta Village, East Point, East Lake, Farm Mobile, Grant Park, Peachtree Road, SWOOM and Truly Living Well.

Some markets are year-round, but most will not open until April. As the weather gets warmer, Hayes is anticipat-ing the opening of farmers markets. Some markets feature celebrity chefs and local bands that come out and play.

Kozak wants to encourage markets to expand and con-sider longer seasons, but it is a building process.

“It is a slow process to get people to a point where they are capable of selling food 12 months out of the year,” Kozak said.

He does, however, remain hopeful. He is also “cautious-ly optimistic” that farmers markets could outsell the mass-produced grocery stores and fast-food restaurants.

“I think that day is certainly down the road,” Kozak said. “It seems that [eating green and healthy] is less than a fad, but more of a movement and reality.”

Hayes agrees. “People have to make a conscious effort to support

their local farmers. We need a lot of help, and we have a long way to go.” p

Senior takes big dreams to Big Ben

PROGRAM to stimulate local farm economy

By Ansley MArks

Scraps of muslin were littered about her. Her head was bowed over her work as she meticulously cut the cheap fab-ric used to create templates for patterns into her self-made garment. Then, lining the pieces up, edge-to-edge with frayed strings along the cut ends, she pinned the fabrics together. She continued to cut, scrap and pin more patterns together. When she had depleted her muslin and all her patterns were cut out, she put the finished garment on a manikin to start fitting. Yet, after days of cutting muslin, she still had to redo the entire process for her final piece that would be cut from “the devil of all fabrics,” silk chiffon.

Sophia Smith, a senior designer for UrbanCouture, Grady’s fashion pro-gram, did not always want to design clothes, but her creativity has led her to her next destination: the world re-nowned London College of Fashion.

“From when I was little, I was always dressing myself and picking out my own outfits,” Smith said. “I’ve always had an interest in fashion, but I wanted to be a movie star on Broadway or have my own TV show or something.”

It wasn’t until the summer before fresh-man year, when Smith started sketching Audrey Hepburn-inspired dresses, that she knew she wanted to become a fashion de-signer. Not knowing what being a fashion designer required or how to sew, Smith decided to hire a private sewing tutor who taught her most of the fundamental tech-niques she uses today. Once Smith knew how to sew basic patterns, she started ex-

perimenting with what she could create, which intrigued her the most.

“The more that I learned, the more that I really liked about becoming cre-ative,” Smith said.

Yet Smith had only begun learning what it took to become a designer. A long road still existed between where she was during her freshman year and what she dreamed of being in the future, a designer for Vogue magazine. She knew she had to do more, gain more experience and learn how to sew more complex patterns and fabrics. She needed a teacher who could guide her and show her how to be creative with her pieces. This led her to spend the following summer at the Rhode Island School of De-sign, a prestigious art school that offers a summer program for aspiring fashion and design majors.

It was at RISD that Smith realized the importance of art on what she designed. Here she learned everything from sketch-ing to designing and industry preparation. Smith emphatically believes RISD changed her perspective on what was required to become a fashion designer. She rose to the next level and opened her eyes to the world of fashion. Attending the summer pro-gram at RISD led Smith to another similar program the following summer at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, a leading institute in art, design and architecture.

Longtime friend and fellow UrbanCou-ture senior Mckenzie Taylor describes how Smith’s talent has blossomed since she first met her in seventh grade.

“She has always been talented at art, design and sewing, but I have seen how

much she has learned from attending summer programs at RISD and Pratt, and it really shows in her work,” Taylor said. “I have seen her become more dar-ing in her designs. She's not afraid to take on a challenge.”

After the summers at RISD and Pratt, Smith knew she wanted to get into a fash-ion and design school. Her ambitions led her to the London College of Fashion.

For months, Smith gathered a col-lection of her finalized work from AP Studio Art, Pratt and her sketches for a portfolio to show the interviewer from LCF. Two weeks before the in-terview, she met with a representative from LCF and was able to present her portfolio, only to find that her port-folio was composed of the wrong ma-terial. Instead of showing the sketches and brainstorms for her pieces, Smith had strictly included only her finalized work. Smith’s dreams of LCF pushed her to collect another portfolio within a compressed span of two weeks. She spent the two weeks in a frenzy, but by the time Smith flew up to New York for her interview, she had a new and im-proved portfolio to give to them. Fif-teen slow and anxious minutes passed before LCF congratulated Smith on getting accepted.

AP studio art classmate senior Nara Smith has high hopes for Sophia at LCF.

“[London] will provide a plethora of inspiration for her work,” Smith said. “I hope that she enjoys the environment and people. She will make the absolute best out of it, which she always does.” p

STUDY BREAK:

A (LONDON) EYE FOR FASHION: AP Studio Art student and Urban Couture senior designer Sophia Smith diligently works on her AP Art concentration, a series of surreal collages cut from magazines and made from her own designs. Smith loves mixing normal pictures together to create the improbable.

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REBUS WORD PUZZLES

Answers online at thesoutherneronline.com

By Olivia vOlkert

The cheerleading team, under the direction of Inman theater arts teacher and cheerleading coach Antavious Baker, is more than just a group of girls who chant in short skirts during football games. The team is comprised of 19 girls who work hard to create and learn inventive routines for both games and cheer competitions, many of which involve difficult and sometimes dangerous moves.

Baker started coaching varsity cheerleading for Grady last year after seven-year coach and math teacher Ebony Anderson-Johnson resigned her position. Baker is also the chearleading coach at Inman.

“[Coaching at Grady] is a different energy,” Baker said. “There is a youthful zeal that comes from Inman that is refined and polished on varsity [cheerleading].”

The team practices two to three times per week un-til the members master the routines. Because of the lim-ited practice space for sports teams at Grady, the team is forced to run through its routines on the track, the field sidelines or under the scoreboard. When it gets cold, because they are not allowed to practice inside the gym, the girls have to resort to practicing in the balcony of the theater atrium.

“Next year we are doing a lot more competitions and stunts, so we’re going to have to find a place to practice,” sophomore Ali Reynolds said.

The team placed second in the APS Metro Cheer Championships against 14 other high schools last Octo-ber. This year, however, because the team did not find out about the competition until four days before the compe-tition date and one of the team’s flyers was hurt the day before competition, the team did not place.

“We tried our best, and I’m sure next year the team will

be fully prepared to come back for redemption,” senior Akasha Lawrence said.

Baker said the team prepares for competitions by prac-ticing and polishing stunts, cheers, jumps and tumbles; cheering at Grady games; attending summer camps and “consistently seeing what the latest ‘thing’ is in cheerlead-ing and innovating and remixing it to make it our own.”

Several members of the team, such as Reynolds, have been cheering with Baker since middle school and have learned all they know about cheer-leading from his unique coaching style. Lawrence said compared to previous coaches, Baker is unafraid to take more risks in trying new stunts, cheers and dances.

“Mr. Baker tries to make cheering fun,” senior Jakara Griffin said. “My past coaches used to curse us out in order to make us perform better, but Mr. Baker is very respectful and doesn’t yell.”

Unlike most cheerleading coaches, Baker is willing to demonstrate everything he asks his students to do. He tries to coach his students for cheerleading and also on a personal level.

“I challenge the squad to be the best people and unit that they can be, in and out of the uniform,” Baker said. “I respect the squad and protect them as individuals with their own individuality and creativity.”

In addition to having the team compete in cheerlead-ing competitions, Baker has made other innovations to the team, such as bringing the Inman and Grady teams together by assigning each Grady cheerleader a “little sis-

ter.” Because he still coaches at Inman, he hopes to de-velop a program that unites the teams.

The team also shares a common appreciation for sup-porting the school’s athletic teams and for treating cheer-leading as a sport.

“Cheerleading is definitely a sport,” junior Taylor Wil-liams said. “We have to condition, train, lift girls above our heads, tumble and move a lot,”

Many of the students on the team have been cheer-leading since middle school or ear-lier and attend cheerleading camps in the summer. Some of them also practice routines outside of prac-tices and games, stretch, strengthen and exercise regularly to stay in shape for cheerleading.

Some of the most memorable moments of the season for the team include the boys basketball victory against South Atlanta—the No. 1-ranked team in the region—the

homecoming victory over Booker T. Washington at the Georgia Dome and the one-point loss against Monroe Area in overtime that marked the last high school football game for the seniors on the team.

“Some of our seniors were crying because it was their last [football game], and it was really sad because we should’ve won,” Reynolds said.

Despite hardships in terms of practice space, competi-tions and team member differences, the team had a suc-cessful second season with Baker.

“I celebrate each and every triumph on the court, so-cially and academically,” Baker said. p

March 20, 2013 s p o r t s 17

Cheerleading season dynamic, successful with Baker

FANCY FOOTWOOK WITH CAPTAIN JUSTIN WILLIAMS

“ We tried our best and I’m sure next year the team will be fully prepared to come back for redemption.”

Akasha Lawrencesenior

THE MARADONA

Senior captain Justin Williams has played on the varsity soccer team since his freshman year. As a midfielder, he has a strong, leading presence on the field. Williams demonstrated two soccer moves for The Southerner: Around The World (left), a juggling trick used during practice, and The Maradona (right), a dribbling maneuver to escape defenders in a game.

“Around the World is a cool trick to impress your friends,” Williams said. “Start by stalling the ball on top of your foot between your shin and your foot. If you are new to soccer, this step will require a few tries.”

“Finally, as your foot comes around the other side, stop your foot under the ball,” Williams said. “Attempt to stall the ball on your foot again just as you did in the first step. With a lot of practice you can attempt to get your foot around the ball twice.”

“Flick the ball up into the air,” Williams said. “Quickly move your foot around the

ball while it’s in the air. Pivot your body so that the

ball stays in front of you. Again, this trick will require

repetition to master.”

“Pull the ball back towards your planted foot and then

place that foot on top of the ball,” Williams said. “Make

sure one foot is firmly planted the whole time. You

should now have your back to the defender.”

“The Maradona is actually applicable to a game,” Williams said. “You begin by facing perpendicular to the defender with your foot placed on top of the ball. Look for a defender that is stabbing with his foot if the move is to be successful.”

“End by dragging the ball forward, turning with your body as you go. At this point,

the defender should be out of position and a burst of acceleration should be enough to put you past him,” Williams said.

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AROUND THE WORLD

Rows of s t u d e n t s dressed in white gis stand at at-t e n t i o n , facing the line of sen-sei at the

front of the class. Everything is still and absolutely quiet, as ev-eryone meditates before beginning the group warm-up. The room is calm, but it is also electrified with everyone’s ki (life force) as it fills and flows through the room. The head instructor signals for the meditation to stop by softly saying “down,” and we respond as a single entity with a thunderous “GONG” (which means something along the lines of “have a good workout”). The silence is broken and the room takes on a serious air as everyone prepares to give their all for the next hour and a half.

Every Monday and Thursday, homework and extracurriculars al-lowing, I head down to my dojo

located in Grant Park to practice my Vietnamese style of martial arts, Cuong Nhu (pronounced Kung New). The 48-year-old style is relatively young in the world of martial arts but takes its roots in the ancient styles of Shotokan Ka-rate, aikido, judo, Wing Chun Fu, Vovinam Viet Vo Dao, tai chi ch-uan and boxing. Cuong Nhu is not just a martial art but also a way of life. The goal of the style is never to break you but to build you up. It encourages you to be the best person you can be, to grow, expand and discover new things about yourself to better serve the world and to lead a more fulfilling life. It was this philosophy that made me fall in love with Cuong Nhu.

Whenever I walk through the doors of my dojo, it is like I am walking into a second home. Not because of the amount of time I have spent there over the years, but because of the community. Every-body from the beginners to the head of the dojo, who has been practicing the style for more than 30 years, be-

longs to an amazing family that ex-tends throughout the world. Many people join because they want to

get in shape or learn self-defense but they stay because of the com-munity. Everyone is so accepting

and understanding. Even when life (as it is now) does not allow me to attend class for months, I know I will always be welcome. It is a place that gives me faith in the world no matter how dark it may seem every-where else. It is a place where I can leave the negative behind and focus on the positives in life. The sense of community and its overarching philosophy on life has helped me through difficult times.

A few years ago my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was only stage one, and it was the most common type, so it was not as serious as one might think when they hear the word cancer. The cancer only required two surgeries and six weeks of radiation for it to be cured and the ordeal was over relatively quickly. I did not tell a lot of people because I did not want a lot of undue sympathy, but it was still a scary time and dur-ing that period the dojo provided a place of calm during the storm and made a dark time seem that much brighter. p

March 20, 2013

Cuong Nhu provides much more than self-defense

By Joe Lavine When senior starting striker James Meier

moved to the United States in June 2012 from Brighton, East Sussex in the United Kingdom, he was looking forward to playing soccer “quite a lot.” It came time for his first home match against Grady’s archrival, Paideia, and Meier sat quietly in the “changing room,” listening to his music and getting himself in the zone for the game. Then, within half an hour of game time, Meier was told he could not play.

“I was close to tears,” Meier said. “I just wanted to play so bad. It was gut-wrenching.”

Meier was not the only one. Senior start-ing right midfielder Giorgi Gaxashvili, sopho-more starting goalkeeper Sage Eggleston and sophomore Jonah Griswold were also on first-year athletic director Kathleen Washington’s list of ineligible players in an email sent to head coach Thomas Waller an hour before game time. The Knights suffered an embar-rassing 4-0 loss.

“It was just shameful,” said Loren Williams, father of senior captain Justin Williams. “It was kind of like the team was undermined by the administration.”

The students were ineligible to play because Washington had failed to complete all the required paperwork before the game. What happened to these four varsity soccer players is not an isolated incident. Rather it represents one in a series of eligibility issues that have occurred this spring. The paperwork delays have incited outrage in parents and athletes and also raised the question as to whether the roles of the athletic director position are too extensive for one person to handle.

After the loss to Paideia, several parents of the ineligible players sent irate emails to Washington. The Southerner obtained the emails through an anonymous source.

“What a disappointment/disgrace it is that several of our players were not allowed to play tonight [through] no fault of their own or of the parents’,” one parent wrote.

Another parent stated, “Playing soccer for my son is one of his main joys in life, and pure incompetence has robbed him of that.”

Williams organized a meeting shortly af-terward with Washington and Grady Prin-cipal Vincent Murray to address the parents’ concerns. Washington defended herself for the delays.

“I explained to them what the certifica-tion process was, what I had sent out to the

coaches, and so I believe that after listening they understood why the process may take longer sometimes and not so long at others,” Washington said.

Murray said the parents and Washington came to a “truce” at the meeting. Williams said that although the parents didn’t accept Wash-ington’s excuse that certifying requires a lot of work, they were willing to move forward.

“There was a truce in a sense that the parents were just desperate to get the kids certified for the next game,” Williams said. “They were say-ing, ‘Whatever it takes, let’s all work together, we’ll help you, let’s get that done.’”

B e c a u s e of consistent emails between parents, such as Council on Educational International Exchange coordi-nator Dana Persons, and Washington, the en-tire varsity team was certified nine days later, just in time for their next game. Meier scored two goals in Grady’s 6-1 win over Clarkston.

In the chaotic e-mail scramble to ensure athletes’ certification, one foreign-exchange student’s academic records were included in a mass e-mail. The original email, which Washington sent to Persons, coach Olayin-ka Olorunfemi and girls varsity head coach Rodney Thomas, stated that the student was ineligible because “he failed four classes last semester.” Persons forwarded the email to multiple soccer parents to speed up the certi-fication process.

“Basically, we were working on multiple certifications at a time,” Persons said. “I was forwarding it to the soccer parents so that they would know the status of their children.”

Williams, after reading the e-mail, be-lieved that Washington had violated the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the rights of student educa-tion records. Williams told Washington this and also contacted Murray and APS athletic director Jeff Beggs about the incident. Mur-ray said the situation is being investigated by one of two departments.

“It may be considered an ethics, or it could be an employee-relations issue,” Murray said.

Beggs said he did not know about the investigation but stated that coaches and foreign-exchange coordinators have “a viable educational interest” in regards to a foreign-exchange student’s educational records.

In addition to these incidents with the soccer team, Washington has also experi-enced issues fully certifying the tennis team,

lacrosse team and track team before compe-tition. Junior Eli Mansbach said he missed two tennis matches be-fore he was certified. Sev-eral girls track athletes missed track meets. Senior captain Alex Stearns-

Bernhart said multiple lacrosse players had to resubmit paperwork that Washington had misplaced.

Murray said he is giving Washington a chance to improve.

“I think that when a person assumes a job, you don’t kick ‘em out just because they have made a couple of errors,” he said. “In fairness to the person, you will give them an opportunity. She needs to be able to do the certifications in a timely manner so that students are certified to play their particular sport at the time of their given season. If she does not do that during the second year, then you say, ‘Ok, you were given an opportunity, you didn’t achieve that goal, I need to go in a different direction.’”

Washington admitted her struggles with spring sports in contrast to her promptness in the fall.

“By me having to come in and create new files, create new databases on my computer, it has taken me a very long time to get stuff to-gether,” Washington said. “Fall sports weren’t as bad because you don’t have as many sports teams. Spring sports, you have 11 teams, and so it gets a little rough.”

Once Washington assembles the paperwork, she sends it to the Georgia High School As-sociation. Once GHSA processes and reviews the files, they send them to Lakewood High

School, where the APS Department of Athlet-ics processes them before sending them back to Grady. Washington said getting all the nec-essary forms together to certify students is the most time-consuming part of her job. Murray also described the difficulties of the job.

“[The athletic director’s] job has always been a challenge, when you’re teaching classes and you also have to do certifications and be the coach, those kinds of things,” Murray said. “So it is a tremendous job.”

Washington, who is also the varsity girls head basketball coach, said it is extremely taxing for her to find time to perform all of her roles.

“I work day and night,” Washington said. “I take stuff home. I don’t get to bed until 1 a.m. working on stuff. That’s after practice. Sometimes I’m here [at] 6:30 a.m. working. I only can do what I can do in the length of time that you have in the day.”

Murray said Washington could do better with someone to assist her, but “the district does not allot that and does not give us that kind of latitude.” Murray also said having a teacher in the physical-education depart-ment assist her would not be an option.

“If I give that person to her to work, let’s say, the periods that she is in class, then that person loses a class and then that means I have students that are not able to take P.E. or health class because I have to kill those classes,” Mur-ray said. “So it’s a catch-22.”

Longtime physics teacher and cross-country coach Jeff Cramer said an inefficient certifica-tion process is what makes the athletic direc-tor role a challenging one.

“I’ve always thought that there must be more productive, easier ways to do it than the athletic directors that we have had have been doing it,” Cramer said.

Despite the demanding roles of an athletic director, Cramer sets the bar high.

“The athletic director I think should have so much pride and care about the facility that they’re willing to do everything necessary to make it a spotless venue for people to come in from outside, making sure that the trash al-ways gets picked up, making sure that things are clean, making sure all the equipment is put away,” he said. “It’s the willingness to really go the extra steps, to make sure that everything is running smoothly, working beyond what it says in your job description, what you’re sup-posed to do." p

Athletic director job proves difficult for Washingtons p o r t s18

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A MARTIAL ARTIST: Senior Simon McLane performs a take-down during a regional test.

“ If [Washington] does not [do the cer-tifications in a timely manner] during the second year, then you say, ‘Ok, you were given an opportunity. You didn’t achieve that goal. I need to go in a dif-ferent direction. ‘”

Vincent Murray principal

March 20, 2013 s p o r t s 19

APS athletic director Beggs for greater participation

By Ben SearleS

The ball sails towards the basket, bouncing around the rim. A defensive player from Washington High School jumps up and tries to tip it out. Grady center Brandon Watkins leaps above his opponents, grabs the ball in the air and brings it down with a huge slam dunk.

Watkins, who has committed to playing at West Virginia next year, is a double threat. Not only can he defend well, like so many big men, but he is also a threat on offense, aver-aging 12.2 points per game. For Watkins, big dunks like this are a common occurrence.

Watkins started playing basketball at the age of 5 after he was encouraged by his mother to attend a basketball camp run by his uncle. He started playing organized bas-ketball at 11 at Drew Charter School. He played in sixth and seventh grade until he was eligible in eighth grade to play on the junior varsity team at South Atlanta High School. Watkins then went to Grady for high school, where he has played varsity basketball all four years.

“I thought transitioning from middle-school basketball to high-school basketball would be harder, but then I played my first game, and it just came easy to me,” Watkins said.

The 6-foot-9, 225-pound power forward is a huge as-set for Grady. Currently, Watkins is ranked by ESPN as No. 6 at this position in the state and as the No. 18 high school center in the country. In addition, he is also a Mc-Donald’s All American nominee. The All-American game is an all-star game played by the best high school basket-ball players in the country.

Grady coach Brian Weeden and summer league coach Norman Parker both believe that Watkins’ size sets him apart from most other players. Although big players don’t usually shoot from the perimeter, long-range shooting is a major strength of Watkins’ game.

“Very few big guys can step outside and shoot the ball,” Parker said. “He does that very well.”

Watkins prefers to play with his back to the basket, rather than playing facing the basket. In addition, he can run the fast break well. Watkins is a very hard worker and a dependable player. He is also a very unselfish player—sometimes a little too unselfish for Parker’s liking; Parker prefers that big players sometimes demand the ball and drive to the rim.

“You can always count on [Watkins] to score in tight situ-

ations, or if you get beat on defense he is there to blocks shots,” junior teammate Chandler Organ said.

Watkins had a very good summer playing with the Georgia Stars. At the time, he was ranked No. 56 in the country among centers. Soon, he started attracting the at-tention of college scouts. He said he grew tired of talking to scouts and getting evaluated and decided to turn down early offers from Miami, Memphis and Florida State and committed to West Virginia. West Virginia, coached by the legendary Bob Huggins, is a mid- to high-ranking Big 12 team that makes it into the March Madness tourna-ment most years. Watkins’ uncle, Warren Baker, was a four-year starter at West Virginia and was inducted into their hall of fame the same weekend that Watkins verbally committed to the school.

“I was actually glad when he commited early,” his mother Janet Watkins said. “It took a lot of pressure off of him.” She

has played a big role in supporting Watkins’ basketball.“If he continues to work hard, he would probably be start-

ing for West Virginia,” Weeden said. Weeden also said that if Watkins can take his work into

“another gear” this summer, as far as becoming more physi-cal and avoiding fouling out, he will have a bright future.

In addition to basketball, Watkins plays golf outside of school. He started golf in middle school but had to keep it always on the side, second to basketball. He plans to play more this summer, as he is no longer trying to get noticed by college basketball coaches.

Both Weeden and Parker think Watkins’ size, good work ethic and McDonald’s All-American nomination are all attri-butes that will help him be successful in college—and maybe even get him into the NBA.

“With his size and athletic ability and his willingness to work, to me, I think the sky is the limit,” Parker said. p

Brandon Watkins dunks his way into West Virginia

By alliSon rapoport

Two-and-a-half years ago, Jeff Beggs, came out of retirement to take the position as director of athletics for APS.

“What I saw was a sleeping giant,” Beggs said of the APS athletics program.

This assessment came on the heels of a recently completed athletic audit, which found major deficiencies throughout the system. Beggs’s plan is to unite middle- and high-school athletic programs and to promote sports in the elementary feeder schools in order to create stronger high school teams.

An Atlanta native and a graduate of South-west DeKalb High School and Furman Uni-versity, Beggs had already been an athletic director for 20 years when he took the job.

“I thought that this was the most in-credible job that anybody could ever have because there’s so much potential here,” Beggs said.

He aims to maximize that potential by realizing his vision for APS athletics.

“What I’ve found and what my staff found was a culture and a climate of ‘we can’t succeed,’” Beggs said. “And we want-ed to create a culture and a climate and an atmosphere of success.”

Beggs’ basic goal is to increase the num-ber of students who participate in athlet-ics. He believes being involved in sports helps keep students in school, which leads to academic success.

“Studies and research show that a child starts to begin thinking about dropping out of school as early as fourth or fifth grade,” he said. “If we can get them in-volved in something at an early age, and they can start to see ‘I want to become a

Grady Gray Knight,’ or ‘I want to become a Therrell Panther,’ or ‘I want to become a South Atlanta Hornet,’ and that’s their goal, then it’s easy to say that athletics can be a piece of a great big educational pie. If we can help keep kids in school through their participation in sports, then we’ve ac-complished our goal.”

Atlanta Board of Education member Cecily Harsch-Kinnane agrees with Beggs about the importance of athletics.

“I think the skills you learn in partici-pating in any athletics, and particularly in your school athletics, promotes skills that you need to be successful academically,” Harsch-Kinnane said.

Jeff Cramer, Grady’s cross country coach

for the past 16 years and a teacher for 30, also believes in sports’ ability to help stu-dents succeed.

“What [the students] tell me is that it helps them organize their life,” Cramer said. “It keeps them fit, which is good for all parts of your life, just being healthy. It keeps you healthier.”

Cramer supports Beggs’ idea to connect the middle and high schools through athletics.

“I never had a feeder program until I came to Grady, and Inman has provided us with a feeder program in cross coun-try, which has really helped our program,” Cramer said.

Beggs and his team have made progress towards his goal of increasing the number

of students involved. When Beggs became athletic director two-and-a-half years ago, there were 4,700 student-athletes out of 50,000 students.

“This past year we had over 7,000,” he said. “I see that as a tremendous success because we’re getting more kids involved.”

Beggs hopes to push that number above 10,000 in the next year or two by involv-ing outside programs like Girls on the Run and the Atlanta Youth Soccer Association, alumni from the schools, corporate spon-sors and athletic booster clubs. Neighbor-hood leagues can help by getting students involved in athletics at an early age. Spon-sors can help fund growth of the programs. Booster clubs and alumni can also lend their support. The Grady Booster Club is willing to work with Beggs.

“If he has ideas of interesting new equip-ment for Grady, new sports for Grady, new procedures to help keep things efficient at Grady,” Athletic Booster Club treasurer Duggan Lansing said, “the booster club would then go to each of the team’s repre-sentatives and help put those procedures in place, or help them ensure that they have the funds they need to have a diving team or a water polo team, or things that are new at Grady.”

Beggs believes his plan will benefit not only student-athletes, but also the larger community.

“Once we get it instituted, I really be-lieve that our athletic program will ex-plode,” he said. “And we will draw people back that have moved out to the suburbs. They’re going to see Atlanta Public Schools as something that is good and wholesome and positive.” p

SCRAMBLED BEGGS: Beggs plans to mix things up with increased sports involvement among APS students.

HOOPS AND HOOPLA: Watkins shows off multiple skills against with a foul shot (left) and a dunk (above). He signed to play with West Viginia University on Feb. 6.

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theHENRY W. GRADY HIGH SCHOOL, ATLANTA March 20, 2013

thesoutherneronline.com

VOLUME LXVI, NUMBER 6

sectionSports

Feb. 13Grady 62, Chamblee 49Feb. 14Grady 51, Chamblee 43Feb. 15Columbia 66, Grady 64Redan 59, S. Atlanta 34Feb. 16Marist 60, Grady 29

Grady Sports Score Central: February

Basketball

See complete coverage of games on thesoutherneronline.com and on The Southerner Facebook page.

PLAYERS TO WATCH THIS

SPRING SEASON

I remember when I was about 5 years old, I asked my father what would happen if I were to start root-ing for the Atlanta Braves.

“I would miss you,” he replied. Con-fused, I asked him why.

“Well, you wouldn’t be living in this house anymore,” he explained. Backtracking furiously, believing

his joke to be a real threat, I pledged my allegiance to one team, the New York Mets.

Now before you crumple this newspaper in disgust, let me tell you why I love the Mets. It’s not because I can go to their home stadium every other weekend to watch them play. It’s not because I enjoy being met with derision, taunts and jeers when I reveal which team I support. And it’s certainly not because of their record in recent years.

No, the real reason why I’m a proud Mets fan is because of the camaraderie and connectivity that I feel to the team and to the whole fan base. It doesn’t really matter what team you root for though, because as long as you are a fan of any team—baseball,

football, basketball, Little League—you belong to a family.My history with the Mets goes way back. Both of my parents

are from New York, and they met and were engaged at Shea Stadium, the old home of the Mets. For a five-year stretch, my birthday present was to go with my dad to see the Mets play at Turner Field. My first celebrity crush was on the team’s third baseman, David Wright. And the first song that my dad sang to me as a baby, within 24 hours of my birth, was “Meet the Mets,” the team’s theme song of which I now know all of the words.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, however, that I realized the true power behind team spirit. The Mets were playing at Shea Stadium for their last season before it was getting torn down and replaced by the current ballpark, Citi Field. My parents wanted my siblings and me to watch at least one home game in the old stadium before it was gone, so we flew up to New York to watch the Mets play the Phillies during spring break.

The game was different than anything I had experienced in Atlanta. People actually booed for the other team instead of the Mets, and nobody started that terrible Tomahawk Chop. But the biggest difference was that you could almost feel a tangible connection between you and everybody else in the stands. In

Atlanta, my family and I were “those obnoxious Mets fans” that annoyed all of the surrounding Braves fans. In New York, we were just one speck in the great big sea of blue and orange, and together we were all a part of the team on the field.

Similarly, when the Atlanta Falcons had their incredible sea-son this year, the entire city seemed to be caught up in Falcons fever. You could barely take a step without running into a fan or overhearing a conversation about the team. The aura of hope, pride and intensity permeated the air. That is an example of team spirit at its very best.

Sometimes, however, it’s just the little things that can separate the fair-weather fan from the lifelong supporter. Like how my family boos loudly every time we drive past Turner Field on the way to the airport. Like how our basset hound’s name is Ike, after the Mets’ first baseman Ike Davis. Like how I can tell when the Mets lost just by the sour mood that pervades our house.

So while it physically pains me to say anything good about the Braves, I can appreciate their devoted fan base. Regardless of the strength of your affiliation with a sports team, just root-ing for any team brings you into a unique community of fans, friends and team favorites. But let’s go Mets! p

Alex Wolfe

Mets fan feels spirit, Braves rough waters in Atlanta

SENIOR PERRI BONNER “[Bonner’s] been our leading

scorer for the past three years,” Coach Rodney Thomas said. “Despite the fact the opponents know about her and key on her, she should still produce the same she has in the past seasons”

BASeBAll TeNNISUlTIMATe fRISBeelACRoSSe

JUNIOR CARLOS VALDIVIESO

“[Valdivieso’s] been injured at the end of the past two

seasons so we haven’t been able to use him in

those games,” Coach Thomas Waller said. “This season, I’ve challenged him to stay

healthy and to score goals in double digits. “

TRACK AND fIelD

SENIOR CHAD WATSON“[Watson] has already received a partial scholarship to play golf at the University of Georgia.” Coach Linda Brasher said. “He is just a

great kid because he’s strong academically and is just an all

around role model.”

JUNIOR SHACORA THOMAS“[Thomas] has been playing at

First Tee over in Eastlake for years,“ Coach Linda Brasher

said. “As far as female golfers go, she’s really great. She is definitely

on track to receive scholarships for golf.”

ZOE SCHNEIDER “[Schneider] is coming into the season already equipped with solid disc skills,” Coach Haley Reese said. “I’m looking forward to seeing her distribute the Frisbee whilst breaking apart our opponent’s defensive sets.”

KAYLA VALLEY“[Valley’s] taken a leadership role on the team,” Coach Scott Stephens said. “She challenges others on the team to get in shape. She hustles, and she’s just got a great attitude.”

SoCCeRGolf

LINDSAY VAN BECK“She’s going to be top of the line this season,“ Coach Martha Jones said. “She really put a lot of preparation into the season by going to clinics and playing fall ball.”

NYLA WOODS“[Woods] placed second in the shot put at state last year,” Coach Randy Reed said. “Normally 35 meters is good, but she does 40 meters. [Her throw] is probably one of the best in the country.”

FELTON GRAY“Felton didn’t score last year at state in the high jump, but he competed very well,” Coach Delbert Ellerton said. “The expectation is that he should be able to score this year.”

For more information on each athlete, go to thesoutherneronline.com

LacrosseSoccer

Feb. 8Grady 3, Dutchtown 0Grady 12, Dutchtown 0Feb. 12-Feb.13Paideia 4, Grady 0Grady 2, Paideia 1Feb. 15Westminister 4, Grady 0

Feb. 19Grady 3, Riverwood 3Feb. 22Grady 6, Clarkston 1Feb. 26Grady 0, Lakeside 0Lakeside 1, Grady 0

p Boysp Girls

Feb. 20Grady 13, Southwest DeKalb 3Feb. 23Grady 8, River Ridge 7

Marist 56, Grady 52

State ChampionshipFeb. 19R. Ridge 48, Grady 43Feb. 20Grady 61, NW Whitfield 47Feb. 23Alexander 66, Grady 59

Baseball

Feb. 20Mays 1, Grady 0Feb. 23Riverwood 13, Grady 5Feb. 25Arabia Mountain 7, Grady 4Feb. 27Galloway 4, Grady 3

LUKE LEONARD, LIAM HENRY, PETER MASTIN AND OSCAR PRIOLEAU

“Leonard, Henry, Mastin and Prioleau are my top four starters. I rely on them heavily,” Coach Mark Davidson said. ”They’re all juniors so expect all of them to have a breakout year.”

JUNIOR LUkE LEONARD•JUNIOR LIAM HENRY•JUNIOR PETER MASTIN•JUNIOR OSCAR PRIOLEAU•JUNIOR FELTON GRAY•SENIOR JAWAYLAN BROOkS•JUNIOR NYLA WOODS•JUNIOR DIONNA RILEY•SENIOR BILAL VAUGHN•SENIOR ALEX STEARNS-BERNHART•SOPHOMORE LINDSAY VAN BECk•JUNIOR TENICIAH DIXON•SENIOR JASMINE MOON•JUNIOR SEBBI DIFRANCESCO•SENIOR JOE LAVINE•JUNIOR ZOE SCHNEIDER•SENIOR kAYLA VALLEY•SENIOR JEFFREY COX.