vol v issue ii heritage high school’s student newspaper...
TRANSCRIPT
Vol V Issue II March 1st, 2013 Heritage High School’s Student Newspaper
By: Troy Schmidt
Editorial…….……………...2
Student Politics……..........3
Pope……………….……...4
Warm Bodies Review......6
Wrestling…………………..7
By: Courtney Spiess
To put an end to much specu-lation from Heritage High School students, from the classrooms to the twitter-sphere: Yes, Heritage will have a winter dance this year. Currently scheduled for March 16th, all of the planning for this
dance can be credited to the fresh-men members of SGA.
Tickets will be sold starting March 4th and will not be sold at the door. With a theme of a “spring night”, students are told to dress in “more casual dance wear”. For ladies this means dinner wear or a nice dress, so long as it’s dress code appropriate, and for boys a nice dress shirt, possibly a sweater vest. The most unusual aspect of this dance relates to the freshmen SGA decision to make it a Sadie Hawkins dance.
In very simple terms, a Sadie Hawkins dance means a dance where, unlike cultural norms, girls ask guys to the dance. Our Sadie Hawkins dance actually lives up to par with other Sadie Hawkins dances across both the Cap-8 and our country. A traditional Sadie Hawkins dance takes place be-tween Homecoming in the fall and Prom at the end of the year, and
normally the standard attire reads “less formal”.
Where does this tradition come from? Surprisingly, the tradition originates from a hillbilly comic strip called Li’l Abner. The dance idea comes from a particular strip about a character named Sadie Hawkins. The prettiest girl in her whole town, by the age of 35, Sadie grew bored waiting for suitors to come to her, and her father didn’t want to risk her living at home forever. Her father arranged from her to chase all eligi-ble bachelors around town, and when she caught a suitor, she would marry him. The idea transi-tioned from comic strip to colleges in 1937, in a monumental role re-versal for the time period.
Now the time comes for the dance tradition to continue, ladies better ask the guy of your dreams before someone else does!
A new school year brings new changes. One of those new changes includes new courses. Heritage proudly offers new courses for the 2013-2014 school year.
This school year, Heritage offered Chinese as a new language course and offered a variety of Advanced Placement classes such as AP World Geography. Students can anticipate AP Psychology, Sign Language, and PEPI courses next year.
Heritage currently offers Hon-ors Psychology. Next year, Mr. Kraft plans to teach AP Psychol-ogy. The curriculum for AP Psy-chology differs from the Honors course.
The athletic department offers
PEPI, a course for students who desire to become a PE teacher. The course requires an application and students must be in 12th grade.
Speech I and II are two Eng-lish electives being offered next year. Mr. Macleod described speech I as a “fun” elective where students can practice public speak-ing with activities such as a best man speech. Speech II will be much of the same, but with an honors option. Students in speech II honors will automatically join the debate team and focus their class time on preparing for that.
Students can also sign up for other electives such as Astronomy and Animal Science.
The Career Technical Educa-tion Cluster Table, given to students from student services, helped stu-dents choose classes that center around a certain career choice. For example, one cluster included Arts,
A/V Technology & Communication. Another cluster consisted of Agricul-ture, Foods & Natural Resources classes. Students can also speak with Ms. Wiggins, the Career Devel-opment Coordinator at Heritage.
Staff members at Heritage encourage students to talk to their counselors and look at their teacher recommendations for course selec-tions. With the variety of classes offered at Heritage, staff also rec-ommends that students register for classes that gear towards their interests or that prepare them for classes in college.
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Editorial/Opinion
Want to voice your opinion? Send your letters to the editor to: [email protected]
The Heritage Herald March 1st, 2013
By: Troy Schmidt
Our generation grew up in an inter-esting time to go through the American education system. We grew up a scan-tron generation. Fueled by the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2002, from 3rd grade on, standardized testing took root as one of the core elements of our education. No longer could teachers teach what and how they wanted to teach, they now taught a curriculum focused on ensuring their students passed the End Of Grade test, or EOG. Their reasoning seemed to be, if you can pass a test you must have mas-tered the material and be ready to move on.
Beyond testing, what goal do American students possess? If you ask 99.9% of students their answer will probably be, “Go to college”. From a very early age, peers, parents, and teachers tell students they must go to college if they want to be successful in life. Both of these philosophies im-pacted the American education system, in very different ways. In both theories, it seems to be a fair statement that the real losers are we, the students.
Okay, so maybe standardized test-ing doesn’t work, but surely college works for everyone? After all, our whole life teachers have told us that we must go to college if we want to be successful in life. The sad reality exists
that only 56% of students finish their college degree, according to The New York Times. 44% of students go to col-lege and leave without a degree. Not only does that create difficulty in finding a job, each year in college means sev-eral thousand dollars in debt. In fact, the rising cost of college, which nearly increased six fold since 1985, remains the main reason many students don’t complete their degree.
Look around you. Chances are the first ten students you see want to go to college. Now imagine that only 5 or 6 of them, statistically, graduate. A scary thought for a generation told everyone must go to college. In modern America, however, this message no longer rings true. Students must realize that college is not a necessity, but a risk. You take the risk that you stay focused and graduate with your desired degree, then use that degree in order to get the job you desire. You also assume that the job provided by that degree allows you to repay your student debt loans.
This “everyone must go to col-lege” also created an almost crazy gen-eration of Americans. Students con-stantly worry about their GPA, passing the class takes importance over learn-ing the material. Students fill their schedules with AP and Honors classes until their workload could only accu-rately be described as crazy and over-whelming.
Simply googling “how to fix the American education system” brings up everything from articles to Youtube videos on the subject. At a personal level though, I just hope you keep two ideas in mind. One, you spend a larger portion of your life working, enjoy your time in high school and college. So what if you get a B instead of an A?
Sometimes it happens, stressing over a grade won’t improve it.
Two, always keep your options open. If you don’t feel college will work for you, life goes on. Plenty of great options exist without college. If money seems to be the problem, consider enlisting in the U.S. Armed Forces or Reserves, then using your GI Bill money to pay for college. Life doesn’t have a script, and sometimes you have to take the pen into your own hands.
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“College is a refuge
from hasty judgment”
~ Robert Frost
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Student Politics
By: Brad Anderton
March 1st, 2013 The Heritage Herald
By: Jonathan Coby
Congratulations!
The Heritage Herald would like to congratulate Jonathan
Coby and Brad Anderton on their success at the YMCA
Youth & Government Session.
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Spending cuts are almost unheard of in Washington D.C. However, a battle is currently going on that promises to change that. The sequestration, now also affectionately known as the “Meat Cleaver,” that takes effect on March 1st, with proposed spending cuts of $85 billion this year alone. That will extend to include more than $1 trillion in automatic cuts over the next decade - a very reasonable amount if you account for the base-line budgeting that goes on in Washington D.C.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree that spending cuts are an integral part of saving the country from financial crisis, but they disagree on how to get there. The current cuts are set to hit the US military the hardest, an idea that has neo-conservative Republicans up in arms. They instead point to more cuts in welfare programs, social security, etc, an idea that has moderate to very liberal democrats, including the President, up in arms as well. So then, it seems there is a grid-locked stalemate as usual in national politics.
Speaker Boehner and President Obama have been going back and forth as representatives of their respective parties, each arguing against any proposed ideas from the other side. For example, the President commented the Congress should not allow the “meat cleaver” to destroy the lives of so many dependent on that welfare assistance in the United States. Boehner was quick to fire back, reminding the President that the idea of automatic spending cuts was his and his party’s idea, so he should live with the reality that he has helped cre-ate.
At the end of the day, the bickering needs to stop and prudence should prevail. The government needs to, as both sides have agreed, cut money in order to survive. If that means a smaller military budget and changing social security, so be it. As an onlooker, the solution seems relatively simple. If the government lowered tax rates across the board again as to encourage spending, match that with spending cuts so to slow (and hopefully end) the deficit, de-regulate business to increase growth, and finally keep a tight control of the money supply to keep inflation rates low, the country would get back on track in a heartbeat. Less government is a better govern-ment, and it is time the people on Capitol Hill started to realize that. Let it be.
Last Tuesday, newly inaugurated Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill that imposes outright draconian cuts to the state’s unemployment insurance program and restricts access to federal unemployment compensation. The law reduces the maximum benefit from $530 to $350 a week, while cutting eligible weeks from 26 to 20. These asinine cuts constitute the most severe cuts to both state and federal unemployment insurance in the nation. North Carolina’s jobless rate, the fifth highest in the nation at 9.2 percent, is clearly not a concern to Governor McCrory or the Republican legislature. To McCrory and the goons in the legislature, the state of the economy and the unemployed are simply props used to win elections, from which point they utterly disregard both and proceed to govern as right-wing ideologues.
As the bill goes into effect, 400,000 North Carolinians and their families will go from barely making ends meet to barely being able to survive. Beyond that, the entire state will take a hit from the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending at local businesses. Republican State Senators tout the bill as a “re-employment” program that somehow encourages people to look so hard for non-existent jobs that the jobs will suddenly exist. This, of course, is despite the fact that countless studies have shown that workers who receive unemployment benefits search much harder for jobs than those who don’t.
Governor McCrory claims all of this is a “fix” to the unem-ployment insurance program. North Carolinians should hope to God that our Governor and legislature don’t try to fix any-thing else.
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By: Abby Webb
News
March 1st, 2013 The Heritage Herald
By: Jessica Swanson
Most everyone heard when Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. At the age of 85, the pope came to realize his health issues and plans to step down at the end of the month, becoming the first pope to resign in six centuries. He says to the New York Times, “Before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are [no] longer suited to an adequate exercise.”
Born in Germany and originally Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI became the Roman Catholic Church’s 265th pope in April 2005. Prior to becoming the pope, many years before, people knew him as an intriguing scholar and eager to learn man. He kept a conservative view on his teachings, just like the pope be-fore him, John Paul II. Previous to 2005, Benedict XVI led the Congre-gation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In his hour, the pope dealt with sexual abuse scandals in the church, wars all around, and general critics. Benedict XVI held responsibility for revoking the excommunications of four bishops, meaning he brought them back into the Roman Catholic society with forgiveness, even though they did wrong. One of these bishops, Richard Williamson, said on live tele-vision that he believes only 300,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust (the accepted number is 6 million). Outraged and confused, the public
reacted immediately, questioning the pope’s own opinion in this event.
In the past year, a scandal named VatiLeaks occurred. Basically, the pope’s butler was arrested on charges of leaking secret documents. People called the scandal “one of the most serious breaches of Vatican secrecy” overall. Later, police convicted two officials.
The inevitable question of “Who will be the next pope?” still looms while Benedict XVI steps down. According to CNN, his successor will be selected by the College of Cardinals. Much like the Electoral College, there must be a two-thirds vote in order to be elected. Ru-mors fly about where the new pope will come from. Some say he might come from the United States or Latin America. From the New York Times, Cardinal George spoke on behalf of the choice, saying, “It matters far less where he lives.”
While marriage amendments and gay rights arguments march up and down the streets here in America, over-seas laws pass with flying rainbow col-ors. According to CNN, the UK legalized same-sex marriage on February 5 in a 400-175 vote by the House of Commons soon after. The bill allows same-sex cou-ples to marry, and it also permits civil partnerships to convert to marriages and married transsexuals to remain married while gaining legal recognition as their
acquired gender.
While civil partnerships in England and Wales have been legal since 2004, the term “marriage” applies now. "Whatever you are, if you love that per-son, then you should have the rights to be joined in matrimony with them,” Tony
Drewitt-Barlow, a man in a civil partner-ship said in CNN’s article “UK lawmakers
approve same-sex marriage in first vote”.
The bill does carry some opposition, particularly from the Church of England. Provisions have been made to ensure that, though any religious organization that wishes to can grant a same-sex cou-ples marriage, none have to do so. The House of Lords still needs to vote on the issue, but excitement and hopes run high
in the United Kingdom.
France also made a major move a week later in deciding to give same-sex couples the freedom to call their relation-ships marriages, and the lower house of the French parliament passed a bill al-lowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. This time the opposition
rests with the Catholic Church, though ac-cording to BBC, 55-60% of French citizens
support gay marriage.
Europe, though, doesn’t stand as the only place where homosexuals gained rights. On Valentine’s Day, Illinois voted to legalize gay marriage, a huge step forward, especially as President Barack Obama’s home state. With every step forward same-sex marriage supporters march further in
the parade.
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For news on the prom,
follow @HHSProm2013
on twitter!
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By: Abby Webb
Student Life
March 1st, 2013 The Heritage Herald
By: Troy Schmidt
In preparation for next month, the Fine Arts hallway has been composing vigorously; both the chorus and the band
have big plans in their schedules.
Mrs. Hathaway, the chorus instructor, is ready for the two-day competition called MPA (Music Performance Assessment) the first week in March. All schools in Wake County will cooperate. “Wake County is the most competitive area”, says Hathaway. “We compete against ourselves, trying to better ourselves, but they can’t help but compare our perform-
ance to other schools.”
Later, the chorus will be competing in the Heritage Choral Festival located on the high school grounds. Hathaway is excited to host and participate in this
event. The competitors will include Heri-tage Elementary and Heritage Middle School, in an attempt to show the younger kids what to anticipate as they move up in their schooling. Each group will perform two pieces and a sight reading for the judges. A sight reading is when a group is given brand new music and one to two minutes to prepare to perform this music. Intensity runs high. Free to all students,
the festival occurs March 14th.
The chorus is also performing their spring concert on March 21st at 6:30. It will
be $1 for students.
The first thing Mr. McCaskill said when I asked him about upcoming events with the band was, “More HIPE.” Although the band kids are “hyped up”, HIPE stands for Heritage Indoor Percussion Ensemble, the school’s winter drum line program. Along with the winter guard, the drum line will go to compete at West
Johnston High School on March 9th and again at Green Hope High School on March 23rd. The band, which consists of winds at this time, plans to attend their MPA at Franklinton High School on March
27th.
Both the band and chorus work ex-tremely hard, and just like a team, they need students in the crowd, encouraging them. It would be much appreciated if students came out and cheered them on at their competitions or showed sup-
port at a concert.
Heritage Records, an idea by Mr. Bullock to help tap into the “diverse pool of talent here at Heritage High School”, cre-ates a unique opportunity for Heritage High School students and teachers. The idea behind the project seems simple- provide students with a “safe environment for crea-tivity.” Mr. Bullock also discussed his hope that talent involved with the program could use this as an “avenue” not only to develop their talent, but also to experience the busi-ness aspect of the industry. For the teach-ers, this creates a whole different opportu-nity, one that can create a bridge to help teachers connect with their students on a
deeper level.
Mr. Bullock and the crew of stu-dents already created an ideal plan. The official unveiling of Heritage Records be-gins with the album they expect to release mid-April. The current crew: Mike Saunders (a producer Loon Links), Malic Walker (a rapper/producer by the name of Infinite),
Trevor Shores (who raps under the name T), Jahaad Dennis (who raps under Tekka), Dylan Gowler (who raps under White Gold), Luve Johnson (who raps under 1 luve), Jonathan Magana (who raps under J. Ghost), and Keon Sands (who is a rapper/visual artist), and Mr. Williams, a poet who helps out with the club. Once these students pro-duce their album, the club officially starts. Any student wanting to join should contact the talent scout for their grade level, who will help them begin the process. Students must also main-
tain a GPA above 2.5.
One of the most impor-tant aspects of Heritage Re-cords comes from students not involved with the club. Mr. Bul-lock hopes that the whole school comes together to sup-port Heritage Records, so they can eventually use that support
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to spread to other schools. For the stu-dents involved, this club represents a goal being accomplished. As Mike Saunders put it “It all started as a dream [ and we’re] trying to make it a reality”. Jonathan Ma-gana added, “It’s a culture. Everyone here loves music.” Be sure to keep your eyes, and ears, out for the Heritage Record al-
bum dropping sometime in the future.
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Arts & Entertainment
March 1st, 2013 The Heritage Herald
By: Jessica Swanson
Warm Bodies, the recent film starring Nico-las Hoult and Teresa Palmer, breaks all the clichés while somehow also fulfilling them. It basically encapsulates every romantic-comedy stereotype ever written… but with a zombie. It features the classic makeover montage overlain with pop music… with a zombie. It covers the oh-so-familiar walking in the rain scene… with a zombie. It even throws in the goofy trying-on-sunglasses medley… with a zombie. And it works.
The film opens in a post-apocalyptic world divided into humans and “corpses,” the humans’ name for the risen undead that plague the streets. Julie, a human whose father heads the hunt for corpses, ventures into Zombieland only to be saved from a group of corpses by R, a corpse struggling to become human again. The
country ran so rampant that these mass shootings became biweekly, with the casu-alties growing more and more. It’s no se-cret: Violence in America shot out of con-trol.
The king of horror himself, Stephen King, threw his hat into the ring in the form of Guns, a Kindle single published on January 25 that pulls no punches, attack-ing all the sides and subjects that form the greater gun debate as a whole. He very poignantly articulates his thoughts while having the frank and brash style that is omnipresent in his fiction works, asking such questions to gun owners like “Do you really need an assault rifle?”, “Do you really need a pistol to protect your fam-ily?”, and so on. His thoughts on guns emanate not from emotion, but from facts, logic, and reason. I’ve always noticed about people that argue for stricter gun laws that most of them tend to be victims or related to victims of gun violence and don’t want anyone to go through what they went through. Though a great sentiment, I believe it unwise to have nothing but pure
2012 memorialized itself as a water-shed year for gun violence in the United States. Starting off with the fatal shoot-ing of unarmed seventeen year old Trayvon Martin, continuing near the mid-dle of the year with the shooting in the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorada and the shooting of a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and topping off the year with the shooting of Sandy Hook Elementary School in New-town, Connecticut, gun violence in this
By: Will Bois
emotion sway you to any issue. But fortu-nately, Stephen King does not fall into using appeal to emotion, as he researched and thought out all of his arguments for gun control incredibly well, proving King no one-trick pony in that his exceptional writ-ing covers journalism as well as horror.
Stephen King stated that this essay aims to start discussion, and hopefully it will. With his trademark wit and sophistica-tion at hand, King put the best effort in the ever growing gun control debate, using rationality and reason as his weapon of choice for giving his views on one of America’s most hostile and volatile topics. While I didn’t agree with everything he said, I definitely respect the fact that he told it like it is in his mind and wrote flat-out honestly about it. Some people refuse to touch this subject with a ten-foot pole, regardless of whether they lean Democrat or Republican. King, on the other hand, doesn’t flinch one bit, showing us the clear and light in a topic that remained muddled and dark for much too long. Guns can be purchased on Amazon.com for $0.99. Trust me, it’s worth it.
ensuing bond between them teaches corpses and humans alike that a way exists out of the constant war.
Miraculously, the macabre yet adorable plotline ties in perfectly with the impressive- yet not over-the-top- effects, the flawless acting, and the killer soundtrack, which features artists from Feist to Bob Dylan to Guns ‘n’ Roses. Laugh-out-loud at parts, thought-provoking at others, and equipped with a beautiful love story, the movie man-ages to refrain from being cheesy in the slightest.
The two best friends of the pro-tagonists, M and Nora, portrayed by Rob Corddry and Analeigh Tipton, stood out. These two, while withholding the rom-com cliché of the quirky best friends, also manage to stand out as
strong characters who can override the social norms (in M’s case, eating people, in Nora’s case, killing zombies) to help their best friends.
Warm Bodies, inspired by Isaac Marion’s book of the same name, ate up $11.4 million at the box office. This fantas-tic movie perfectly exemplifies the “the power of love can save the world” mentality while still maintaining a human quality and marvelous humor. I highly recommend it.
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Sports
March 1st, 2013 The Heritage Herald
By: Chelsie Sywanyk
This year’s Wrestling team encountered its successful wins and disappointing losses. Throughout this season, the team grew stronger, and learned about teamwork, and in the end it brought everyone closer. The Tri Match against Car-borro, and South Granville proved a very good match to watch. Also, another good match happened against Wake-field. That match brought you to the edge of your seat, anx-ious to see what the wrestlers would do next, especially when Tierre Davis and his opponent went into overtime in the fourth quarter. The whole match the teams competed neck and neck with the team points and also the individual points.
Overall, the wrestling team achieved a good season, even through the wins and losses. With all the challenges they had to face with the injuries, the athletes not being there and the forfeits they had to give up, they faced adversity well.
A few standout wrestlers this season were: Tierre Davis, Colin Heimann, Adam Riley, Delshown Young, Dilon Camp-bell, and Anthony Nann. These wrestlers have practiced hard, and gave all of their effort in their matches and it showed, by their hand being raised at the end of the match.
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These wrestlers performed at a high level, and executed wrestling moves that in turn gave them the win they wanted to obtain.
Congratulations to Colin Heimann, Adam Riley, Robert Berry, Anthony Nann, Delshown Young, Dilon Campbell, and Tierre Davis, on qualifying for regional's. Even as the season ends, they will still work hard to continue their success at regional's and the offseason to ensure they follow up next year.
By: Troy Schmidt
As the Heritage High School Men’s Basketball team finishes up their season, they have a lot to reflect on. With their first class of seniors graduating, the team set out with a lot of expectations. The team’s 6-18 record (2-13 in confer-ence), does not do the team’s season justice. Three conference games were lost by one shot. Eleven games overall were lost by a single digit score. A few more shots fall, a few more fouls called, and
suddenly the team holds a few more wins.
Despite these struggles, the team did enjoy success in many areas. Senior Mike Dix led the team in points, 196, and assists, 53, while starting every game for the team on his way to being named all conference. In his first and only season with the Huskies, he transferred from Enloe this year, Mike played well for the team. Josh Katowitz, a junior, led the team with 132 rebounds and added a third contributing year of varsity basketball to his resume. Another senior, Caleb Carter, added 146 points and shot 78% from the free-throw line. Jared Joyner and Ger-shom Ejoni, both sophomores, demon-strated what the future of the program might hold. Jared started only 15 games due to injury, but still scored 136 points and recorded 46 assists. Gershom added
97 rebounds and 70 points. The team also appreciated the great support they received from their Hooligans, who showed up in great numbers for home and some key
road games.
Despite this season’s struggles, the future for Husky Men’s Basketball could be bright. Next year the team faces the loss of many seniors, but there are many poten-tial young stars in the program. Josh Ka-towitz and Nick Grover are two juniors with three years of varsity experience, and the aforementioned Jared Joyner and Ger-shom Ejoni already showed great potential. The JV team also played well, posting a 16-4 record. All of these factors point towards the fact that the Husky Men’s Basketball team could be very good in upcoming
years.
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Want to inform students of your upcoming
event?
Send upcoming events to
March 2: Applebees Flapjack PTSA Fundraiser 8am-
10pm
5: ACT (All Juniors)
9: Husky Howl Talent Show 6:30
14: Chorus Festival
15: Early Release
16: Sadie Hawkins Dance
18: Pre-paid Underclass Spring Pictures (profits
help HHS)
19: NACAC College Fair, Raleigh Civic Center 4
pm-8 pm
28-29: No School
April 1-5: Spring Break
13: Wake Forest Dream League Opening Day 10
20: Heritage High Fun Run
Purchase a business advertisement or a senior wish!
50% off for teachers
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Superlatives
Last Will and Testaments
College Decisions