Harrison Quinton The Columbine Highschool Massacre happened almost seventeen years ago. The massacre was a wake up call for many americans to the bullying in American schools. Though the shooting happened many years ago, the statement the shooting showed to America is still very pertinent today. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were bullied continuously for about four years, which is what caused the young teens to commit this heinous act. Today in America, the message of the zero tolerance policy is strongly enforced by every school. The columbine shooting occurred on April 20th, 1999, the day that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine high school and took the lives of fifteen students and teachers. Before the shooting, policies on bullying were far more lax than they are today, letting the parents at home settle the problem of bullying. After the shooting, many school’s eyes were opened to the problem of bullying. Columbine also influenced other shootings from around the country, many believed to be inspired or influenced by the brutality of the Columbine shooting. In today’s society, many people still feel trapped by the issue of bullying. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were just the first to be nationally recognized by the public. They were harassed at school for years before the shooting took place. Harris and Klebold also made a series of video diaries documenting what they were planning to do in the shooting. This is all a big reminder that bullying is still a very prevalent issue in America today, as it was in the days before the columbine shooting.
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Harrison QuintonDue to the interference of man on Earth, the climate has changed globally. Due to humans constantly using non-renewable resources, we have effectively terraformed the planet for the worse. Areas of the planet that should be cold are becoming hot, places that should be hot are turning cold, and a mixture of droughts and flooding have ravaged many communities around the world. Many people have experienced catastrophes due to changes in the environment, including heavy flooding, long droughts and drastic crop damage. Recently, countries have also been noticing more subtle changes in the weather, for example unpredictable rain storms or overly warm winters. More specifically, Kentucky has been adversely affected, and it may only get worse from here. Many remember that this past Christmas was unusually warm, somewhere in the seventy degree area. This is not only a subtle temperature change, it entails much worse weather to come. The weather has been fluctuating rapidly over the past few years, the changes occurring quicker and quicker as time goes on. If this keeps up, not only will humans be adversely affected, but also all our plants and animals will be too. Food storages would go deplete due to farm animals not being able to adapt to the rapid weather change. Certain crops cannot handle extreme hot or cold weather, so the crops could be destroyed and food shortages would start to rise. Also, weather catastrophes could occur to us here in Kentucky too. We are relatively close to tornado alley, and tornados occur when a cold front meets a warm front and the air mixes. If these temperature fluctuations continue as they do, we could be dragged into tornado alley and a heightened level of tornadoes could occur and the occurrences would become bigger and more violent, until there is a major statewide disaster. To avoid this, we should start thinking about majorly cutting back on the use of non-renewable fossil fuels, then we can fix the climate. Harrison QuintonThe view of the universe is interpreted in many different ways by many different people. But, thanks to science, we may now have a better understanding on how the universe really is. The old school of thought used to be put into two sections. One section suggested that all galaxies are separate and aren’t connected by anything but space. The other section was that all galaxies are connected by walls, sort of like a honeycomb. But, thanks to Princeton Astrophysicist Richard Gott, we now have a much better idea of how the universe really looks and works. Gott’s view of the universe is sort of a compromise of theories. The idea goes that the universe is like a giant web, everything connected by cosmic material formed after the big bang during cosmic expansion. This way of thinking about the universe has been vindicated with the development of telescopes, proving that the universe is more like a giant web of cosmic material. This view of the universe has greatly changed our understanding of everything around us. Knowing how the universe works and what it looks like is only the first step in being able to travel and tame the universe for ourselves. The importance of understanding the universe is often overshadowed by the petty debates on how the universe was created or it’s purpose to us. The main focus in the universe should be in trying to understand it how it is now, not how it was created or why it was created. These debates are pointless if the main picture is totally missed in the process of debating. Sarah Showalter California is taking a big step; not just for themselves, but possibly for the rest of the nation, too. Starting January 1st, Senate Bill 358 (SB 358), eliminated the gender wage gap in California by reinforcing the existing Equal Pay Act of 1963. They intend to do this by having stricter rules within workplaces so that it will be very difficult to not earn the same pay as someone of the opposite sex in a position similar to your own.
The idea of equal pay began during the Industrial Revolution and it wasn’t illegal to have unequal wages until June 11, 1964, when the Equal Pay Act was established. Until the 1960’s, newspapers published separate job listings for men and women. The jobs were categorized according to sex, with the higher level jobs listed almost exclusively under “Help wanted- Male.” In other cases, ads ran with the same exact jobs for men and women, but for different wages. Without SB 358, full-time working white women in California would make 88¢ for every dollar white men would make; African American women would make about 64¢; and Hispanic women would make about 54¢. The result of this gap being a loss of roughly $33 billion a year. If California had passed this bill a while ago, it would have saved women a lot of pay discrimination, but the Equal Pay Act of 1963 restricted them. This bill strongly discouraged the discussion of employee’s wages. Because of this, many women, such as Chicas, the co-founder of Latinas in Stem, who “. . . never had the courage to ask others what they were making and didn’t know how to negotiate a better salary.” According to The Guardian, California’s state senator and author of the Fair Pay Act, Hannah-Beth Jackson, says “SB 358 was inspired by President Barack Obama’s focus on fair pay for women, actress Patricia Arquette’s impassioned plea during her 2015 Academy Award acceptance speech, and that data shows that as the economy improves, women are not benefiting.” Parts of SB 358 include revising current labor laws referring to equal pay for equal work. Equal work means that work is done with substantially similar work, skill, effort, responsibility and is done under resembling work conditions. Although SB 358 is much like the Equal Pay Act of 1963, there are a couple differences that made all the difference when the new bill was passed. This bill enables employees to freely ask and/or discuss pay wages with other employees, with no consequences. This bill also states that if a company has two employees that hold the same or similar position in two different locations, the company must pay the employees the same pay wage. “The new law is just the beginning. A long period of transition will be needed for companies to adapt to the reality of being open about salaries because people have different levels of comfort talking about pay.” Said Claudia Galvan, the president of the Society of Women Engineers Santa Clara Valley section. Sarah ShowalterCharger PRIDE is our new thing here at J-Town. Dr. Kingsley came up with this concept.
P- Perseverance R- Responsibility/Respect I- Integrity D- Discipline E- Engagement I can see this “project” going far and making a lot of improvements to our school. Even though the purpose of this isn’t to gain school spirit, I think we will see major changes in our spirit, if we carry it out. Pride in our school would be the cause of many things such as an increase in our academic potential, each student’s character, and even our ability to better our society. Believe it or not, school pride can actually improve test scores drastically. With school pride, students’ grades on tests, homework, health, and overall well-being improve greatly. When you walk through the halls and into the classrooms at J-Town, you should feel light-hearted and you should want to be there. When students don’t feel this way, their test scores, grades, and most importantly, their health declines. Then, they start to hate school and they don’t do their work because they don’t care and it all just goes downhill from here. When you have pride in your school and you want to be there, you strive to do well in your classes and boost your grade. School pride can teach you a lot about yourself as a person. Your limitations, ways you express yourself, and what you set your priorities as can become very apparent to you. When it comes to having pride in your school, some people don’t have limits. They dress in complete school attire and dress to the max for spirit week. Some students, and even teachers, will get up in front of the whole school in a pep rally and chant, get squirted with silly spray, race each other, and anything they have to do to show that they love their school. The Huffington Post included a quote from Michael Fullan, an education reform leader, who said that “principals should prioritize their school’s culture over everything else because it can make all the difference.” When this happens, you learn what it’s like to devote yourself to something bigger than you. This can lead you to recognize what you can contribute to your society to make it a better environment. As you start to get into your school more, you start to treat it better and with more respect. Consequently, your environment also becomes important for you to keep clean, so that we can all function in a neat manner. Studies show that students in classrooms optimally designed for “daylighting progressed 20% faster on math tests and 26% faster on reading tested in one year than those with the least amount of daylight.” And this is just the lighting of the school, there are so many other factors that go into keeping our school a safe and fresh-feeling. There are so many reasons for everyone to have pride in anything they do, especially our school because our identity can easily be found in the years we spend here. It would be completely illogical to treat our high school like it doesn’t matter. We need perseverance so we make it through the tough times, we must respect others and ourselves, and take responsibility for everything we do. We, as a school, should have integrity so we always feel led to tell the truth, we need to discipline ourselves so that we meet our goals, and we must be engaged because if we are, we can learn so much more. Ariyanna S. Bryson Tiller was born January 2, 1993 in Louisville, KY. Louisville’s own is on the rise to be the hottest R’n’B/ rap sensation. What influenced Bryson Tiller to start singing was Omarion and R. Kelly who are also rappers. When he was 15 years old, he and a few friends bought some studio time and began pursuing Tiller’s career. Ever since Tiller released his summer hit single “Don’t”, he skyrocketed to the top. The hit song now has over 3 million plays on soundcloud. Although the song was such a hit Tiller wasn’t sure about it. He told Vibe Magazine that he uploaded it twice before finally leaving it up. When “Don't” hit 3 million plays, Tiller said “ I didn’t think the song would be such a huge hit amongst today's generation.” Bryson Tiller is currently 23 years old with three hit songs “Don’t”, “Sorry not Sorry”, and “Let em’ Know”. He has also recently released an album on September 25, 2015 named TRAPSOUL. The album is still a huge hit today played on every pop/rap station. Even as a hit artist, Bryson Tiller hasn’t forgotten about his home roots here in Louisville. He is coming back on March 12, 2016 for a concert at the Louisville Palace where he will be sure to target the bodies and souls of the 502.
Sidney ParkerEveryone is passionate about something. Whether it's a sport, hobby, topic or person. That is what makes America so great; we can fully express and support any idea that we are passionate about as long as it is not a danger to others or ourselves. An extremist is a person who holds extreme or fanatical political or religious views, especially one who resorts to or advocates extreme action. But when is it too much? Where do we draw the line of being passionate and just being extra?
For example, Feminism, the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. The idea of women sticking up for themselves and fighting for gender equality is amazing. Nevertheless, practicing the hatred of men is not okay. Radical feminists have tried to pass laws where it's illegal for men to urinate standing up. There was an article that reported women having a bake sale to support feminism and charged men a $1.50 for a treat while women only had to pay .50 cents. Things like this make feminist appear as hypocrites and it is hard to gain support when you don't practice what you preach. Hatred did not help Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders get laws passed that gave equal rights to African-Americans. Moving on, feminist are not the only group of people that can be extremists. This is just an example of what extremism looks like. Considering this is a more relevant topic in the media. Deshawna B Since January 2, 2016, St. Matthews Mall has officially enforced the new ‘parental guidance’ policy. Due to the few incidents that had taken place in short amount of time in 2015 between the recent months of November and December that involved teenagers. This is the first time a policy like this policy has been placed since the ‘riot’ that was caused at the mall St. Matthews on Dec. 26 by a large group of teenagers. The mall management enforced this policy in order to control and limit teenager’s time inside the mall to avoid any more events from happening. This rule affects those ages of 18 and under. Those without an adult 21 or older, and also there is set limit on how many teens are with an adult. This looks like this can put a halt on summer plans as this rule seem like it is going to be here for a bit. Taking this in, how is this helping but hurting us one it's punishing the ones that weren't involved; second is if teenagers are bored with nothing to do what is the result more mischief. Maybe this will show sooner other than later.Another bad result of this is that most of the mall customers are teenagers and will affect the economic state of St. Matthews mall. Just a little food for thought on the subject from a teenager perspective.
Lindsay Orosz Every year, both the Journalism and Yearbook classes here at J-town attend the annual Journalism Scholars Day program at Western Kentucky University. WKU is recognized to have the best Journalism program represented by their newspaper, The Herald, and their school yearbook, The Talisman. Each year WKU opens up their doors to inform and educate journalism and yearbook classes all around Kentucky and to help them broaden their skills. The trip this year went great as opposed to other times where the bus has broken down and caused the class to miss two out of the three classes. For one day three sessions are offered to enhance skills in journalism. For each session, there are a multitude of interesting classes to be chosen from such as Design 101 all the way to Creating Cartoons. The classes are taught by Journalism majors and students involved with The Herald and The Talisman. To be most effective, each student focuses on their own individual needs and requirements and goes to a class most necessary to them. Altogether, the Journalism and Yearbook class here at J-town takes back all of their newfound skills and information to make both The Imprint and The Charger more captivating and intriguing than before. Harrison Quinton NASA has been contemplating to send a manned mission to mars. Naturally, this has rekindled NASA’s need for new, younger astronauts. So, NASA has announced that they want to encourage new space pioneers to join the space exploration project. Of course, getting into this program is not easy, it takes rigorous physical expectations and education requirements. First of all, you have to be in peak physical condition to even be considered for the program. Being an astronaut takes a certain amount of education as well. To be considered for the program you must also meet a certain education requirement. The main education requirement for astronauts is a bachelor's degree in math, engineering, and various sciences like physics and biology. Also, having three years of related job experience is also suggested. You also need about 1000 hours of jet airplane flight experience to be able to pass the flight training program you need to go through. There is also a sight requirement, being that all pilots need to have 20/20 vision or something equal. This means that having Lasik surgery is allowed as long as it has been at least a year since the surgery was performed. A certain height is also preferred for astronauts, usually being about 5ft 2in to 6ft 3in. All of these requirements should not deter you from attempting to become an astronaut, over the last 50 years, NASA has chosen 321 people from around the world to be astronauts.
So, all of you young space pioneers should think about becoming an astronaut, the world could always use more stargazers out there discovering the dark depths of the abyss that is space. Though, for that mission to mars, would be space goers should be aware of another recent discovery made by nasa. That discovery was that the surface of mars is covered in a thick acidic fog. While nasa was inspecting images taken from the mars rover, scientists noticed a very unusual erosion pattern on the martian rocks. This led scientists to study the composition of the air on Mars. This analyzation of the martian atmosphere revealed that mars actually has acidic fog that rolls over the entirety of the planet. This new information has let nasa re-adjust all of their preparations for a mars mission. There will need to be a modification to the standard space suits nasa uses to resist the acidic fog that accompanies the surface all over mars. All these discoveries are leading to a better future for space exploration and the well being of future generations. |
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