Image provided by: West Linn High School; West Linn, OR
About The amplifier. (West Linn, Oregon) 1921-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 2007)
Student Opinion Matters Are we supposed to idolize these Americans? u J oseph M iller _________ Staff Reporter In 2002, the first year of "American Idol" and the explosion of Kelly Clarkson's career, it was all about the singing and raw talent. It was true, heated excitement, passion, innocence and pure energy. The buzz was everywhere; all over the pages, overflowing on the net, and on every newscast. It was a positive supernova that seemed to brighten many peoples' lives. It started at the top—a true contest for the best of the best. But it has all gone downhill from there. "American Idol” has become mote and more about the embarrassing, the strange, the scandals and the superficiality. It is all overrated, untrue drama, instead of a search for the greatest—the golden talent of one of America's citizens. This dark decline led us to today, where it is raw stupidity. It's no longer a talent show; it's casting for the most entertaining American idiot. It's pathetic really, because people who can actually sing that audition for the show don't even have a chance. They don't even get to see the judges. That's right— in this deceitful show, the people who audition are judged before they're placed in front of the gruesome threesome. In fact, they are judged three times (but judges who probably aren't even qualified to be judges, according to MSNBC) before they meet Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell, the judges of the show. And these "pre" -judges aren't even looking for singing ability—they're looking for anything that's remotely odd or strange. They then encourage the "singers" to change a little 20 minutes: too lengthy to be rule J ohn C ampbell Staff Reporter "Students are expected to be to every class on time. Everyone is to remain in the classroom for the first 20 m inutes (aides included). The beginning of each class period is a critical time to be IN CLASS. Students will n o t b e e x c u se d fo r b a t h r o o m breaks, porch use, pop machine, "visiting", w orking on com puters, etc. This time is essential for accurate attendance taking." This is word-for-word the school policy. The first 20 m inutes m ust be used for attendance taking, and not even teachers are exem pt from this. A great example of this, is if you are in a class and you're in the middle of a huge project. Your teacher has been nice and given you the period to work on the computers. In the first five m inutes of the class, attendance is taken and everyone is there. Time to w ork on the computers, right? Wrong! According to this rule, that extra 15 minutes should be wasted by sitting there until the clock goes a third of the way around. Now, I understand the im portance of taking attendance. I get it. We want to know who's here and who's not. But I m ean 20 minutes? Really? How does it take 20 m inutes to take attendance? If there is a teacher in this school who's taking a full 20 minutes to see who's absent, there is a serious problem that needs to be looked at. Twenty gmm fier w \ Linn High School, 5464 West A Street, West Linn, OR 97068 (503)673-7843 •fax: (503)657-8710 • wlhs-amplifier@wlhs.wlwv.kl2.or.us ilifier is published approximately every four weeks by the West High School Advanced Journalism class. Opinions expressed ommentaries and editorials represent only those of the writer, are not necessarily the opinions of West Linn High School, its d m i faculty, staff, or student body. fssss issi: « if.: if-ffff :- 1 « Page Editors Hilli Ciavarello, Christopher Erbin, Chris Garfield, ÌX Hays, Mary Wood Staff Reporters Megan Butts, John Cam ng & Katie Carnahan, Katie Ca: Malia Chong, Mike Sachie Hopkins, Danielli Levine, Kira Matsuoka, McGinnis, Joseph Miller, ren Pak, Ali Peterson, Jes___ Shuholm Photographers Sarah Chicoine, Chris Jon Helmkamp Adviser Ann Breyne - II m inutes is an extreme amount of time. Now, I'm sure people would say that w aiting 20 minutes gives more time to w ait for tardy students. But w hat they don't tell you is that attendance is taken electronically and can be accessed from any computer in the school. So even if someone is to walk in late, it's just a few clicks of the mouse to k send in the attendance. I can see not letting students go to bathroom or getting drinks during this time is reasonable seeing as they just had the entire passing period to do this. But I don't think attendance should interfere w ith actual class work. Because of the im portance of the need to take attendance, I'm not advocating the elimination of an in-class rule. I'm sim ply saying that maybe the idea should be re evaluated. I think a 10 minute rule would make a lot more sense. It would give teachers enough time to take attendance, but wouldn't take away from class activities. Or perhaps, classes that need to do activities outside of the classroom could be exem pt from the current rule, i.e. classes signed up for a computer porch. The 20 minute rule was created with noble intentions but lacks the necessary flexibility to remain in its current form. This part of our school's guidelines needs review. something—like putting on another mask of makeup, or maybe acting a different way, or dressing differently. The actual goal of this is to create a clown out of the singer, who has no idea that he or she is actually being brainwashed. For those who are accepted to the next two rounds before the "real" judges, they are told to dress the exact same way. They are asked ask to do many ridiculous things at the auditions so they can take clips of these and then compile them at the showing of the judging round with the Three Stooges. This is how the montages are made when we watch the auditions on TV (like the ones where the "singers" sang "Don't Cha" to the cam era). Then, not only does the show encourage this of the singers, but the viewers as well. A web site called www. votefortheworst.com takes a poll for who its members think is the worst singer. Then they announce who was thought the worst, and then they tell everyone to vote for that person. One of the popular singers on the site is Sanjaya Malakar, the one who perms his hair and is a professional hula dancer. This web site is also to be blamed for the tragic win of Taylor Hicks last season. The web site does this because the producers only let certain people in and they try to keep the worst singers in since the good singers aren't even on the show. However, with "American Idol" being the brainless, dope show that it is, it manages to increase its viewers each year, making it to the top of Fox ratings. How is this possible? Why do people watch this show? It was originally thought that people watch reality TV shows because they can relate to these "normal" people, or they watch these "normal" people struggle in order to make themselves feel better. But a new research from P sy ch olog y T oday uncovered some new material on this topic. They ran a research study where they observed people who watch reality shows. From their research, they found that the people who care for status and power seemed to watch reality TV. -s9 Also, these people were on th ^ unintelligent side who were not engaged in extracurricular activities. continued on page 6 Awareness raised, paper saved a Au P eterson _____________ Staff Reporter The No Print Day has been an eye opener showing students and teachers the superfluous amount of paper used at WLHS. The statistics were astounding. So far, we have used enough paper to total 33 trees. The No Print Day will occur every second Wednesday of the month as a reminder to be environmentally conservative and to restrain from printing anything unnecessary. Portland's local news channel KGW showed up March 14 to cover the No Print Day. The action was on Channel 8 on the 6 p.m. news the next night. The Green Team along with ASB and Leadership organized the effort to shut down all the school printers and copy machines to make a statement about the waste. I believe that it's an awesome idea that raises awareness. Education and awareness are some of the best ways to decrease a problem, but alone cannot solve one so huge. Action is needed by everyone if we want to change our wasteful habits. This is vital if we want to stop the unnecessary waste we create today, so we can save our environment for tomorrow. But there have been some noticeable changes as a result of the No Print Day. For instance, the Amplifier Staff switched to turning in assignments such as story ideas via the computer. This saved roughly 70 sheets of paper. Another example is allowing field trip permission slips to be approved by parents by e-mail. Other teachers saved files using the K drive and had students save projects into the class common folder. A very effective new way of saving paper involved an online survey that was e-mailed to the staff, students and parents. The responses are then e-mailed back saving thousands of sheets of paper. This new method is organized and leaves little room for error. To make sure we won’t forget the significance of No Print Day, maybe it should occur more frequently. Perhaps we should have it twice a month. Another way to energize the effort could be to have reminders on the electronic ROAR. We need to stay aware, protect ourselves and preserve our environment.
