Image provided by: West Linn High School; West Linn, OR
About The amplifier. (West Linn, Oregon) 1921-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2010)
June Lottery is best alternative to limit chaos for parking spot bids M ichele B ondy Imagine a beautiful summer day. Now change that to waking up at the crack of dawn, exhausted from staying up until 2 a.m. the night before, only to arrive a mere hours later to wait in line for a parking spot for the next school year. A less hectic process of an online application and simple lottery for parking will be used this summer. No chaos, no lines. The administration and ASB threw out new ideas for a parking system and decided upon a lottery being the best and most positive alternative for the whole student body. Although the new parking system initially caused quite an uproar from students when introduced, it should be a positive experience and minimize issues that have occurred in previous years. However, the whole student body should have been more involved in the selection of the new system as many students were unaware that there would even be a change. In previous years, there Viave b e e n issu es of stu d e n ts cam ping o u t illegally, littering around the school and cutting in line for spots. The new system will minimize other issues for those students that were out of town or didn't want to wake up at the crack of dawn during the summer just to acquire a parking spot. The new system consists of a lottery with 143 spaces open in the Tripp Lot and 111 spots open in the Senior Lot. Students will be able to enter the lottery between May 17 - June 1 on the website under: Students > Seniors > Senior Parking Request. An email will also be sent out to all juniors' school email accounts. A driver’s license must be obtained by Aug. 1 in order to sign up for a spot. All students that request a space in the Senior Lot will be randomly selected from a hat by their ID number. Students that request a parking space in the Tripp need to wake up early in the summer and can just sign up online," Aaron Downs, Vice Principal, said. The subject should’ve been addressed either by the school's daily announcements or by the ROAR's live broadcast to introduce the issue. Having the whole student body involved in the decision could have caused less indignation by students, and many, including me, would have been pleased to have been involved in choosing the new system. "I am sort of taking a liking to the new system, but waiting in line was tradition. I would have liked to have been more involved in the change," Claire Offer, junior, said. In no way am I against the new system, but I would have liked to have seen involvement on the part of the whole student body versus a few students as everyone is affected by this decision. It is important to have more students involved in future endeavors. Letter to the editor Newspaper distribution is huge waste of paper To the editors: W h at a coincid en ce. The day after Earth day the school wastes hundreds of pounds of paper to print one copy of the school paper for every student. I'm sorry if it comes off as rude, but frankly most of the teachers have a cabinet of untouched old Amplifier issues. I brought in about 120 today from just my last two classes. I also know that emails are sent out asking the teachers to give out amplifiers to each student, and they do. The thing is nobody keeps it and most of ; ' J West Linn High School, 5464 West A Street, West Linn, OR 97068 _ „ iS É fi (503) 673-7843 »fax: (503)657-8710 * wlhs~amplifier@wlhs.wlwv.kl2.or.us v : î -■ ■ • . : -. . The Amplifier is published approximately every four weeks by the West Linn High School Advanced Journalism class. Opinions expressed in . commentaries and editorials represent only those of the writer, and are not necessarily the opinions of West Linn High School, its administration, faculty, staff, or student body. Business Editor: Zack Mueller Section Editors: News: Mary Wood Forum: Alison Fieldhouse Features: Lexi Welp Sports: Jennifer Sitton Entertainment: Nora Hand, Emily McDonald The Senior Lot is a closer walk, but traffic can be quite hectic. If students have early release or late arrival, this will minimize the amount of traffic in the morning and afternoon. "This will and should be a positive experience for everyone. Many students are excited that they won't Photo by Alex Houston A new parking system is being introduced. The goal of the new system is to streamline the process and the issues thait have occurred in the past such as students camping out to be first in line. A m p lifier Editor-in-Chief: Mary Wood Managing Editor: Zack Mueller Lot will automatically have a space in that lot as more spaces are available. Overall, the system is a good idea. As students have two lots to choose from, both lots have their advantages and disadvantages. The Tripp Lot may take a little longer to walk to, but it's easier to enter and leave with traffic. Photo Editor. Mark Poppert May Day Essay: Clara Altemus Staff Reporters: Clara Al temus, Michele Bondy, Ty Clarke, Austin Cummins, Patrick Douglas, Mary Earp, Bailey Middleton, Emily Reed Photographers: Ethan Brent, Alex Houston, Libby Kara Adviser Ann Breyne W the class just walks up and puts them back in a pile! I understand that you want everyone to have an equal opportunity to read the school paper but honestly anyone who cares enough to read it is more than capable of picking one up from a pile in the library or looking at it online. It's completely wasteful to print that many papers and silly to think that every student wants one when the stark truth is that the only people that read them are either in amplifier or have been in the past! It has become common practice to spend the period searching for typos, similar to the one in the FIRST SENTENCE of the highlights section on the top-left of the most recent issue of the Amplifier distributed on April 23rd. The quality of the papers have gone way downhill as of late. To wrap this up, I just needed to say what everyone else was thinking and say that it's ridiculous to have "no print" days when you waste that much school money, ink, and paper on such a silly cause. Please take what I've said into consideration. Sincerely, Jake Gianuzzi Dear Jake, Thank you for providing us with your feedback. We always appreciate hearing what people have to say and their comments about the newspaper. The Amplifier provides a service to the students and staff of the school: informing them of different activities, competition results and upcoming games and productions, among other things. We do want every student to have the opportunity to read the Amplifier, and we are supposed to print one copy of the paper for every student. In fact, we do not print one copy per student, we print several hundred less copies per student because we know not everyone is interested in reading the paper. In consulting with Lou Bailey, principal, we decided that delivering them to classrooms was the best way to ensure that only a small amount of papers are unused and wasted, rather than letting them sit on the library desk. We use the returned copies to exchange with other schools, for archived and learning copies, and to distribute within the community. Like many school sports, we raise funds to offset the cost of printing the Amplifier through advertisements. For some issues, we are able to raise over half the cost of printing the paper in advertisement revenue. This is a much higher percentage of our total expenses supported through fundraising than many other school sports or activities. In addition, we've only run seven issues this year, a very small percentage of the total paper use of the school. We feel that The Amplifier is a better use of paper than many of the wasted computer printouts students make every day. It's a shame that the only value you find in the Amplifier is searching for typos. The staff on the Amplifier work very hard every issue to bring you interesting, professional stories. As a staff, we recently won Best in Category for an overall school newspaper issue — the top spot in the state of Oregon. Like anyone else, we make mistakes, and we work to ensure that those don't happen very often. We would encourage you to read the articles instead of simply looking for typos — maybe you will be able to appreciate the high quality writing and the great accomplishments students in our school have achieved. The Amplifier staff doesn't feel that the newspaper is a "silly cause" and we would hope that you could recognize its value as well. Zack Mueller, Managing Editor Mary Wood, Editor-in-Chief and the Amplifier Staff
