ODOBASIC

Friday, Dec. 12, 2014 Volume 55 Edition 11

Dancing DynastyThe dance teams turn out top results at State/Page 4

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STORTZBy Staff Writer Sarah

Leah Forsblom Photos

The band completed its winter concert on Monday, Dec. 8, and the orchestra concert was last night. The choir concert is set for Monday, Dec. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Claire Stanard Auditorium. Tickets are $5 for adults and $4 for students. Activity passes are accepted. Starting at top left and moving clockwise, pic-tured above are Kyler Boss, Maddy Husome, Becky Ochoa, Mary Anton, John Nicol, Michael J. Stowe, James Bamber and Jayla Jackson.

Sounds of the Season

The

HI-LINETiger

Cedar Falls considering decriminalizing marijuana

Bots for Tots will be host-ing a fundraiser all day in the gymnasium on Friday, Dec. 12. Students are able to donate $2 or a new toy for two min-utes of fun.

People who donate are able to drive a robot around and compete against their fellow classmates to shoot a ball into a hoop and score the most points.

Students are welcome to come by the gymnasium whenever they have a study hall or release.

Some of the robotics team will be supervising and help-ing people with the robot. Ro-botics adviser Kenton Swartley will be supervising for parts of

the day.Every year there are chil-

dren who don’t receive any gifts from Santa, not because they have been naughty but because their Santa simply can’t afford any gifts.

“It’s a creative way we as a robotics team can help our community,” Swartley said.

All donations will be go-ing to the Toy’s for Tots, lo-cally run here by the Cedar Falls Exchange Club through a foundation that distributes toys to children whose parents can’t afford to buy them gifts on Christmas.

The legalization of marijua-na has become one of the most heated debates in the country for years. Though marijuana is only completely legal in two states, there is actually a current discussion to have it decrimi-nalized in Cedar Falls, mean-ing that anybody who is caught with marijuana won’t face any arrest and will only be charged with a civil offense instead of a criminal one.

War on Drugs Task Force, an advocacy group comprised of Cedar Valley citizens, has been around since 2011 and fights for drug-related topics such as making medical marijuana available for those who need

it, reducing sentences for drug offenses and funding treatment programs for substance abuse. On Dec. 1, Allen Hayes, a re-tired political science profes-sor from University of Northern Iowa, represented the group and spoke out at the city coun-cil to try to ease marijuana laws.

What they’re looking for is to create a separate, local ordi-nance related to marijuana pos-session that doesn’t negate the state law.

“It’s an experiment,” is how Hayes described the idea. “We’d have to see how much that would be successful and how much it would be divert-ing people from going to jail

for marijuana possession, but it’s something that we think is worth a try.”

The council ended up vot-ing 5-2 and referring it to committee, meaning that they are willing to listen to this pro-posal. It is unknown if the idea has any chance of passing in the future, though that doesn’t seem to discourage Hayes and the group’s goal. “You can’t do these things overnight. You have to do these things gradu-ally,” Hayes said.

Today, the use of marijuana among teens has increased substantially. The National High School Senior Survey re-ports that around 36 percent

of high school seniors all over the United States have smoked marijuana before.

Students from Cedar Falls High School obviously are not exempt from this statistic, though if decriminalization for marijuana does follow through in Cedar Falls, that won’t mean teenagers will be free of any punishments from smoking weed. The group still believes that marijuana being legalized or decriminalized should only go for adults and doesn’t ad-vocate marijuana to teenagers until they reach a certain age.

If teenagers were caught possessing marijuana, they would be penalized the same

way as if they were caught with alcohol. Hayes doesn’t believe that teenaers should even use marijuana due to the research behind it that can affect them. “There’s research, though sometimes it’s conflicting, that says using any kind of mood or mind altering substance at a young age while you’re brain is still developing can have more harmful effects than us-ing it when you’re an adult. By the time you’re 21, you’re brain development is more or less complete,” he said. “As you get older in adolescence, your judgement improves.”

By Staff Writer Dino

In an event from 2012, the robotics team competed with a basketball shooting robot. With a donation of $2 or a toy, students and staff will be able to try their hands at shooting hoops today in the gym.

Robotics team invites CF to donate gifts

File Photo

Friday, Dec. 12, 2014 HI-LINETiger

The

OPINION2Our View

The Tiger Hi-Line is a weekly publication of the journalism classes at Cedar Falls High School, 1015 Division Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613. Our website is www.hiline.cfschools.org. The Hi-Line is distributed to CFHS students on Fridays to read during their fifth period classes.

Columns and letters do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hi-Line staff or Cedar Falls Schools. The Hi-Line editorial is present-ed weekly in the editorial labeled Our View, and it is the view of the majority of the editors listed below. Reader opinions on any topic are welcome and should be sent to The Tiger Hi-Line staff or delivered to room 208. All letters must be signed. Letters must be submitted by 3 p.m. on Monday for publication in the following Friday edition. Letters may not exceed 300 words and may be edited to meet space limita-tions. Writers should include their contact information for verification.

Editor-in-Chief: Austin AndersonOnline Editor: Zuhayr AlamCopy Editor: Annebeth AhrenholzLead Opinion Writer: Kaleb BengstonStaff Writers: Kaela Avila, Dino Odobasic, Skylar Starbeck and Sarah Stortz

Contact Us

On July 17, an unarmed, black man named Eric Garner died in New York City after telling the police multiple times that he was not selling cigarettes, was minding his own busi-ness and wanted to be left alone. He was killed by a white member of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), Dan-iel Pantaleo, after 19 seconds of being put in a chokehold, a tactic which was banned by the NYPD in 1993. During those 19 second, Garner can be heard in a video recording saying, “I can’t breathe,” 11 times.

Five months after Garner’s death, a grand jury decided not to indict the officer, even after watching video of the incident. The announcement came just days after a highly controversial case with the death of Michael Brown.

Soon after the announcement, public protests, rallies and riots erupted in multiple cities, all with the message of stop-ping police brutality and rac-ism, some of these protests are still going on. Subsequent-ly, attorney general Eric Holder announced that the justice department would launch an investigation into the case, similar to Brown’s case. Presi-dent Barack Obama released a statement saying that the protests were necessary for the country to move forward.

This case is different from Brown’s case because there is much less ambiguity. In Brown’s case, there was no video, and the multiple witnesses that were interviewed contradicted each other. In that case, it would have been much more dif-ficult to indict officer Darren Wilson.

In the Garner case, however, there is a clear video that shows the incident in its entirety, along with multiple witnesses who saw Garner every day and testified for him. Even after all of the evidence, the grand jury decided not to indict the officer.

Unless there is something that the jury has seen that has not been released to the public, there is absolutely no reason not to indict the officer, and unlike the Brown case, there is little chance that the evidence presented to the grand jury will be made public.

For many people around the country, these two cases were the last straws of something much larger: the prevalence of racism in America.

In order to help with police racism and brutality, President Obama announced a $75,000,000 plan to equip police with body cameras. That’s a good start, but as the Garner case shows, we need to train our police force the limits of what “police force” entails.

U.S. police force needs sensitivity overhaul

For many people around the country, these two cases were the last straws of some-thing much larger: the prevalence of racism in America.

By writing a story about someone and showing how important they are, you have given them a very valuable gift, but you have also given that gift to yourself.

There isn’t a greater class to take than journal-ism if you are itching to impact lives. You get to prove your creativity to an actual au-dience that other writ-ing classes cannot pro-vide. More so than any other English class, you get real world experience that will help you in your future no matter what avenue you decide to take. Communica-tion is key in every aspect of life, and when you blend that with time management, innovation and individuality, journalism is one of the most beneficial classes you can take. “Anyone who is natural-ly curious and inquisitive and has an ability to communicate should have an avenue to ex-plore a career that nurtures those talents,” Michael Lee, lead NBA writer for the Wash-ington Post, told me recently.

Everyone has a story just waiting to be told. Writing for the paper isn’t just finding scores to basketball games or discovering a change in study hall. It’s about bringing a sto-ry to life because that’s what journalists are: storytellers.

Throughout the stories I have personally written, it has been the stories that went beyond the surface level that have made the greatest im-pact. I went to interview Trey Hansen, the quarterback of the football team who also doubled as one of the best long snappers in the country thinking my story was about that. What I found, however, was a student who happened to play football, but who was also driven on and off the field by the death of his best friend. The story reached his old city in Minnesota and produced many tears in the Cedar Valley as well. “The article really changed my life and gave a great life lesson to be thankful,” Hansen said. “It really hit home to my old

town four hours away.”Another time I was go-

ing to simply write about the upcoming swim team meet. I walked into the pool area and immediately realized there was so much more than just swimming going on. I saw a love for a sport that I had never seen before, through the eyes of a 75-year-old man who started the swim pro-gram at Cedar Falls. I brought that man to tears after he read the story I wrote about how much he loved, not only the sport he has given his life to, but everyone single stu-dent athlete on the team.

Multiple people came up to me after I wrote a story on a student who is atheist and told me their eyes had been opened. They previ-ously judged him for being atheist before they knew his story, but after reading the article produced in the news-paper, they understood that they had mislabeled him and gained the respect for him

that they re-alized they should have always had.

The sto-ries I have written for the news-paper have b r o u g h t many tears to people I have never met, caused people to give up so-cial media

for the betterment of their lives, changed perspectives, connected people 2,000 miles apart, and, most impor-tantly, the stories I produce in the journalism class have impacted lives of not only the people who read them, but for those who are the focal points of the stories that al-low themselves to be uncov-ered.

Now many people may believe that journalism is dy-ing and that the students of today will have a nearly im-possible task of finding a job in the field when their times come. People say that the In-ternet, technology and social media are forcing journalism into nonexistence.

To that I would say that journalism is absolutely not dying; it is evolving like many things over the course of hu-man history. This isn’t the first time that media was suppos-edly dying due to something new. Radio was supposed to kill the printed word. Televi-sion was supposed to kill radio and the Internet was supposed to kill broadcast-ing. But if you are living in the 21st century, then you can see that those circumstances obviously didn’t transpire.

“Anyone who thinks journalism is a dying field isn’t paying attention to this world and how information and technology have given anyone with a smartphone or tablet the capacity to ex-press themselves and report on what’s happening around them,” Lee said.

Editor-in-chief recounts rewards from journalism class experiences

Journalism Course OfferingsBeginning News/two English credits

This is the first-year class where students write stories for the Hi-Line.Advanced News/two English credits

This is the second and third year newspaper class where students create the Hi-Line and website.

Broadcast Journalism/one credit English, one credit elective This is the first-year class where students create

podcasts and news stories for the Tiger Hi-Line Online.Advanced Broadcast Journalism/

one credit English, one credit electiveIn addition to podcasts and news stories,

students can produce the weekly news show.Yearbook/one credit English and one credit elective

This is the class that produces the yearbook and can be taken three years in a row for full credit each year.

THE WRITE STUFF continues on page 3

HI-LINETiger

The

FEATURES3

AHRENHOLZ By Copy Editor Annebeth

Friday, Dec. 12, 2014

THE WRITE STUFF, continued from page 2

“Play me back in Trivia Crack.” That is the most common sentence

passed digitally in Cedar Falls High School after the wildly popular cell phone app arrived for download last month, and though many students would agree that Trivia Crack is huge distraction from school, that isn’t stopping anyone from joining in the fun.

Junior Jackson Reynolds was moti-vated to download the app right after the food bank trivia challenge. Some people downloaded the app right away, but soon after a few people had it, the news of it spread quickly.

Junior Anna Stillman downloaded this app when she heard about it from other students such as sophomore Rachel East-man, who downloaded the app right

when it came out but quickly deleted it because she thought it was stupid at the time. But once everyone else got the app, she redownloaded the app. “I actually hate it, but it’s addicting,” Eastman said.

That is a common battle that everyone deals with. The game is too addicting to put down.

Many staff and students play this game not only daily, but multiple times a day, consuming a lot of their free time, homework time and even class time when they should be paying attention.

“I don’t play in regular classes, just electives,” Reynolds said. Eastman, on the other hand, said, “I pretty much play all the time in class because teachers know the answers.”

Reynolds said he has nine games go-

ing currently, while Stillman has five. East-man plays Trivia Crack every time she gets a notification.

Students say they try to multitask while playing Trivia Crack, but it doesn’t always work out.

There are six different categories in Trivia Crack: art, sports, geography, his-tory, entertainment and science. Reynolds and Stillman’s best category is science, but it is Eastman’s worst. Eastman’s best is art or sports, while Stillman’s worst cat-egory is sports.

As students and staff advance through the rounds of questions, sophomore Sier-ra Fredickson said, “We are getting more intelligent day by day.”

Sample questions range widely.

“Saint Petersburg is the second larg-est city of what country?”

“Czech Republic?” WRONG. “Russia.”

“Halloween is the third largest U.S. party day of the year. Which is the sec-ond?”

“Super Bowl Sunday?” Correct!

While some may view Trivia Crack as learning and reviewing pointless knowl-edge, others says these bits of info may be useful sometime in life, and also much of the stuff asked on Trivia Crack relates back to something students have learned in class.

Science teacher Jason Steffen agrees that he recalls teaching a lot of the sci-ence questions in the app and that al-though Trivia Crack may be distracting, it definitely has its perks and is educating many teens and adults in many different areas of knowledge. “This game is not pointless. I don’t think people realize that most of the questions they see in the game they could have learned in school at one point.”

Steffen was motivated to download this app when he noticed the majority of his fifth hour class students concentrated intently on their phones and asking him for help on miscellaneous science ques-tions or shouting across the room to each other to “play me back in Trivia Crack!”

Now he’s on a quest “to beat all of you guys in 5th hour.”

Steffen does admit that this game can be a problem, but not always in a bad way. “It is affecting people’s learning be-cause it’s a distraction, but if it wasn’t Trivia Crack, it would be something else.”

He said he wishes that the game could be more classroom based so the benefit would show through in the class-room as well. “If we could somehow put all our classroom content into this game, then everyone would know everything.”

He currently has 14 games going and is 22 and 6.

DigitalPURSUIT

Trivia Crack is a free app for cell phones that pits two users against each other in a battle of quesions on a variety of topics. It has reached a wide range of popularity in the last couple weeks.

Students, staff finding themselves strung out on trivia app

ANDERSON By Editor-in-Chief Austin

“Journalism is storytelling, and there will never come a day that stories will not be told.”

Journalism teacher Brian Winkel has taught me many things in and out of the j o u r n a l i s m world through-out my life, but the most im-portant thing I have taken from him is s o m e t h i n g that applies to both worlds. “By giving to others and by making them happy, you will in turn make yourself happy.”

By writing a story about someone and showing how

i m p o r t a n t they are, you have given them a very valuable gift, but you have also given that gift to your-self. You get a certain feeling of immense pleasure when you write a good story.

You get ancy and start looking for your next story so you can

put your mark on the world once again. That feeling and those stories will never go away, and neither will jour-nalism. “There will always be a place for talented writers, reporters and editors,” Lee said. “There will always be a public for what journalists provide.”

When I became interested in journalism, I was immersed in the idea that I could talk about sports for a living one day. After getting into the field, I realized the only thing I love more than sports is peo-ple and bringing their stories

to life in ways a good journal-ist can. The values of a good journalist are what our coun-try was built off of; honesty, hard work and persistence.

“Journalism is one of the American public’s systems of checks and balances,” Tim Crothers, former Sports Illus-trated senior writer and New York Times bestselling author, told me. “If we are doing our jobs correctly, journalists are truth seekers who hope-fully hold everyone, including themselves, to a proper stan-dard of behavior.”

Journalism is storytelling, and there will never come a day that stories will not be

told. It is, however, evolving, which is a good thing. It is becoming more technologi-cal while at the same time be-coming more opportunistic. Success stories of small web-sites and bloggers making it big exemplify the new world of journalism.

The places you will go and the people that you will meet alone will be well worth your involvement in journalism. But the lives you impact and the difference you will make in the world will last forever.

Annebeth Ahrenholz Photo

Friday, Dec. 12, 2014 HI-LINETiger

The4SPORTS

Senior captain Keaton Block is leading the resurgence of the Cedar Falls men’s swim team. At his most recent meet at Cedar Rapids Kennedy, he finished first in the varsity 100 breaststroke and broke his personal record by three seconds. He also partici-pates in the 50 freestyle and two relays.

How did you get into swimming?

Freshman year I had Mr. Brown as a math teacher and he told me he thought I would be a pretty good swimmer. I ac-tually ended up not going out that year because I was a little afraid of what people would think if I went out. But sopho-more year I wasn’t doing very well in football, so I decided to go out, and I’ve stuck with it since.

Why do you like Coach Brown so much?

Every race I finish, I always go to talk to him, and he always tells me ways I can do better and get better. He probably is the best coach I’ve ever had.

Why do you love swim-ming?

I was just built like a swim-mer. I just love to be in the wa-ter I guess you could say ever since I was a kid. I love seeing my time getting better, and that’s something you can’t see in some other sports.

Keaton Block Swimming

AVILA By Staff Writer Kaela

AthleteWeekof

the

Athleteofthe

TigersActionin

Men’s Basketball Next up: Dec. 12

Waterloo East at home at 6 p.m.

Women’s BasketballNext up: Dec. 12

Waterloo East awayat 6 p.m.

WrestlingNext up: Dec. 13

Western Dubuque dual tournament at 10 a.m.Men’s Swimming Next up: Dec. 13Marcussen Invite

at 11:30 a.mBowling

Next up: vs. Iowa City HighDec. 12 @ Iowa City at 3:15

Sophomore Sam Prophet competes on Saturday, Dec. 6 in the breast stroke at the Ames Invite where the team finished in sixth place. The Tigers will be at home on Saturday, Dec.13 for the Marcussen Invite.

Logan Cole Photo

On Friday, Dec. 5 at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, the Cedar Falls dance team consisting off coed, all male pom and hip hop, took the spotlight as they competed for a state championship. For the girls, they were hungry for re-venge to place higher than the previous year. As for the guys, the pressure was on to defeat all the competition for the fifth time in a row.

It took months for the teams to perfect the same dances over and over to strive for competitiveness. By the time State came rolling around, the dances had to be spot on.

The state championships consisted of three different dances for the girls: hip hop, pom and coed dance. For the men, they competed in an all male routine and coed as well.

The girls placed 3rd in their hip hop routine and 5th in the pom dance. Both dance teams were content with the results when they received two tro-phies after the places were an-nounced on the floor. Senior captain Josie Speltz said, “It was the most amazing experi-ence for me, especially being a leader on the team. It is always an honor to work with such talented girls and bring home

trophies.” The all male dance team

has been successful for the past four years, winning 1st place all four years. The men were looking to carry on the tradition of success. As a team of 23 they were ready to get the job done.

After the all male dance team competed, the results came to be that the men had done it again, a five-year run-ning streak of 1st place.

Senior Hiram Marquez said, “We reached our goal of win-ning first place and got the job done. We dance for the ladies, and our dance moves help us get them.”

The coed team results were announced, placing Cedar Falls in 2nd. This was no surprise to senior Kendall Krueger. “We worked really hard and had one of the best teams in awhile in Cedar Falls. I was so happy to compete with a great group of people. We really stepped it up and got an amazing second place finish out of everyone in the state of Iowa,” he said.

The team was beyond thrilled with its overall results and coming home with four trophies.

STARBECK By Staff Writer Skylar

Taking home the top trophy for the fifth straight year, the men’s dance is all smiles in this selfie from the state dance competition at the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines on Friday, Dec. 5.

Austin Anderson Photo

Dancing DynastyCedar Falls captures four trophies at state dance team competition

Swimmers prep for Marcussen Invite on SaturdayIt’s time for the boys to dive right in as the 37th

annual Marcussen Invitational makes a splash this Sat-urday, Dec. 12 at Holmes Junior High. Starting the meet at 11:30, the Tigers must compete with a total of seven teams coming from all around Iowa, includ-ing Muscatine, Jefferson, Decorah, Waterloo West, Des Moines Lincoln, Mason City and Dowling.

With the swim team consisting of three seniors, one junior, 13 sophomores and four freshmen, the wave seems to be pushing against the small CFHS team, but coach Joe Brown said otherwise.

“We just had two really strong meets for us. We’re still a small team. We are still inexperienced, but we’re getting stronger and quicker than we ever were before,” coach Brown said, “so we’re excited because some of the teams should be similar in talent, mean-ing we should have opportunities to race, so we’re excited about that.”

Since this meet is one of the most important com-petitions for the men’s swim team, the tension should be high within the watery depths of the Marcussen Invitation.