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“Acronyms make us happy!” the teachers came cheering into the gym…. The whole event started off with all four teams entering in the gym with their banners, but everyone knew that in the end only one team would win the battle. On March 26th, WWMS held an unforgettable event for all the students; Battle of the Classes….

All throughout the week of BOTC, WWMS hosted spirit week and food competitions. In the food competitions, one member from each team, during a certain lunch, had to eat as many Twinkies, chicken nuggets, and spa-ghetti they could eat in a certain amount of time. All during spirit week, each class/grade had to wear an article of clothing that was specified in spirit week directions. The first day in spirit week, March 19th, was Team Colors Day, when each class had to wear their specified color. The teachers were green, 6th grade was black, 7th grade was blue, and 8th grade was red. The second day in spirit week was Sports Day. Everyone was wearing all sorts of jerseys and sportswear supporting their favorite sports teams. On Friday, March 21st, it was Pajama Day. Everyone came to school dressed in their favorite form of sleepwear, and it was quite a sight to see our school in pajamas! On Monday, March 24th, it was Hoodie Day. This one was an easy day, and almost every-one was wearing his or her favorite hoodie. Tuesday, March 25th, was Hat Day. There were a few people wearing funky hats, and a lot of people wearing the traditional bean-ie. A couple sparkly fedoras could be seen the hallways. The last day in Spirit Week, March 26th, was Team Colors Day, and each grade had to wear their specified color once again! This was also the day Battle Of The Classes took place.

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The Woodrow Wilson

Challenger

Spring 2014

Woodrow Wilson Middle School

Edison Township Public Schools

Contributing Members of

Newspaper Club

Noor Amanullah

Nirmal Bhatt

Nikith Boyapati

Aditya Chakrabarti

Ava Dul

Akhil Dwasari

Darlene Fung

Ram Gadhamsetty

Henry Geng

Hargun Ghai

Rahul Kannani

Avinash Kumar

Peter Maynard

Esha Mehta

Ranen Miao

Nathaniel Mumau

Anakha Anilkumar Nair

Jaii Pappu

Nirali Patel

Praksha Patel

Alison Park

Irene Quan

Adithya Rachakulla

Ashley Ramjeet

Rishabh Rout

Siya Scindia

Dhruv Shahane

Hasfah Shaik

Nabiha Sherali

Shruti Sinha

Helen Wei

Tejas Venkatasubramanian

Alexis Wilner

Jenna Yan

Samuel Zhang

Co-Student Editor in Chiefs

Pooja Bhate and Grace Wang

Faculty Advisor Ms. Jaclyn Bartlett

Inside this Edition…

Woodrow’s Very Own News Articles: Pages 1-12

News from Around the Town: Pages 13-15

News from Around the World: Pages 16-17

The Debate Corner: Pages 18

Science Section: Pages 19-20

Technology: Page 21-22

Exotic Cars: 23

Month by Month- Wacky Days: Pages 24-25

Sports: Page 26

Olympic Coverage: Pages 27-30

Reviews: Pages 31-33

Jokes: Page 34

The Woodrow Wilson

Challenger is a Member of the

National Scholastic Press

Association

Woodrow Wilson’s 5th Annual Battle of the Classes

By Pooja Bhate & Nirali Patel

Woodrow Wilson’s 5th Annual Battle of the Classes...CONTINUED

The Woodrow Wilson

After the teams all entered with their banners, the actual competition started of with the teachers dance! The teacher’s team wore bright yellow t-shirts, with smiley faces on them. They danced to “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. They really got the crowd going, and everyone was clapping along!

After the teachers dance, began one of the many events in BOTC. This one was “Sit Down Volleyball”. In Sit Down Volleyball, each team had to play volleyball, as the name indicates, sitting down. The volleyball nets had been lowered for this event. First place was 8th grade, then 7th grade, then the teachers, and in last place were the 6th graders.

After Sit Down Volleyball, came the next exciting event! This one was called “Hula Hoop Race”. In the Hula Hoop Race, each team had to make a line of them, and hold hands. The first person in line had a Hula Hoop, and they had to pass the hoop on to the next person, without disconnecting their hands. Then, the next person had to pass the hoop to the third person and so on… As easy as it looked for the teachers, who were in the lead for the first half, the other teams seemed confused by how they could pass that hoop! In the end, the other teams caught on, and the 6th graders came first, the teachers next, the 7th graders next, and in last place, the 8th graders.

The 6th grade dance started of with some 6th graders doing cartwheels and flip and ended with a stunning pose! It was really great! They performed nicely, and the teachers and crowd alike seemed impressed with their performance.

The next event was called “Horsin’ Around”! In this event, pairs of two stepped up to the...horses! There were bouncy horses, and each pair had to get across the gym by bouncing on the horse. In all, each team had to send 20 people from their teams, to bounce across the gym. This task was a physical one, and in the end, the 8th graders won! The teachers came in 2nd place, with the 6th graders in 3rd place, leaving the 7th graders last.

After “Horsin’ Around”, was the Tug of War! This classic event is always a favorite, for teachers, students, and the judges. In Tug of War, the rules were as normal. There was a bandana tied on

the rope, and the team that got the bandana on their side, would end up winning that round. In all, the 8th graders placed first, the 7th graders placed after, the 6th graders placed in 3rd, and in last place, were the teachers.

The seventh graders had a fantastic dance planned out! They danced on a variety of songs, including the famous, #SELFIE. At this point in the dance, the 7th graders pulled out smart phones, and pretended to take selfies. They also seemed to be mimicking Ellen’s infamous selfie, which received over 2 million retweets!

The next exciting event was called “Dizzy Bat/ Balloon Pop”. In this event, the team members, one by one, had to spin around a baseball bat twice, then run to the chair (across the gym), and sit on a balloon, until it popped. After spinning around the baseball bat, which was touching the ground, the participants were really dizzy and lightheaded. The balloon popping part seemed to be simple for most of the participants, though. Near the end of the event, the 8th grade team had been disqualified, because they didn't have their bat on the ground. In the end, the 6th graders won the Dizzy Bat/Balloon Pop, with the teachers in 2nd place, and the 7th grade in 3rd place. The race to win BOTC was coming along, but the scores were really close.

After the Dizzy Bat/ Balloon Pop came an event that is always in BOTC! The “Scooter Races”! In the Scooter Races, a physical event, a pair would step up to the scooter. One person would sit on the scooter, and the other person would push the sitting team member, all the way to the finish line. Then the positions would switch, and the person sitting would have to pull themselves together, and push! The 8th grade ended up winning. After them, came the teachers, then 7th graders, and in last, were the 6th graders.

The next event, which all the 8th graders just couldn’t wait for, was the 8th grade dance. The dance started off with the lights off. Then, the light came back on and the dance crew started to actually dance. First, the boys rocked up the gym with some cool moves, followed by the girls, and later the whole group together! Their dance included some really neat flips, cartwheels, human pyramids, and more. The lights began flicking off and then the team began freestyle dancing with their glow in the dark sneaker laces and ending the whole thing all together with a stunning pose!

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3


Woodrow Wilson’s 5th Annual Battle of the Classes...CONTINUED

B.O.T.C. from a Judge’s Perspective

By Pooja Bhate

The whole BOTC ended with the most exciting event that every-one had been waiting for…. the RELAY RACES! This event tests multi-ple abilities of the teams. 15 people from each team got to be part of this event. There was puzzle solving, pony bouncing, caterpillar walking, and pie eating involved in the entire thing! The relay results were as follows; 7th grade won, teachers came in 2nd place, 8th grade came in 3rd place, and 6th grade was last. The dance results were finally announced, and the crowd was silent. It was definitely not a surprise when the judges announced that the 8th graders had the best dance! After the 8th grade, came the 6th

graders, and then the teachers in 3rd place, and in last place, came the 7th graders. In the end, the banner winners were announced. The 8th grade banner, which read, “Going out with a BOOM”, was awarded first place! Next came the 6th grade banner, then the 7th grade, which had a very nice artistic element, and in last place, came the teacher’s banner. The final results of BOTC were...the 8th graders in first place! The results were highly appreciated by the 8th grade team, and the rest of the graduating class! The 6th graders came in 2nd, leaving the 7th grade for 3rd place, and in last, were the teachers.

Battle Of The Classes is an exciting school event for all the students as well as the teachers. In BOTC, a team of around 20 people is formed for each class- 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and teachers. Each team performs a dance, and creates a banner, and participates in many activities, like Tug of War, Sit Down Volleyball, and Relay Races.

For me, BOTC, for all three of the years that I’ve been at WWMS, has been a very interesting experience. Starting from 6th grade, I was a judge. Judges, in BOTC, decide which banner is the best, determine whose dance showed most origi-nality, most difficult choreography, and more. Judges also make major decisions, in deciding which team had the best dance, and best banner! Judges also help out with ticket sales, and overlook the events. We make sure all the events/activities go as instructed, that the teams aren’t cheating, and we keep the time. Judges have a pretty big part in BOTC. If a team makes a mistake, then a judge reports it, and the team may lose points or become...disqualified!

This year, along with me, as the other 8th grade judge was Rhea Jhamb. The 7th grade judges were Brianna Rice and Kayla Takitch and the 6th grade judges were Marie Bossley and Anju C. The teachers who were judges were Ms. Debrossy, Ms. Yesalavich, and Ms. Crowley. I’d say that we all made a great team of judges.

I’d say our 8th graders very well appreciated the results of BOTC. After 2 years of being defeated, the 8th grade team was deliriously happy to hear that they had won. The 6th grade, though they might have been little, won 2nd place. In third place, came the 7th graders, who had quite a lot of spirit, and in last place, were the teachers.

My experience as a judge has always been exciting and thrilling, and though its a lot more work than sitting in the bleachers, being a judge is always worth whatever it takes. I’m so very glad that I was judge for BOTC, all of my years at WWMS.

It’s that time of the year again when one of the most popular events at Woodrow is hosted again, but this time at a whole new level with Perform-ing With The Staff. The most enthusiastic, mind blowing events were present-ed showing us what the staff and students are really made of to become this year’s winner! The tile was previously held by Mrs. Dragona, 7th grade science teacher.

To start the day off, we were entertained by the most creative perfor-mance, Mr. Al with Abby Jason and Katelyn Clements. The performance was an excellent “sweeper” because Mr. Al and the girls were showing us their moves by dancing along to “Chim Chim Cheree” from the movie Mary Pop-pins with their Golden brooms. It was highly entertaining and definitely filled with the most wonderful and unique qualities.

Next up was the wonderful Polar Vortex, singing “Let it Go” from the movie Frozen. We had Ms. Hurwitz along with Shreya Murthy, Ria Trinidad, Disha Saha, Shalini Jillella, and Mrs. Hurwitz’s, daughter Ariella bring us a very spectac-ular performance to Woodrow with its beautiful twist and wonderful creativity from the unbelievable singing to the little streamers enhancing the lively performance. Following that, some magic was displayed. I bet everyone has seen a card trick, but I bet none of you have seen a card trick like the ones we saw from THE J.A.Q.K.s featuring Ms. Bartlett as the Magicians’ Assistant. Think about all the tricks you have seen from the movie Now You See Me and imagine someone pulling tricks right under their sleeves that are ten times better. Their performance was a combination of the most extraordinary card tricks to pure skill which blew all minds. We all loved the tricks, but nobody could have loved anything more than Rohan Arora and David Leo’s amazing shirt flip.

The next moment everyone was waiting for, was the most amazing dance performance of the day, THE BOOM BOOM POWS. The catchy beat with the first class dance moves by, Mrs. DeZaio, and Isabella Marino just rocked the whole crowds’ socks. The amazing break dance by Mrs. DeZaio and the intricate dance moves by Isabella and Mrs. Caprigilone, were fantastic!

Everyone loves dances and it couldn’t have gotten any better than this when SDS Dance Crew came and put our socks and shows on fire. Mrs. Drobbin unleashed her true and unbelievable talent of dancing with Alexa Santiago and Jocelyn Shamy with the catchiest song on the Market, “Monsters Remix.” The dance was a gorgeous combination of skill and talents which encompassed great moves like break dancing and jumps. If you wanted to see some of the true talented performances of the day then SDS Dance was definitely one of them.

Nothing could have followed SDS Dance Crew better than The Cups with Mrs. Lobello and Caity Shannon as the singers and the Cup Artists as Angela Cao and Christina Rusk. They had an amazing performance with excellent tapping of the cups and an even better sensation from the awesome singing of Mrs.Lobello and Caity Shannon. The most surpris-ing thing of all was that they only had one practice together!

When you talk about a touching performance then you must have been thinking about the beautiful performance by Ms. Nilooban, Shreya Kodati, Sophie Weinberg, Lakshanyaa Thamarai Kannan, and Alexis DiCocco. It was heart-warming, majestic and angelic especially from the surprise of Mrs. DiCocco’s daughter, Alexis, making the whole crowd extremely emotional. The singing was beautiful and the whole performance was a perfect mixture of charm and beauty.

Finally, The Demons made up of Kevin Niranjan and Mr. Romeo take the stage and lit up the world. They took the crowd into their world of amazing and unbelievable signing talent making the whole Woodrow Wilson crowds roar in disbelief. The performance took us all out of this world and to this day we are still reliving the moment. While all the performances were truly special, there could only be one winner. The results of the show were The Cups as our third place winner, SDS Dance Crew as our second place winner, and by a landslide The Demons took first place! We look forward to next year’s event!


Woodrow Wilson’s 2014 “Performing With The Staff”

By Rahul Kannani


Woodrow Wilson Students Meet Lonnie Allgood By Nathaniel Mumau

On February 28th, Lonnie Allgood, a retired NFL

wide receiver came into Woodrow Wilson to hold a very in-

spiring assembly. He told the students of Woodrow his life

story, beginning with his humble roots in Raleigh, North Car-

olina. Growing up on his family’s farm, Allgood had to share

a two-bedroom house with his six sisters and two brothers.

Even at the youngest stage of his life, he had a desire to play

football. His teachers would have to confiscate a football

from him every day in class, and he was the wide receiver on

his Pop Warner football team.

However, he continually stressed the influence his

mother had on his childhood. She taught him the virtue of

honesty, of self-confidence, and of hard work. She would

restrict all football privileges from Allgood if he did not bring

home a satisfying report card which led to him earning

straight A’s for five years through middle school and into

high school. Allgood reminisced about how every day when

he got home from school, his mother would ask him the

same two questions: “How are you doing in school?” and

“What have you done today to touch your dreams?” His

mother bolstered him throughout his whole life, supporting

him around every turn; this would ultimately lead him to suc-

cess.

Mr. Allgood preached another message as well-

“Don’t rely on sports.” A total of 103 colleges wanted him as

a student because of his sport skills and his excellent grades.

He went on to play professional football, and even went to

the Super Bowl. It was all for loss, though, as after 12 con-

cussions and 50 broken bones they, “showed him the door.”

He thought he was going to be playing NFL football his

whole life, and instead was a professional player for less than

a decade. At the assembly, he reminded us that nothing in

life, including sports, is forever. Therefore, all you need is to

work hard and “have a picture of your dreams.”

Mrs. Molnar the Great: One of Woodrow’s Very Own Art Teachers

By Hargun Ghai

Do you take art? Well, have you ever stopped for a second and thought, "Wow, Mrs. Molnar is so talented! I wonder where she learned this from?" You must be thinking that she was blessed by an art god! However, she was born just like us, but growing up she had a HUGE passion for art. She has been drawing since she was in 4th grade. Her favorite things to do are oil paintings, and she is a master at those!

One day in high school, she had the fascinating idea to become an art teacher, and her art teachers encouraged her to become an art teacher. With so much work and passion, you can make your dreams come to life! During our inter-view, she told me a funny story. In her middle school, kids had quarterly electives. Students took four courses that the teachers chose for you. If chorus was on your schedule, you were told to play a recorder. Recorders were shared and eve-ryone's mouth touched them, and all they did was spray the stuff they use to spray bowling shoes with! Mrs. Molnar re-fused to play it, so then she got two quarters of art! How cool is that?

Do you want to be like Mrs. Molnar? If you are in-terested in art, talk to her and Mr. Romeo! They will give you great tips on how to excel in art. Mrs. Molar also told me,

"They say that time changes things, but you must change it yourself." It's a nice saying, and to me it means that time can't make you change, you must change it by yourself. The last thing she wanted me to share with you is the following quote, "If it's something that you love, it becomes your second na-ture! Just do it!"

Mrs. Molnar wanted to honor Hargun by

showing her awesome artwork off to all staff and

students.

Assistant principals have many jobs, and all of them are very important. Woodrow Wilson is one of the best middle schools in Edison Township. I think we need give credit to Mr. Scully, our assistant principal. I am a lucky man. I got to in-terview Mr. Scully during his busy schedule, and here is what I learned. As an assistant principal, what does your job entail? I would say, pretty much everything. For example, I observe classes, I worry about the students’ safety, and I help organize the school’s ideas and events. Can you say one difference between WWMS and JAMS since you worked at both places? I cannot find one; they are both great schools to be at. As an assistant principal, you have to deal with detentions, do you like that? Is it difficult? Well, it is part of my job to see if everyone is doing the right thing or not. I have to make sure all students are following the rules, and most importantly all students are safe. Are there any changes you would like to make to our school? This school is doing fine, and I think we should keep moving forward. What do you like to do in your spare time? I like to spend time with my family members. I have four boys, and I love playing with them. What is your favorite football team? The “#1” Dallas Cowboys!


Sitting Down with the V.P.- Mr. Scully By Ram Gadhamsetty

Every Penny Counts! By Irene Quan

Do you ever find loose pennies just dawdling or hiding beneath your couch? Well those pennies won’t be dusty for long when you put them to use for the annual Penny Wars right here at our school! The Penny Wars occurred during lunch, the week of February 10th, when kids were able to drop coins into cans and make one lucky teacher dress up in a costume. However, there’s more to it than watching teachers wear silly costumes. I asked Mrs. DiCocco a few questions about it, and here’s what she said: When did The Penny Wars begin? This is our third year doing it. It’s to raise money for the ETEA Pride Committee, and we raise it for Sloan Kettering Cancer Research and Buddy Ball of Edison. What is the ETEA? The ETEA stands for the Edison Township Education Association and is the teacher’s union. This committee gives the money to the Sloan Kettering Cancer Research and Buddy Ball of Edison. Buddy Ball does work with handicapped kids and sports. I was told that this also funded a JPS volleyball tournament. Is this true? Well that’s the culminating activity. Every school in the district has a volleyball team of teachers, and we play volleyball to see who the champion is. That night we give donations to the tournament, so it’s more money raised. What inspired you to do this? Trying to raise money for the things, and I figured kids would pay a lot of money to see teachers do silly things. Describe The Penny Wars. Each teacher has a can with their name on it, and the students get to put money into the can of the teacher they want to see make a fool of themselves.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

How much money was raised in all? This year was $915. Last year we raised $1,900. Woodrow Wilson Middle School raised the most money for three years in a row out of all the schools in Edison. All of the schools in Edison raised money for this fund and it’s a contest to see who will win. We won for the past three years. What teacher raised the most money? What did he or she do? Mr. Karatz won, and he dressed up like Super Gonzo. Will you be continuing next year? I don’t know. There’s a good possibility. If it seems to be working, I guess we’ll keep doing it.

Now you know all you need to know about The Penny Wars. As good way for you to both remove trouble-some pennies and help our society, The Penny Wars is a beneficial, but fun fundraiser in our lives. After all, “fun” puts the fun in “fundraising!” Now consider this: will you be donating next year?


Woodrow Wilson Wins Big at

Odyssey of the Mind Regional

Competition

By: Rahul Kanani

The Odyssey of the Mind regional competition

has come again in another successful year for Woodrow

Wilson to show the world what it is made of. Months of

hard work had passed for the teams that competed that

day. The teams dealt with numerous arguments and strug-

gles. However, in the end, it all paid off. All the work that

they had done was put to the test in order for the teams

to create an excellent performance. The students worked

vigorously throughout the day, waiting, painting, support-

ing, and harvesting their raw creativity in the spontaneous

and long term problems which finally determined the

teams that would go to state finals. This year Woodrow

Wilson out-performed the rest and brought home five

trophies. This is a new Woodrow record set by five teams

that will advance to the next stage as genuine competi-

tors.

Every Penny Counts...CONTINUED

7th Graders Participate in

Community Service with

“Valentines for Vets”

By: Ashley Ramjeet

Isn’t it great to receive valentines from all of your

friends on Valentine’s Day? However, imagine waking up

on Valentine’s Day knowing that you aren’t getting any

valentines at all! Many people feel like this, especially el-

derly people in nursing homes. This year, as you may

know, the seventh graders have the put in the time to

make some creative valentines for elderly veterans, living

in a nursing home, located in New Jersey. While this

doesn’t seem like much to us, it is certainly making

someone’s day when they wake up to find a valentine sit-

ting near their bed with their name on it. It is definitely an

honor for us to bring joy to these people who have

helped us so much. They fought for us, freed us, and

risked their lives so that we could have the life that we do

now.


How would you like to find out you have cancer?

Nobody wants that awful news, but unfortunately, many chil-

dren have to. Over 12% of children worldwide are diagnosed

with cancer each year. That’s why St Jude’s Research Hospital

was created. It’s a hospital where families of cancer patients

can send their children to get the treatment and help they

need. Since families already have enough to worry about, St.

Jude’s doesn’t charge anything for their service. Since St. Jude

doesn’t charge any money, they rely on donations to func-

tion. That’s why Math-A-Thon was created.

Math-A-Ton is a program where students can earn money for Saint Jude by doing math problems. Each student receives a “Fun book” that contains 17 pages of math prob-lems. A student can get money by having “sponsors” who pay the student a certain amount of money for completing their “fun book.” After earning the money, students can send the check or money order in an envelope. Then, their spon-sors sign or print their names on the envelope to show that they agree paying the money. All the money collected goes directly to Saint Jude’s Hospital. This year, the sixth grade collected $5,921! Also, you can receive prizes for certain amounts you donate. Recently, I interviewed Mrs. Fortino, the coordinator of Math-A-Thon to learn more. What is Math-A-Thon? Mat-A-Thon is a project where students raise money for Saint Jude’s Hospital by having sponsors that give them mon-ey for completing a Math-A-Thon fun book.

For how many years has WWMS been having Math-A-Thon? For about two years.

How come the sixth grade only participates in Math-A-Thon? Since Math-A-Thon is a big project, we decided to start small with the Sixth graders.

Is there any reason why you wanted to be in charge of Math-A-Thon? I got an email about it last year and I thought it would be a really good idea to give back to the children who need it. Al-so, I had a family member who went through cancer as a small child. I think being able to give back to others is a very important life lesson that sixth graders should learn.

Can you also donate individually? Yes, you certainly can. If you want to learn more about Math-A-Thon, check it out at http://www.mathathon.org/index.shtml.

6th Graders Do Math for a Cause

By Avinash Kumar

8th Graders Participate in Career Day

By Nirali Patel

What do you want to be when you grow up? This is a popular question asked to kids from all ages; all the way from preschool to college. This year, on March 7th, the WWMS eighth graders really got the time to think about it. Parents and other volunteers came to talk about their ca-reers on Career Day from 8:30 to 11:30! A few days before March 7th, the eighth graders got to choose five jobs that interest them from a list and put them on an index card in the order of preference. Jobs included people from the food business (the bakers) to lab medicine to the mayor! There were even student athletes from Rutgers who were able to give a little more information on college life as well! The social studies teachers and Ms. Cotoia did their best to place the students in the careers that they preferred. On March 7th, during homeroom, the eighth graders got a small slip of paper with two of the five careers they chose.

The eighth graders got to attend two workshops to see what the job really is about. Whether they decided if they liked the actual career or not, all eighth grade could agree upon one thing! It was a great and enjoyable experience! The eighth graders definitely loved it but, how about the principal? We got the honor of interviewing the principal about the event… How do you feel about this year's career day? “I’m very excited that it went over so well. I stopped in al-most every session and the kids seemed very engaged and interested. Some of them were asking very intense ques-tions, so I was pleased by the organization and by the speakers.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 9

http://www.mathathon.org/index.shtml


In your opinion, how does career day influence the eighth graders? “I’m hoping it will keep you more focused on the small goals you have to set between now and when you enter the work-force and keep you focused on academics as well as pursuing your interests in life.” What would you advise the 8th graders about choosing the right career? “Don’t make your mind up too soon. Keep your mind open. You have a lot of options and still some time ahead of you. The first goal in that is getting to 9th grade, making it through 8th grade and then taking classes in high school that are going to prepare you for your choice of University.” How did you organize this event? We organized this event in conjunction with the PTA. The Parent Teacher association officers got the speakers for us. We asked them to get specific speakers from different careers that we knew the students would be interested in...If a parent wanted to volunteer, they should get in touch with the PTA president or they can get in touch with me and I can get the information in to the PTA because we hope to do it again next year.” How long has Woodrow been doing career day? “We did it for the second time this year. The first time was two years ago... when the 2011 - 2012 kids were eighth grad-ers. Last year, we did not have enough parent participation to do it, so we had to take a year off.” When you were a child, did you have anything like ca-reer day? “I don’t remember having it when I was a child, but when I was a math teacher at Herbert Hoover we did have a career day and that’s where I got the idea to do one at Woodrow Wilson.” How would career day have made a difference for you if you did have it when you were a child? “I think it would have opened my eyes up to more options. I don’t think I was aware of all the possibilities there are in life and it may have influenced me to do something different.” Do you know if the other schools at Edison do career day? “They do not do Career Day. One of the other middle schools does a community night. They have members of the community come in and talk about what they do in the com-munity, but it’s not structured the same way we do ours.”

Do you plan on hosting career day next year? “Absolutely, as long as the parents will come forward and get me speakers of interests to the students, we’ll take care of all the organization and facilitate the event.” Are there any changes you would like to make to career day for the future? “I would like to consider maybe doing it a little longer. This time we only let you go to only two sessions. One of the things I’m interested in hearing from the students is if they would have been able to handle a third session in terms of paying attention, and then maybe expanding it a little bit that way.” What was one of your favorite parts of Career Day? “I liked the several presentations that I thought were really hands on, like one of the science based careers when they extracted DNA from strawberries and eggs. I saw students taking apart computers and actually ripping out components and figuring out what they do.. I thought that was very cool. I enjoyed watching the dog trainer work with her dog. I learned a lot of different things from the mayor to the chief of police to the actress /choreographer. It really gave me some new ideas and experiences as well.” Any final words?

“I hope that because the experience was so labor intensive to plan, that the students reflect on what they saw and take home with them the start of a discussion; talking with their parents, talking with their older relatives, older siblings; about how they got interested in careers. I hope its just the begin-ning of opening up your eyes and your ears and opening up doors of opportunity for the future. If we have done that for a few of our students, it was worth of all the hard work.”

As you see career day was definitely a success! The students and teachers really loved it! As you may have remembered if you were there, the mayor, Thomas Lankey was there at Career Day as well to speak about his job as the mayor. We got a chance to ask him some questions about how he felt about Career Day as a guest speaker. Mayor Lankey’s interview is on page 10.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

8th Graders Participate in Career Day...CONTINUED

Edison’s Mayor

Thomas Lankey


How was your experience coming here today? “It was excellent. Great experience… Everybody was really engaged, asked a lot of questions so I didn’t have to go on and on and be boring. It was great. Everybody was really ex-cited so it was good.” What would you advise others who are interested in your career? “I think that they just need to pay attention to everything that’s going on… Watch there counsel meetings. Go to coun-cil meetings every now and then… You can talk with us; Schedule a meeting with me and learn what it’s all about...Keeping their eyes open and watching what’s going on is probably the biggest thing.”

Any other words? “No. It was great being here. You all were smiling a lot which was great!” The other speakers agreed with him too! They truly enjoyed Career Day! As said before, not only the speakers and teachers, but also the students enjoyed the day as well! They had a lot of fun. To the 8th graders who got to be a part of career day, don’t forget to thank the speakers, teach-ers, and the PTA when you see them around! They are the ones who made it all possible! For the kids coming to 8th grade be sure not to miss this unforgettable event! You will really regret it. As Ms. Cotoia said herself, Career Day helped the 8th graders think a little bit about their future! Thank you PTA, teachers, and guest speakers, for making this day possible by dedicating your time and effort!

8th Graders Participate in Career Day...CONTINUED

Ask any kid in this school. What’s NWEA? Everyone will know. Now, ask any kid in this school. What’s the Northwest Evaluation Association? I would say about 55% of the kids in the school will have no idea what you are talking about. The 7th and 8th graders have been taking NWEA since 2 years while the 6th graders have been taking it for 1 year. Have any of us ever wondered what the NWEA really is or means? Most kids in our school probably only care about what their score is and that’s it. Well it’s time for you to find out some more! Here is a fun fact: NWEA started as a normal test on paper in the 1970s. Later on, in 1985, it became USA’s first educational assessment on computers! Cool, right? Allan Olson, George Ingebo, and Vic Doherty did quite a lot of hard work to develop the test. It involved a lot of math! Their hard work definitely paid off. NWEA is used all around the nation by students, teachers, and educators! It is a great tool to use. Even teachers from our school agree! Below are Ms. Cotoia’s thoughts on the NWEA. What is your opinion/ view on NWEA? “My view is that it is extremely helpful to the teachers. Even though they are with you every day, it's reassuring for them to be able to quantify the skills and the areas where you are growing, as well as the skills and areas that they know that they need to work with you more on.” Do you feel that the NWEA truly measures how smart you are? “It has nothing to do with intelligence because I believe people can be smart in many different ways. I believe in musical in-telligence, artistic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence … We all bring in a wealth of skills that make you intelligent. It measures your aptitude; how well you can read and how well you can do math. To me there are 2 aspects of being intelligent but there are more that it does not measure.” How could you improve your NWEA scores? “I think the best thing to do with the NWEA is to if you find an area you want to work on, a sub score, or perhaps vocabu-lary instead of just looking at the reading Rit.. You work with your teacher because he or she can give you specific activities that are geared towards your Rit score, your level and give you ways to improve that particular area. Teachers are already do-ing that in class setting goals, giving small group work. A lot of the station work is geared towards your RIT scores and your areas to improve but you can also take responsibility by asking to the specific ways you can grow from your teacher.”


Get the 411 on the NWEA

By Nirali Patel


Will we be taking it next year? “Yes, I believe we are scheduled to… I think we will continue in the middle schools to take NWEA; grades 6, 7, and 8. I do not think they are planning on taking it in the 9th grade at JP Ste-vens.” Whose idea was the NWEA? How did NWEA start over here? “This is our second year with the NWEA. In two other middle schools, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, it's their third year. The decision was made by the central office, administration, and the Board of Ed. as a way to check students’ progress through-out the year instead of just once a year like on the NJASK.” Do all the schools in Edison take NWEA? “All four middle schools take NWEA. The elementary schools have an assessment they call STARS.”

Any final words? “Try your best. That’s what I ask. Sometimes I walk into the classrooms and I see most of the kids are giving good effort and some of them are not. The are just breezing through or wasting time and we know that and we see that. The teachers see that. The administrators see that. We respond so much better when we know that a student is really trying their best because then we go out of our way to help them in any way that we can. Put your best effort forward and your teachers will put their effort in helping you reach your goals.” As you can see, the NWEA is probably going to stick around for a long time in WWMS as it has been proved to be quite helpful! Be ready to take it all three years! Good luck!

Get the 411 on the NWEA ...CONTINUED

This past weekend from March 27th-29th, the Woodrow Wilson Model UN team of 22 students participated in the prominent UNA-USA international conference. This year, over 1600 stu-dents globally participated in UNA-USA, the world’s largest middle school

conference. In delegations of two people each, the WWMS MUN team debated in various different committees, represent-ing the countries Uganda and Qatar. Woodrow’s delegations were featured in the following 8 different committees: the WHO, FAO, IAEA, UNHCR, ECOSOC, UNEP, UNDP, and GA3. Woodrow was extremely proud to have won 6 Honorable Men-tion awards (FAO, IAEA, UNHCR, GA3, and 2 in UNEP,) along with 1 Best Delegation award (UNDP)!

The WHO, (World Health Organization,) arguably the most intriguing committee, discussed the crisis of the zombie pandemic. The committee successfully passed a resolution which saved humanity from zombies! Next, in the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization,) delegates worked to pass a resolution that would eventually ban dangerous GMOs globally. In the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency,) students discussed the urgent situation regarding the future of nuclear power. In the UNHCR, (UN High Commissioner for Refugees,) the topic sur-rounded the sentimental issue regarding the millions worldwide who are forced to flee their homes due to environmental change, natural disasters, war, and more. In ECOSOC, (Economic and Social Council) delegates discussed the predicament that many impoverished countries faced due to their lack of clean water and sanitation. In the UNEP (UN Environmental Programme,) dele-gates passed a resolution that would protect the arctic by limiting tourism in certain areas. In the UNDP, (UN Developmental Pro-gramme) the debate was committed to reducing and eradicating

extreme poverty. In this committee, Woodrow’s delegation earned a “Best Delegation” distinction. Finally in the GA3, (General Assembly 3rd,) students discussed ways in which access to education could be facilitated for disabled people.

The overall UNA-USA experience was quite unique. As part of the delegation of Qatar in the FAO committee, I discov-ered new levels of MUN in my first real conference. First, we participated in the opening ceremony, in which speakers came to introduce the program and talk about the importance of our work in MUN. The next day, we started off with a training ses-sion, in which MUN chairs taught us the fundamentals of MUN including the motions, points, and more. We learned through a creative stimulation in which delegates represented animals and debated which animal type was superior. Soon after, the first committee session began. This was the big moment for delegates to shine and put all their hard preparation into action. In com-mittee, countries formed alliances in blocks and debated for around 10 hours, to help make their resolutions pass. For me, committee was a stressful, yet interesting experience where strat-egies were primary. After committee sessions on Friday, MUN hosted a delegate social, in which delegates could socialize with each other by talking or dancing. The DJs blasted loud, popular songs in the ballrooms and entertained the active crowd.

Aside from the conference, the feeling of debating in New York was quite interesting. For instance, during lunch, my fellow delegates and I ventured through the congested streets in N.Y.C. to visit stores and eat. Subsequently, it was quite easy for me to get lost, as navigating around one of the world’s largest cities was a great task for a middle-schooler like me. Still, noth-ing compared to that feeling when I found my way back into the prestigious Grand Hyatt Hotel. (Apparently, while I was lost, my fellow delegates had greeted and taken “selfies” with basketball legend, Magic Johnson.)

UNA-USA: An Inside Look By: Grace Wang


The NJASK is looming! Here are some tips to help you do your best: Weeks Before the Test As the test gets closer, take the time to prepare. Pay extra attention in class and review your notes. You may also want to use other resources to help you study, including worksheets, videos, websites, and workbooks. Here are some key things to keep in mind while studying-

* Turn off all distractions (TV, phone, music) and make sure it's quiet * Highlight key points on your notes. * Make flash cards for vocabulary. * Eat a snack while studying. This will boost your energy. However, make sure your eating something

healthy! * Take frequent breaks. You don't want to overwhelm yourself.

On The Days of the Test

* Make sure you are well rested. * Eat a healthy and adequate breakfast. That means stay away from too much sugar. It'll make you feel energetic for

a while but it'll wear off soon. Also, don't stuff yourself. Studies have shown that leaving some room in our stom-ach can help you focus.

* Do not study on these days, especially in the morning. It will make you tense. * Right before the test, take 3 deep breaths. It will calm you down.

During The Test General Strategies

* Read directions carefully. You don't want to make silly mistakes. * Keep track of time. * Concentrate. Don't let your mind wander. * Try to answer each question. * Show your work if necessary. (Math)

Multiple Choice Strategies

* Consider and read all choices. * Use the process of elimination if necessary. * Change your answers only if you have double-checked them. (Always go with your gut)

Essays and Open Ended Response Strategies

* Be organized and know your time limit. * Keep the amount of writing space in mind. You will not get extra paper. * Pre-write if you can. * Proofread!

After The Test

* Relax * Eat a good lunch. You will be hungry! * Do not think about what you think you got wrong on the test. You can’t

change it. Hope these tips helped! Now you're ready to do your best. Good Luck!

NJASK Helpful Tips

By Siya Scindia


AROUND TOWN

James Monroe – A School to Remember By Darlene Fung

On Saturday, March 22, the James Monroe Ele-mentary School, which cele-brated its 50th anniversary this year, caught fire just be-fore 8pm. Within minutes, the whole building was swal-lowed up by the flames. It took three hours for the fire-fights to get the massive fire under control, and they had to work through the night to keep hotspots from flaring up again and re-setting fire to what was left of the school. By Monday morning, smoke was still visible from the devastat-ing fire that burned James Monroe Elementary School to the ground.

After the fire, Richard O’Malley, the Superintendent of Schools, addressed his staff, announcing his seemingly impossible proposal for the 487 students of James Monroe to be back in school within two days. “I knew it was going to be tough,” he said. But with the help of the James Monroe community and the township, his plan became reality.

The students resumed school on March 26th, at the Middlesex County College (MCC), which offered two build-ings as a makeshift school that James Monroe could use. These two buildings allowed the whole school to stay togeth-er instead of having to be separated during this tough time. Besides the two buildings, the students also have access to the college’s gymnasium and a section of the cafeteria. Joann LaPerla-Morales, Middlesex County College President says, “As a member of the Middlesex County community, we see it as our responsibility to help our neighbors through this in-credibly difficult time.”

Students were dropped off at Herbert Hoover Mid-dle school by their usual transportation, and from there, they were all bused to college in school buses and coach buses. Once they arrived at the college, they were greeted by happy high-fives and hugs from their teachers and their principal, Lynda Zapoticzny, as well as some of the college students enrolled at the Mid-dlesex County Col-lege, who were holding a baby-blue banner reading, “Welcome James Monroe Students!”

Zapoticzny says that the children are very resilient and have adjusted well to their new surroundings. For many of them, “going to college” with their entire class on a school bus or even a coach bus was like an exciting school field trip. The students made inspirational posters that they have hung all over the walls, many of them with cheerful floral designs and positive statements, such as “Everything is going to be O.K.” The buildings that the students are occupying looked even more like their old elementary school when the school sign, which survived the blaze, was installed in front of the buildings. To see how the students are adjusting to the new environment at the Middlesex County College, please visit the James Mon-roe Elementary School web-site to view pictures.

The teachers and staff of James Monroe Elementary School have been one of the most important factors in the students’ positive experience at the MCC. “Although losing all their professional and many personal resources and items in the fire, they’ve put on a happy face and moved forward, because they understand the important role they play in the children’s’ lives,” says Principal Zapoticzny.

Fortunately, there have been many generous individ-uals as well as companies and communities that have donated many essential supplies lost in the fire and helped to make all the transportation form Herbert Hoover to the MCC easier. As people found out what happened to the James Monroe, school officials were bombarded with phone calls and emails asking “What can I do to help?” O’Malley called the positive responses “amazing” and said, “This shows that the human spirit is alive and that we live in a great community.”

Dora Ramos, president of the Edison-based non-profit organization Community Action Reaches Everyone (C.A.R.E.) donated $10,000 on March 25th to the staff and teachers of James Monroe to purchase new supplies. She has also gotten step stools for the kindergarteners and coat hang-ers, and has been the go-to person in receiving emails and phone calls from the individuals who want to help. “It’s un-believable,” she said, describing the generous calls she had been receiving. “A guy who put together the donation for Oklahoma City called to donate a copy machine. It’s amazing how everybody from different communities and nationalities come together like this.”



AROUND TOWN

James Monroe – A School to Remember...CONTINUED

In addition to donations from individuals, the school ven-dors have made generous dona-tions as well. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the company that prints textbooks for the schools in Edi-son, has provided brand-new text-books for the students. Promethean, the company who makes the electronic whiteboards installed in every classroom of all the schools in Edison, has also reached out to them.

The school district, as well as many local organiza-tions and nearby townships has hosted fundraising events to raise money for the staff and students at James Monroe. Amanda Coupland, a communications specialist for the Edi-son Township Education Association says that almost $5,000 cash has been raised for the teachers at James Monroe. Addi-tionally, each student will receive a backpack filled with sup-plies from the New Jersey Education Association, who will also be giving every staff member a gift card from Staples. New Brunswick is sending a bus full of school supplies, and Woodbridge Township is offering a 54-passenger bus for the district to use at no charge. The South Plainfield Education Association is sending gift cards and money donations, and Stephanie Cardoso, a teacher at Martin Luther King Elemen-

tary School, has set up a James Monroe Edison NJ Wish List full of children’s books on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/ref=cm_reg_rd-upd?ie=UTF8&id=3EUX8YCA2J6XQ&type=wishlist).

If you would like to help, please visit the James Mon-roe Elementary School website (http://www.edison.k12.nj.us/Domain/17) and click DONATE on the home page, or scroll down to find other ways to help. The students of James Monroe Elementary School needs all the help they can get, and YOU can help them.

Arts Middle School By Alexis Wilner

Have you ever noticed that kids are leaving during class to go home? Does it seem like they leave every Wednesday between 12:05-12:15? Chances are, those kids are in the Arts Middle School. A program at Middlesex County College, provided by the Freeholders of Middlesex County for children in grades 6 through 8 (there is also a program for high school). This program helps children practice/advance their talents in any of the courses they are selected for. Some of the courses at A.M.S. are...

* Theatre * Vocal Music * Photography

How does it work? Well, after paying money for auditions, you receive a card in the mail. This card tells you what day your audition is, what times and where. After auditions, you have to wait for the results in the mail. If your accepted or not, they’ll send you a letter. If you get in, the letter tells you when class starts, the rules, and all the other important infor-mation. On the first day, you’ll arrive at your class and have lots of fun. At 2:45, your instructor lets everyone take a break. You get to hang out with the other kids, eat snack, and talk. At 3:00, your teacher has you come back to the classroom, and you get back to work until 4:00. Then, the class is over.

If you’re interested in going to A.M.S. next year, visit the website below and look for audition dates. https://www.artsandedcenter.org/index.htm

https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/ref=cm_reg_rd-upd?ie=UTF8&id=3EUX8YCA2J6XQ&type=wishlist



http://www.edison.k12.nj.us/Domain/17

http://www.edison.k12.nj.us/Domain/17

https://www.artsandedcenter.org/index.htm


AROUND TOWN

The Real Rush Holt By Grace Wang

Recently, the constituents of

District 12 (parts of Union, Mercer,

Middlesex, and Somerset counties,)

received the alarming news that their

esteemed Congressman, Rush Holt,

had decided to step down after his

current term. In his announcement,

Holt did not provide detailed infor-

mation about the motives behind his

decision. However, he claimed that his

reasons for stepping down were all

“positive and optimistic.”

Holt, an extremely unique

Congressmen was a rocket scientist

and professor is commonly deemed

one of the smartest members of the

US House of Representatives. During

his academic career, he worked at a

number of scientific corporations, in-

cluding the Princeton Plasma Physics

Laboratory at Princeton University,

the largest center for energy research

in New Jersey.

Holt was also a five-time

champion on “Jeopardy,” and was

only one of two Congressmen to ap-

pear on the popular show. (The other

was Senator John McCain.) In 2011,

he participated in a special exhibition

of Jeopardy, in which he defeated

IBM’s Watson, a supercomputer,

$8,600 to $6,200.

In 1996, Holt first ran for

Congress, but he lost during the pri-

mary election. Later, in 1998, he nar-

rowly defeated his opponents and be-

gan his first of eight terms (15 years so

far) as a Congressman. In Congress,

Holt works in committees that deal

with issues such as Natural Resources,

Education, and Labor.

After Holt leaves office, many

other lawmakers in New Jersey will

eagerly vie for the open spot. So far,

some contenders are state Senator

Linda Greenstein and Assemblymen

Upendra Chivukula and Reed

Gusciora. Executive Brian Hughes,

Doctor Alieta Eck (a US senate candi-

date earlier this year,) and Business-

men Scott Sipprelle (who ran against

Holt in 2010,) and John Crowley

might also make election at-

tempts. Hopefully, whoever wins the

election will successfully and responsi-

bly carry District 12 in the House of

Repre-

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade By Alexis Wilner

In every direction, all you can see is one color- Green. No, I’m not in a bank. Im at the Woodbridge Township 41st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. This luck-filled event was held on March 9th, 2014. The floats left Woodbridge High School at 1:30 pm and ended at Woodbridge Town Hall at 3:00pm. This parade was also a production of the American Irish association with 80 marching units, floats and other displays. This event was a big hit. The parade honorees this year were the following… Grand Marshall : Frank Darcy Irish Man of the year: Larry Miloscia Irish woman of the year: Nancy Egan Miss American Irish: Jessica Jacko Lady in Waiting: Rebecca Gardner Luckily, I got an exclusive, inside look of the parade. I was their early to see everyone get together and ready. I also got to ride on the “JFK Medical Center” float! It’s an en-tirely different perspective! Once in while, I would get off the float and pass out “gold coins” to the kids. It was a lot of fun, and I am looking forward to next year’s parade!

The JFK Float


AROUND THE WORLD

She’s a Dork: A Blog Filled with Canine-Inspired Tales of Love and

Rescue By Ava Dul

Jackie Skole has two kids, but they are not human! Her two kids are her dogs named Galen and Gryffin. She writes a blog about them called “She’s a Dork” and the dork she is referring to is Galen. Her blog entries entail canine-inspired tales of love and rescue. When reading this, I fell in love with these dogs, and anybody else will too. You can read her blog at: http://shesadork.com/ Below are some questions I asked her about her blog. 1. What do you want people to get out of reading your blog? The most important thing I want people to get from reading my blog is a few minutes of enjoyment. I'd also like them to think about whatever issue it is that I've raised in a particular post. Finally, it would be nice if people became more aware of the issue of shelter euthanasia and the importance of adopting from shelters. I try to balance my posts be-tween what I call musings -- interesting anecdotes about my quirky dog and seri-ous posts about the issue of pet overpop-ulation. 2. How do you feel about the several shelters in the south? How do you think kids can help?

I think that overall, shelters get a bad rap. Most people (though certainly not all) who work in shelters love animals and hate to see them put to death. The prob-lem is that they are required, by law, to take in every dog and cat that is surren-dered to them and that are picked up as strays. So the shelters become over-crowded. And here again, by law, they can only hold so many at one time. If people do not adopt them, the shelters have no other way to deal with them but to kill them. Regarding how kids can help: Shelters can always use donations of food, toys, pet beds, blankets, etc., so kids can do fundraisers. I'd also direct you to this wonderful program called homeless pet clubs started by a veterinarian in Georgia. Here is the link: Students can start their own pet clubs. 3. When did you decide to write about your dogs? I began doing research for a book about my dog and the pet overpopulation issue, and I thought writing a blog would be good exercise for my brain, and I also wanted to get a sense of how people re-sponded to my writing.

4. You refer to your dogs as your kids. What makes her feel like family to you? Galen is without a doubt my baby girl. It wasn't until I adopted Gryffin that I real-ized how much I could love a dog, and when he died I decided my house felt extraordinarily empty without him, even though I had two human daughters. There is just something about dogs -- about how they are both loving and loyal, and so incredibly happy just to be in your presence. I look into Galen's eyes and I just smile, and I feel comforted. There's something incredibly calming about her. 5. Is there anything else you would like to say? If anyone is thinking about getting a dog, visit your local shelter or go to petfind-er.com and look for dogs in your area. There are so many that need homes -- and for many it really is a matter of life or death.

Is Champ “Lake Monster” Real? By: Henry Geng and Samuel Zhang

Is the lake monster, Champ, real? Some people believe so, yet others oppose this theory. Champ is believed to be a lake monster in Lake Champlain. Why do people believe it is real? The first piece of evidence was a real, proven pho-tograph taken by a woman named Sandra Mansi. She saw the monster during a va-cation with her fiancé and her kids. As she was settling onto the shore of a lake, she saw water churning and Champ slow-ly rising. While it was looking around, Sandra took a quick snap of it. She then

sent to the photograph to a Crypto-zoologist named Richard Greenwell, who examined it to check for any sign of for-gery. What he found was astonishing: there was no sign of fakery. Afterwards, Nat Geo Wild sent a team of two to ex-amine Lake Champlain. They had used a sonar to detect signs of Champ, and they found a large creature without a loud roar lurking under the water. They took out a mini-sub to find photographs of the crea-ture. After a while, one person went to extend the rope, but while he was gone,

the mini-sub suddenly was tossed around by a large creature. Bubbles engulfed the sub and as they went in for a close look, the creature had disappeared into the murky waters. No one knows if Champ is really real, but it is evident that there is something lurking under the waters of Lake Champlain.

Galen the “Dork”


AROUND THE WORLD

The Case of the Dying Commas By Rishabh Rout

Like most other people, you most

probably have not seen an injured comma

lying in the street, pleading for help. Of

course, real commas can’t really get hurt.

Yet ironically, the comma is dying. Let’s

get the scoop on an interesting case that

could possibly destroy something that is the pain of English

students, but the base of the English language itself.

During the first few weeks of February, it was an-

nounced that there was a possibility the commas may be re-

moved from English grammar. Why? This is what professor

John McWhorter claims: “Removing commas from most

modern US texts would cause little loss of clarity.” What he

means by this is that you can still understand pretty much

anything without commas. For example, I’m sure you can

understand this: “After the movie John said goodbye to his

friends Scott Rick and Joe.” Another reason to remove com-

mas is that many kids in schools often make comma usage

errors. The comma has no fixed use. It is used for separat-

ing words in a series, separating different clauses in a sen-

tence, and highlighting adjectives, and more. Also some of

the most common errors students make are comma splicing

and bracketing.

So then why not just forget commas right away?

The other side constantly argues that people who have al-

ready learned to use commas would have a hard time not

using them. One of my teachers comments, “I cannot imag-

ine teaching students and grading papers without commas.”

And imagine English as a subject! A huge chunk of it is learn-

ing how to uses commas properly. One of my friends says

that it would be cool if there were no comma issues to worry

about, but it is still not worth banishing the comma altogeth-

er for that. Although many people neglect the use of commas

online, they are still an essential part of English grammar.

They are what defines not just English, but many other lan-

guages such as Spanish and Hindi. They certainly don’t seem

to have any trouble with using commas.

In my opinion, there should be no reason for com-

mas to be removed from English. True, sentences are under-

standable without them, but commas also clarify sentences

that can have multiple meanings. And plus, nobody would

like every single book in America to be taken and retyped

without commas, would they?

Stopping Junk Food By: Anakha Anilkumar Nair

Junk food- two simple words that represent damage to our health. Slowly but surely, junk foods are gaining popu-larity. Almost everyone living in America right now has eaten junk food at least once. Many people, however, don’t realize the after effects of excessive junk food eating. What is junk food, after all? How do you define it? How do you recognize it? We all need food to live. Our body requires a variety of nutrients - carbohydrates, fiber, fat, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and many others. A balanced diet which includes all these is required to have a good health. However, a balanced diet is not always what tastes best, or something that you get quick around the next corner. Food that is low in nutritional value, but has comparatively high caloric value is generally called junk food. It is easy to find, it is often tasty to have, but slowly and unknowingly to you, it eats away your health as well. Junk foods can cause huge problems in the future. Harvard University says that in the year 2050, 46% of Ameri-

ca’s population will be obese because of junk foods. There are many chronic diseases that take over one’s body, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. Another recent study shows that not eating enough healthy foods such as vegetables, fruits, etc., can lead to gastrointesti-nal (digestive) cancer, heart diseases and strokes. The only way to overcome these health problems is to start eating healthy with a good mix of nutrients, and have more vegeta-bles and fruits. Fruits and vegetables help the human body unlike the useless junk foods that many people have a craving for. People should soon realize that the junk foods are useless and at the same time, harmful. Therefore, the next time you pick up a cheeseburg-er or other fast foods, think about the effects that this one food can have on your life in the days yet to come. Make the right decision today, live a healthy life tomorrow.


THE DEBATE CORNER

Yes! Physical Education is one of the mandatory

courses in our current curriculum, and for good reasons. Physical Education promotes a good, healthy lifestyle, improves essential life skills such as self-discipline and improved judgment, and physi-cal and academic improvement. Physical Education is a way to promote healthy lifestyles for children, to extend into the future. Required gym sessions teach children to have a healthier lifestyle, with frequent and regular workouts. According to studies, only 21.8% of students sit fre-quently or are inactive if gym is a required course in their school, in comparison to the 45.2% for students whose schools don’t provide gym classes. Children who have required physical education are also more active outside of school, participating in activities includ-ing team sports and outdoor activities much more frequently than the students who do not have required physical education. Physical Education is a way to improve students’ skills. Some skills include; self discipline, better judgment, and better cooperation with one’s peers. These are developed through many exercises, which are performed during physical education. For example, team sports improve students’ abilities to work as a team, while health and fitness responsibility is stressed, promoting self-discipline in students. Gym class also improves physical health and academic achievement. Physical health is strengthened through gym work. Academics are also improved from physical activity. According to a study published by USA Today, increased physical activity results in better academic achievement. Another study composing of over 3 million students showed a strong tie between good fitness levels and good test scores. Gym is obviously one of the courses we could not be without. It has a lot of helpful benefits, which would improve the health of students all across America, which is why physical education should be a required subject at school.

No! Physical education class. One of the most useless

subjects in our designated curriculum. These classes should not be a required element in our curriculum because required physical education courses does not lower obesity rates in the United States, results in bullying and rifts between students, and limits a student’s academic capability by restricting them to perform phys-ical education tasks rather than focusing on other academic related aspects of their school life. For starters, a study conducted by the University of Georgia concluded that physical education is not enough to help combat obesity rates in most states in America. Because physical education classes take only 50-minute periods, they do not meet up to the recommended standards; however, increasing the time would either extend the already long school day, or push aside other classes that are essential for the students’ studies. PE classes are also a place where bullying occurs. A study conducted of 1250 schoolchildren concluded that 51% have suffered from mental intimidation from a sport. High standards and competition among students leads to such bullying, whether it be telling a student that they are bad at their sport or choosing a student last to be on their team. Students have said that they avoid such activities due to the harassment, and this would affect their life in the future, impairing skills to work along with others in a group. Lastly, physical education limits the academic capability of students by forcing them to waste their precious school time on physical activities instead of studying other subjects such as math, English, social studies, and science. It also prevents students from taking other courses they may prefer. If gym weren’t manda-tory, students would still be able to take it, but could also select other electives they may favor more, such as visual arts, choir, orchestra, or band. The system makes sure that every student is satisfied with his or her courses. Although gym seems to be an important subject, it really has no need of being mandatory. Even though there is value in gym courses, it would be more beneficial for everybody if it weren’t required.

Should Physical Education Be Mandatory? By Ranen Miao

Should We Embrace Nuclear Power?

By Jaii Pappu

People have many views about this fantastic question that’s starting frenzy-like sensations throughout the nation. This is my view on the issue: Pros: How can a bioweapon be so beneficial to us? Well, you see, nuclear energy can be used to make powerful weapons that can protect a country and can destroy the whole world! Also, nuclear energy can be a new source of energy, too. In addition, this can help boost our economy and find jobs for the unemployed. We will need so many workers for making the weapons, creating nuclear power stations, and people who will maintain and cater to the needs of the power stations who will reform the nation! Doesn’t it sound like eternal bliss? Cons: Nuclear energy is just an expensive way to heat up water using radioactive materials and then converting the heat from steam

into energy. That can inflict major financial problems. In addition, money is needed to cool down the nuclear waste. If there is a leak in the tank, it can scar and damage the area, making life there hard to survive (like what happened at Fukushima in Japan). Further-more, many Americans and other countries’ workers who work at nuclear power stations can develop horrible conditions that may even result in death (like leukemia, a blood cancer). The biggest concerns of activists are that if nuclear weapons are created, but are put into wrong hands, the nuclear bomb blast could be even ∞ times worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki (WW2, Japan). Folks, these are the basics. In the end, I really do believe that risking our health, the environment, and world for money is not worth it. The risks outweigh the benefits easily! Don’t you think us humans have done enough to our world and damaged our futures?


SCIENCE

When you think of “big cats”, you may think of lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, and cheetahs, but do you think of the Amur Leopard? Most people wouldn’t. The world’s rarest cat, the Amur Leopard lives in the temperate forests in the Russian Far East. There are only 14-20 adult leopards and 5-6 cubs left in the world. Some reasons these cats are going extinct include habitat loss due to logging, road building, poaching, and global climate change. There are many fascinating facts to learn about the Amur Leopard and its appearance. For example, the scientific name for the Amur Leopard is panthera pardus orientalis. The Amur Leopard has a thick, cream-colored coat that is marked with black spots with tan centers. The hair on their coat is long enough to keep the leopard warm in the cold climates and snowy winters and can be up to sev-en centimeters long. Male Amur Leop-ards weigh between 80 to 198 pounds and females are smaller, weighing 60 to 130 pounds. The height of the leopard at

the shoulder is 25 to 31 inches. The main vocalization of the Amur leopard is a distinctive raspy call rather than a growl. Amur Leopards can run up to 30 miles per hour and leap up to 10 feet high. Un-like other cats, leopards are strong swim-mers and are one of the few cats that like water. The Amur Leopard also has in-teresting life cycles and hunting habits. The leopards usually breed during Janu-ary and February. Although leopards can have up to six cubs, a customary litter is usually two to three cubs born after a gestation period of 90-105 days. New-born leopard cubs are blind, helpless, and tiny (weighing around one pound). The cubs do not open their eyes until they are about 10 days old. At six to eight weeks of age, they follow their mother out of the den. By three months, cubs no longer rely on their mother’s milk, but will stay with their mother to learn how to hunt until they are 18 to 24 months old. The Amur Leopard will hunt Roe deer, wild boar, hare, Sika deer and occasionally

domestic livestock. They can drag a kill up to three times their own weight into a tree to avoid competition from other predators. Sometimes, they leave lefto-vers in the trees and return to feed later. The Amur leopard may live up to 12 years in the wild and up to 20 years in captivity. The Amur Leopard also has “night vision” which can help them hunt in the dark. The tapetum lucidum, a mirror-like layer in the back of the eye, reflects light back through the eye to help pro-duce a brighter image in low light. This is an adaptation for their nocturnal lifestyle that allows them to see six times better than humans in the dark. The cats have extremely accurate 3-D vision, which helps them gauge the distance to prey.

In conclusion, the Amur Leop-ard is a unique animal with distinctive traits. The next time you are asked for a list of big cats, make sure you include the Amur Leopard!

Amur Leopard: Save the Cats! Helen Wei

The Worst Winter Ever By Hafsah T. Shaik

What are some students and teachers at Woodrow saying about our recent weather? “It’s sparkly and beauti-ful, covering the land like a blanket…” “Snow is terrible! It’s slushy and wet and just gross!” “I like snow, but why do we have to miss spring break, it’s just crazy!” Well there you have it, not only in our school, but across the east coast, 2 out of 3 people are saying that the weather we had been having this winter was terrible.

The winter of 2013-2014 was one of the worst winters ever. Snow in the Big Apple reached up to 4 feet, the most in a January-February period. Bos-ton didn’t reach too much snow, but the temperatures did drop lower than aver-age. Chicago, however, hit 67.9 inches of snow this season, a good 41.5 inches

above normal, which earns the fifth snowiest in the city since 1884. It has also been the snowiest winter since 1978-1979 which set the all-time record of 89.7 inches! Is there an explanation as to why this is happening?

On February 13, CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose and his guest called the extreme cold an effect of glob-al warming. Michio Kaku, a physics pro-fessor from New York City College, claimed that the weather could get worse because of global warming. He says, “We think it’s because of the gradual heating up of the North Pole. The North Pole is melting. That excess heat generat-ed by all this warm water is destabilizing this gigantic bucket of cold air… So that’s the irony, the heating could cause

gigantic storms of historic proportions.” The North Pole will keep rising

in temperature, and we can’t do much to stop it. In fact, winters may even be un-predictable at this point, as we have no control over any of this except for the fact that we have caused global warming.

Although the idea that global warming is the cause of our record break-ing winters is controversial, it is the only thing we can think of. At least we have something to point our fingers at alt-hough the root cause may actually be us. So, members of the Woodrow Wilson community, are you pleased with this in-tense winter, and why do you think we are having such a winter?


SCIENCE

Have you ever wondered how seasons change? Well, what is a season? A season is a division of the year which is marked by changes in the weather, ecology and hours of day-light. Seasons are caused by the Earth’s yearly revolution around the sun and the tilt of the Earth’s rotational axis relative to the plane of revolution. The plane of revolution is the orbit on which the Earth revolves around the sun. The Earth’s orbital plane is also known as the ecliptic plane, and the Earth’s tilt is known to astronomers as the obliq-uity of the plane. That is the angle between the ecliptic and ce-lestial equator on the Earth. The Earth, as of now, has an axial tilt of about 23.5 degrees. This means that at any given time dur-ing summer or winter, one hemisphere of the planet and its rela-tive pole is directly exposed to the rays of the sun. This expo-sure to the sun rays alternates between the Northern and South-ern hemispheres as the Earth revolves in its orbit. Therefore, at any given time, the Northern and Southern hemispheres experi-ence opposite seasons. This tilt also affects hours of daylight. When the Northern hemisphere is pointing towards the sun, it has more hours of daylight and less hours of night. The same is true for the Southern hemisphere. When pointing away from the sun, the hemispheres receive less hours of daylight and more hours of night. The regions between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, on the other hand, have little changes in their daylight hours because for throughout the year, their exposure to the sun is generally constant. This region also expe-riences very little seasonal changes due to this.

There are four special times in the year when the Earth’s rotational axis lines up perfectly with the sun. The first is the vernal equinox, and in the Northern hemisphere it is on March 20th or 21st. The vernal equinox is the first day of spring. At this point, the Earth’s axis is perpendicular to the Sun, and both hemispheres are at the same distance from the sun, which means that they are receiving equal amount of sunlight. This

occurrence will happen again in six months, on the Autumnal equinox, the first day of fall for the Northern hemisphere. When it’s the vernal equinox in the Northern hemisphere, it’s the au-tumnal equinox in the Southern hemisphere and vice versa. For example: When the Northern hemisphere is celebrating a cold and windy Christmas, at the same time the Southern hemisphere is celebrating a hot and dry Christmas because when it’s winter in the Northern hemisphere, its summer in the Southern hemi-sphere. After the vernal equinox, the Northern hemisphere is tilts more and more towards the sun. This gives the Northern hemisphere more sunlight and hotter days. About three months from the vernal equinox, the Northern hemisphere has the long-est day of all in terms of sunlight: the summer solstice. At this time, the Northern hemisphere is pointed directly towards the Sun. It’s the first day of summer. Later, we’ll have the day with the least amount of sunlight: the winter solstice. This time, the Northern hemisphere is pointed as far away from the sun as it can get. This is the first day of winter. In the Northern hemi-sphere, daylight hours in the summer can be as long as 16 hours, and winter daylight can be as short as 8 hours. At the poles, the pole facing the sun receives six straight months of daylight, and the pole facing away from the sun receives six straight months of darkness. In the northern hemisphere, spring season comes during the months of March, April, and May. Summer comes during the months of June, July and August. Fall falls during the months of September, October, and November. Winter, finally falls during the months of December, January, and February. In conclusion, the seasonal change depends on the tilt of the Earth’s axis and the Earth’s rev-olution around the sun. This causes the two hemispheres to have opposite sea-sons because when one is tilted to-wards the sun, the other is away from the sun.

How Seasons Change By Nirmal Bhatt

Spring has Sprung Pollen

By Nirali Patel

“Ehh...Ehh...Choo!” That is a sound most of you must be familiar with. All throughout winter, people get the flu, get sick… It’s normal. The thing is that this sneeze was not caused by a cold, but it was caused by

something else… POLLEN ALLERGIES! For those of you who don’t know what pollen allergies are, the word is self ex-planatory. Basically, when you have pollen allergies, you are al-lergic to pollen which is popular in spring. To sum it up, if you have pollen allergies, you are allergic to the season itself. Many may ask, “What is pollen?” The Google dictionary definition for pollen is: a fine powdery substance, typically yellow, consisting

of microscopic grains discharged from the male part of a flower or from a male cone. Each grain contains a male gamete that can fertilize the female ovule to which pollen is transported by the wind, insects, or other animals. I know it is surprising for many people to find that pollen is not flowers! Believe it or not, 1 in every 7 people have this allergy in the United States. That would mean that about 35 million people in this country have pollen allergies! Surprising, right? If you are one of these people, make sure you are careful when outside and have all your medicine, eye drops, ear drops, or whatever you need/take. If you are not one of these people, consider yourself lucky and hope that you don’t develop these allergies this spring or later on!


TECHNOLOGY

Which type of phone software would you prefer? When there’s a time to buy a new Smartphone, many people are stuck between Apple and Android. Which one is the bet-ter choice? Well let’s check it out!

Apple Fifty bucks will be saved in security operating system (OS)! Apple has made its own software. In the software, there are no bugs or Trojans and

it also has capability to resist any type infiltration. This saves a lot of money. Like Windows, with Android, you have to pay extra money to save the device from any virus attacks. Also, it is highly impossible for any hacking to take place on an apple device unlike on Windows and Android device. In this way, you could save your money on an Apple device.

Apple is a very well known company throughout the world. They were the ones who started to sell Smart phones. Apple makes a ton of money each year, just from Smartphone sales! On the other hand, Apple has also has some cons. A majority of the apple devices don’t have good data portability. It is kind of complicated to copy and paste any document into external memory. As the amount of stor-age space on iPhone goes up, the price increases dramatically as compared with Android phone. While Android, has an excellent feature of copying and pasting anything faster into the phone. It can also download the information, copy songs or any other documents faster and easily as compared to the Apple devices.

Android There are many pros for an android, but this one feature is useful and the Apple devices doesn’t have it! This feature is called as multi-

tasking. This allows you to open more applications on An-droid phone. For an example, you can watch news on your phone while typing a text message to your friend! Also, the space is sufficient and is cheaper in Android phones. You can save documents and you can download anything faster than an Apple device!

On the other hand, screens of Android phones are quite smaller than the opposition. Although it is easier to car-ry and hold it in your hands, typing on the screen for An-droid phone is harder than any Apple device. Also, the cam-era packaged on most of the Android phones, doesn’t come with good HD quality. The camera on an Apple device is very good at taking pictures. The pictures on that phone come out to be HD compared to an Android!

As you can see, deciding to buy a Smartphone is

quite hard. The Apple products are safer and less prone to any virus attacks or Trojans! Apple needs to improve on their data portability. For the Android, it has the excellent feature of multitasking. But, Android screens should be bigger enough for a person to type successfully on the phone. That having been said, you can now select the phone, which suits you the best!

Apple VS Android By Dhruv Shahane

The Flappy Bird APP By Rahul Kanani

Flappy bird is the new trend that everyone is taking about. Children across Woodrow Wilson Middle school have been playing countless hours of this extremely addicting game of a simple yellow, 8- bit bird is flying through pipes. This game has been the biggest thing on the market since

Temple Run, and it is still gaining overwhelming publicity. Students have been playing Flappy Bird nonstop to beat their friend’s high scores, which are now beginning to peak 300. Now the question is: where did this game even come from? A Vietnamese game developer name Dong Nguyen created this Earth shattering in 2013 under the name .GEARS Studios. He created of the most successful game of all time as an independent game developer, never even suspecting the future publicity that come. It first debut-ed in the app store on May 24th 2013 and the fame slow at

first, but the introduction of its publicity for unknown rea-sons was rather sudden. Some critics believe that Dong Ngu-yen influenced Flappy Birds’ first time introduction into the public, however the game was decent overall, so they say from here on out, it’s history. Near the end of January 14th Flappy Bird had become the most downloaded app on the IOS app store, supplying the creator $50,000 a day. Then suddenly, it all changed when Dong Nguyen posted that he would remove Flappy bird from the Google Play and IOS store. Some have said that Dong choose to remove the game due to the sue made by Nintendo for the copying of the pipes in Super Mario bros, however Dong clarified on his later twitter post that “I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore."



TECHNOLOGY

"It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep

it anymore."

"I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine. But it also

ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."

"Press people are overrating the success of my games. It is

something I never want. Please give me peace."

"I also don't sell 'Flappy Bird', please don't ask."

After all, he had not removed Flappy bird for legal

issues, but simply because he was overwhelmed by the

game itself. He was done with this media-infested life, but

the idea of the game has stayed. Countless Flappy Bird-

fakes began to be released, and to this day, they are still

topping the app store charts. Splashy

fish, for example, has been the num-

ber 1 downloaded app for quite a

long period of time, even though it

was simply a Flappy Bird-fake. Final-

ly, on Amazon and eBay, phones

with Flappy Bird installed have been

selling with price tags of $9000. Still,

all of us Challengers will remember

Flappy bird.

The Flappy Bird APP...CONTINUED

Pokemon Bank Finally Hits USA By Peter Maynard

After keeping Pokémon fans waiting in agony for

months, the Pokémon Bank has finally here! It started out

short and simple. America was set to get Pokémon Bank

on December 27th, 2013, 2 days after Asia would. What is

Pokémon Bank you may ask? It’s downloadable software

that allows you to store up to 3,000 Pokémon! It may

sound like the best thing ever, but that wasn’t even the

best part, since you could already store the essential Poké-

mon in the box. What really got us Pokémon fans excited

was the Poké Transporter! It allows you to transfer all of

your aces from the previous generations of Pokémon into

Bank, and then into X or Y. This is incredibly exciting be-

cause now, players can use the best Pokémon from both

worlds. So, we anxiously waited for December 27th to

come, and when all the little boys ran to their DS’s to

check the Nintendo EShop, there was no Bank, or Trans-

porter.

Nintendo failed to deliver us our precious Poké

Transporter, and as a result, America’s Pokémon fanbase

was extremely angry! We waited forever, with Nintendo

saying very little about the project. In 2014, a former King

of the Nerds Contestant and popular Pokémon YouTuber

titled “TheJwittz” did his best to relay anything he could

obtain about Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter in his

weekly Nintendo News to keep the fans updated, but not

much came out, and Jwittz was clearly as frustrated as we

all were. January passed by, and we still couldn’t get any-

thing! But on February 4th, a miracle happened. Europe,

New Zealand, and Australia all got Pokémon Bank! How-

ever, this news was nothing compared to the happiness of

January 5th, when the Americans finally got Poké Trans-

porter, and Bank.

Now, two months since the news hit, the service

has been wonderful. I’m now using my own Kyurem from

White 2 (a game I reviewed last year), to take my battling

skills to a whole new level. My friends also love the Poké

Transporter, and now we’re battling with our reliable, old

veterans and new, promising Pokémon, in epic 3D

graphics. The fans are all happy, with excited posts being

planted on every social media site out there. Even 22 year

old Jwittz started playing his DS in the middle of his Nin-

tendo News video, with him being as ecstatic to use his

old Pokémon, as we all were.


EXOTIC CARS

Hennessey Venom GT: The American Hypercar By Nikith Boyapati

The origin

Imagine the fastest speed a regular car could go. I’m guessing

that you probably thought of somewhere between 150mph and

200mph, right? Well, those speeds aren’t even close to what one

supercar is capable of going up to. When you hear the word

supercar or even the word hypercar, pictures of sleek-looking Eu-

ropean Lamborghinis and Ferraris will probably come into your

mind. Well, the supercar I have in mind is the Hennessey Ven-

om GT. Surprisingly, this car isn’t even from Europe. You’ve

guessed it: it’s an American-made car. Now, if you have never

heard of this car, I don’t blame you because that’s one of the

things that makes this car so special. But first, let me tell you a

little about its foundations.

The Venom GT was created by the Texas-based company Hen-

nessey Performance Engineering, which is a performance en-

hancing repair location meant to make your car better and fast-

er. On March 29th, 2010, the company released the powerful and

unique Hennessey Venom GT as the only production car model

of the company. Its design was based off of several other car

models, but it still looks pretty impressive.

Achievements

The Hennessey Venom GT was a hypercar that most people

had never even heard of, until Guinness World Record awarded

this car last year. On January 10, 2013, John Kiewicz drove the

Venom GT at the Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas for the

world’s fastest supercar/hypercar to go from 0-300km/h

(approx. 186 mi/h). This car went that fast in just 13 seconds!

However, that isn’t the only international record this car made.

It could also possibly be the fastest production car in the world.

On February 14, 2014, an experienced test driver named Brian

Smith, drove the Hennessey Venom GT on a 3.2 mile runway at

the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Using speed-tracking

technology, the members of Hennessey Performance Engineer-

ing clocked the Venom GT going at 270mph! This speed beat

the previous record of 267mph. However, this isn’t an official

record, since Guinness World Records needs at least two runs in

order for it to be official (due to wind conditions). Yet, this car

is even capable of reaching speeds close to 280mph!

An incredible car

Clearly, this incredible car is good look-

ing and is better than most Lambor-

ghinis. It could possibly be the world’s

fastest car. Best of all, it is an all- American hypercar. You could

even buy this car, but it costs a little more than your classic se-

dan: $1,000,000 dollars. There you have it, the Hennessey Ven-

om GT, fast and good-looking.

The Lamborghini Aventador Lp720-450 Anniversario 2014 By Adithya Rachakulla

The all-new Lamborghini Aventador Lp720-4 50 Anniversario 2014 recently came out, hence the name. However, on everyone’s mind, they have one question- forget LP 720 and 50th Anniversario, is the color yellow? As of recent news, there are rumors not yet confirmed that there will be other colors: blue, red, green and black. Or other colors as well, but these five includ-ing yellow are the primary colors Lamborghini Aventador is built in.

What is a Lamborghini Aventador? How does it work? These millions of questions could be echoed throughout your en-tire brain, now is when… these questions will be answered.

What makes this Lamborghini special? What makes it different? For starters, this magnificent and exotic car has that iso-lates it from other varieties because of its V12 engine that is wonderfully visible through an opaque glass. This exotic vehicle is available in two different structures; one a coupe and another is the convertible. Unlike most cars, this cars engine is in the back, so what do we hold in the front? For a convertible you’d have your removable top stored inside there. For a coupe, it’s just another normal storage place.

The maximum and powerful torque is 690 Nm (nanometer), a torque is basically, a twisting force that causes action, this is generally located near the tires, and 690 nanometers is the amount of pounds that torque possesses. The amazing statistic every boy and girl has been on the edge of their seat for-Speed. Its horsepower is 720…. Wait what is horsepower? In simple terms- “Horsepower is the unit of power equal to 550 foot-pounds per second (745.7 watts),” so 720 times 745.7… is 536904 watts. If you really think that’s confusing, a revolution of a circle, and the point from the top and make a circular rotation and reach the same spot, the rpm (revolutions per minute) is 8,250. In one minute this car makes 8,250 revolutions.

Though many youngsters love the idea of speed, how about the cost? The cost varies as the body type does. A coupe is $397,500 the maximum, and for the convertible which we expect should be more costlier than the coupe is around $441,600.


MONTH BY MONTH

April 2014…

By Pooja Bhate

April is a month, full of amazing events! You may be vexed about April, which is full of test prep, tension and other “blah” stuff, especially the rain not letting you go outside, but there are many other things you can do. (Celebrate these days!) April is full of wonderfully wacky days, and it is quite an exciting month! Make it a great month or not, the choice is yours!

Name Of Day Date April Fools Day April 1st

National Fun Day Also April 1st

World Autism Day April 2nd

Find a Rainbow Day April 3rd

National DARE Day April 4th

National Walk To Work Day April 4th

National Deep Dish Pizza Day April 5th

International Pillow Fight Day

(Big Pillow Fights happening everywhere!)

Also April 5th

Army Day April 6th

Hostess Twinkie Day Also April 6th

International Beaver Day April 7th

Metric System Day Also April 7th

Buddha Day April 8th

National Cherish an Antique Day April 9th

National Farm Animal Day April 10th

Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day April 12th

Licorice Day Also April 12th

Scrabble Day April 13th

National Dolphin Day April 14th

McDonald's Day April 15th

National Bookmobile Day April 16th

Blah! Blah! Blah! Day Blah Blah Blah…April 17th

Adult Autism Day April 18th

National “Hanging Out” Day April 19th

Easter April 20th

National Chocolate Covered Cashews Day April 21st

National Jelly Bean Day April 22nd

Talk Like Shakespeare Day April 23rd

International Marconi Day Also April 23rd

Hairstylists Appreciation Day April 25th

Holocaust Remembrance Day April 27th

Zipper Day April 29th

International Jazz Day April 30th

National Honesty Day Also April 30th


MONTH BY MONTH

May 2014…

By Pooja Bhate

What comes to your mind when you hear “May”? Most of us think, NJ ASK, but there’s so much more to May than just testing. There are all sorts of wonderfully wacky days, in this marvelous month of May. Make it a great month or not, the choice is yours!

Name Of Wacky Day Date

School Principal Day May 1st

Global Love Day Also May 1st

Tuba Day May 2nd

Paranormal Day May 3rd

Intergalactic Star War’s Day May 4th

Cartoonists Day May 5th

Cinco De Mayo Also May 5th

No Homework Day (Real day!) May 6th

Bike to School Day May 7th

No Socks Day May 8th

Fintastic Friday- Give Sharks a Voice May 9th

National Babysitters Day May 10th

Eat What You Want Day May 11th

Limerick Day May 12th

National Chicken Dance Day May 14th

Straw Hat Day May 15th

National Chocolate Chip Day Also May 15th

National Sea Monkey Day May 16th

National Learn To Swim Day May 17th

Visit Your Relatives Day May 18th

Weights & Measures Day May 20th

Turn Beauty Inside-Out Day May 21st

World Goth Day May 22nd

National Taffy Day May 23rd

World Turtle Day Also May 23rd

Morse Code Day May 24th

Nerd/Geek Pride Day May 25th

Cookie Monsters Birthday Also May 25th

Memorial Day- No School! May 26th

World No Tobacco Day May 31st


SPORTS

Baseball Team Spotlight: The New York Yankees

By Tejas Venkatasubramanian

After coming off a lack-luster season, the New York Yankees look to come back with a bang to give their captain a sweet farewell. In the 2013 sea-son, the New York Yankees came in with the ambitions of winning their 28th championship and giving a sendoff to their all-

star closer, Mariano Rivera, who had announced his re-tirement at the end of the year. Throughout the season though, the Yankees struggled mightily and failed to reach their goal of 28 championships. The Yankees were plagued by injuries throughout the season and lost sev-eral key players such as Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter. This proved to be a knockout punch for the Yankees as they constantly fell in the standings throughout the year leading them to their demise in the

end. In the offseason, following the 2013 season, the Yankees made two major headlines. In the middle of the offseason, Yankees captain and shortstop, Derek Jeter, announced that he would be retiring after the 2014 sea-son. The other major headline is that, the Yankees ac-quired Japanese rising star, Masahiro Tanaka.

Even though I’m not a major New York Yan-kees supporter, I hope they do well this year and give a sweet sendoff to Derek Jeter and possibly make a run for their 28th World Series championship.

Baseball Team Spotlight: The Texas Rangers

By Tejas Venkatasubramanian

After coming off a season in which they suffered one of the worst slumps in the month of September and losing a playoff position spot, the Texas Rangers look to rebound in a big way this year. On September 30, 2013, the Texas Rangers played host to the Tampa Bay Rays for the second Wild Cart spot. The potent Rangers offense was completely shut down by Rays ace David Price and helplessly watched as the Rays stormed the field after their 5-2 vic-tory, putting them in the playoffs and eliminating the Rangers from playoff contention. The offseason soon followed with the Rangers los-ing key players such as A.J. Pierzynksi to the Boston Red Sox, Nelson Cruz to the Baltimore Ori-oles, and David Murphy to the

Cleveland Indians. Critics and sports-analysts thought the Rangers were in the phases of completely disman-tling their offense and beginning to rebuild. Soon after though, the Rangers made headlines around the country with their announcements of signing free agent sluggers Shin Soo Choo and Prince Fielder. These ac-quisitions proved to crucial for the Rangers because they had filled the offensive voids which had been lurk-ing around since the beginning of the offseason. As a Rangers fan, I hope the acquisitions of Prince Fielder and Shin Soo Choo prove to be valuable assets in their run for a World Series championship. After seeing my fa-vorite team falter in the World Series two years in a row, one could assume

that I would want my team to scale the mountain one day and plant their flag as champions. On that hopeful note, I sign off.


OLYMPIC COVERAGE: A History and Some of Our Favorite Sports

The History of the Sochi 2014 Olympics By Rishabh Rout

It happens every four years, is on snow, and attracts hundreds of people from around the world. What is it? The Winter Olympics! This year, the winter Olympics were held in Sochi, Russia. However, the Winter Olympics are not always held there. The first predecessor to this major sports event was the Nordic games. They were organized by General Gustaf Balck, and held in 1901, 1903, 1905, and every four years after that. It just happened so the Balck was a close friend of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the summer Olympic Games. Balck suggested that Coubertin should add a week of winter sports to the country that is hosting the Summer Olympics. The idea wasn't accepted until 1908, in which the Games were held in London, England. The next at which winter sports were held were the Antwerp 1920 Olympics. In 1921, the In-ternational Olympic Committee decided there would be a sepa-rate Winter Sports Week. In host nation France, Chamonix held the first “week”, with eleven days of 16 events and 16 countries from around the world. In 1925, the IOC decided to extend the week of winter sports to a “Winter Olympics”. The

Chamonix games were deemed the first Winter Olympics. And thus, the tradition that has carried on for over 9 decades was born. To choose the host city for the Olympic Winter Games, there was an exhaustive ballot and bidding, held by the 119th IOC meeting in Guatemala City. There were three final round cities: Pyeongchang, South Korea, Sochi, Russia, and Salzburg, Austria. In the first vote, Pyeongchang was in the lead with 36 votes followed by Sochi with 34 votes. Salzburg was eliminated because it had only 25 votes. In the second vote, Sochi gained most of the votes that were cast for Salz-burg, coming out in the lead with 51 votes against Pyeongchang’s 47. To prepare for the Olympics, Sochi spent almost a decade building the stadiums. The Sochi Olympic Park was built facing the Black Sea, in the Imeretin Valley. The skiing events were held in the Krasnaya Polyana mountain cluster, with different mountains having different courses. The games were on!

Team USA Analysis By Ramsomesh Gadhamsetty

Man I think everyone could say that the ice hockey portion of the Sochi Olympics was bad for both USA teams, especially for the men. Before we get to that, let me say some things about ice hockey in the Olympics. 1924 was the year ice hockey took place in the winter Olympics. Basically, ice hockey is where players are on ice skates and try to score for their team. They hold their stick

and slap the puck into the other goal. Each shot in the goal is one point. Unlike other the other sports in the Olympics, there are no judges to look at you. It is a game where players and fans have fun. Now let us start with the men.

I think we all could say that Team USA was horrendous in the Olym-pics. I mean what were they doing? No offense, but I think beginners could do better. First we have the semi- finals where USA had a meeting with Canada. The end result was Canada 1 and USA 0. You might be thinking that wasn’t a bad loss, but their defense was terrible. I thought Canada should have scored more goals. At that moment, USA couldn’t get the silver or gold medal because they lost. Their only hope was the bronze. They square off with Finland. Everyone thought that this would be a very close game. Every USA fan woke up hoping that USA would bounce back from the loss to Canada. The game was pretty good in the 1st period. It was tied at 0 apiece. Then at the second intermission, the score was 2-0 Finland. USA had their chances, but then Finland scores 3 in the 3rd period. Sadly, Finland crushes USA 5-0, as Finland gets the bronze med-al.

The women did much better than the men. The women made it to the finals to verse the defending gold medalists, Canada. People actually thought that USA had a chance in the finals. Unfortunately, they lost 3-2 against Canada. I think we all could agree that the women team was better than the men.

Bobsleigh By Aditya Chakrabarti

Bobsledding is a winter sport in which teams of two or four slide down a track while being timed. After each team performs, the team with

the least time wins, because that means they are the fastest. It was first invented by the Swiss in the 1870s, as a thrill ride. After that, competition started when the first bobsleigh club was opened in St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1897. It became one of the original Olympic sports in 1924 when the first ever Olympic Winter Games occurred. At Sochi this year for the bobsled

event, the Russian Federation pulled first

place with two gold medals, both made by

Alexey Voevoda, dragging Canada into

second place with only one gold medal.

The United States, in third place, had a

silver medal, made by a woman, Elana

Meyers and three bronze medals, pushing

Latvia and Switzerland off the podium,

who tied for fourth with one silver medal

each.



Alpine Skiing

By: Grace Wang

Alpine skiing, likely the most-watched Olympic sport, en-tered its 78th year of competition in the Winter Games at Sochi this year. The sport is divided into five events: Downhill, Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, and Super-

Combined. The downhill event usually features the longest courses and the highest speeds in alpine skiing, and the fast-est skier wins the competition. In slalom, athletes maneuver through a short course marked with flags that are tightly spaced. The athletes ski two courses and their total time de-termines their rank. Giant slalom is similar to slalom; howev-er, the gates are placed farther apart and the skiers can make wider turns as they venture through the two different courses to vie for the fastest time. Next, in Super-G, skiers experience aspects of both downhill and giant slalom. They receive only one attempt at the event, like in downhill, and must quickly navigate their ways through gates similarly spaced as those in giant slalom. Lastly, in Super-Combined, skiers complete a double-run race with a single slalom and short downhill/super-G in the fastest time in order to secure a medal.

Team USA’s lineup for Alpine skiing this year featured a diverse group of 20 talented men and women who will com-pete for medals in the five alpine events. Among those who debuted in the Olympics were skiers David Chodounsky, Erik Fisher, Julia Ford, Travis Ganong, Jared Goldberg, Laurenne Ross, Mikaela Shriffin, and Jacqueline Wiles. Joining them were Tim Jitloff, Nolan Kasper, Megan McJames, Leanne Smith, Resi Stiegler, and Andrew Weibrecht, who all made their second appearance at Sochi. Next are skiers Stacey Cook and Ted Ligety, who joined the team for their third

Olympics. Now come the verterans, Steve Nyman, Marco Sullivan, and Julia Mancuso who entered their fourth Olym-pics this year. Julia Mancuso, who had three career Olympic medals, set the record for the most medals by an American female skier. Finally, one of the most interesting skiers to watch, Bode Miller, made his fifth appearance at the Olym-pics this year (the most of any American skiers) and held the record of five career Olympic medals: the most of any US alpine skier.

This year, team Austria dominated Alpine skiing by earning 9 medals with 3 gold, 4 silver, and 3 bronze. Next in line was team USA, which earned 5 medals with 2 gold, 1 silver, and 2 bronze. Third place was Switzerland with 2 gold and 1 bronze medal. The event coverage for Team USA Al-pine skiing started in Downhill skiing. All six US athletes fin-ished the event and some came close to medaling; however, the US did not receive any medals for Downhill Skiing. Nonetheless, the next skiing-events had more auspicious out-comes than Downhill did. In Super-Combined, only one American skier, Julia Mancuso, brought home a medal (bronze,) giving her an impressive total of four career medals so far. In Super-G, American skier, Andrew Weibrecht earned a silver medal while Bode Miller tied Canadian skier, Jan Hudec, in the thrilling race for third place. In Giant Slalom, Ted Ligety earned the United States’ first gold medal in al-pine skiing. Finally, in Slalom, Mikaela Shriffin, a 19 year old, easily defeated her opponents to earn the United States’ sec-ond gold medal and her first Olympic alpine medal. All these dedicated athletes certainly proved themselves worthy at the Olympics while simultaneously entertaining the crowd at home.

Biathlon

By Aditya Chakrabarti

Biathlon is a sport that combines skiing and rifle shooting. Athletes ski across many kilometers of snow-covered ground and stop at certain points and shoot at 5 targets. Each shot missed (only in the shortest event) means an extra lap for the athlete. It was invented as an alternative training exercise for the Norwegian army. It was first played as a sport in the Winter Games in 1924, but was not continued because the rules were not set internationally. In 1960, the sport was finally set as a permanent Olympic sport. At the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, there was an exciting competition for bi-athlon. Norway earned first place with three gold medals (including Emil Svendsen), one silver, and two bronze, just surpassing Belarus, who had three gold medals and one bronze(Darya Domracheva). Third place was France, with two gold medals, one silver (Martin Fourcade won that), and one bronze. They pushed the Russian Federation off the podium, which earned one gold medal, two silver medals, and one bronze medal.



Curling

By Jenna Yan

Curling is a sport played on ice, which date back to the 17th century. It originated from Scotland and was usually played on frozen lakes, until the 20th century. Curling was a demonstra-tion sport in the Olympics 4 times (1924, 1932, 1992, 1994) be-fore being a full medal sport in 1998. Curling is a sport that is played by two teams of four players on a rectangular rink. The rink is usually 42.07m long and 4.28m wide with a target at ei-ther side. In the game of curling, all members must need a warm sweater, loose fitting pants, gloves for warmth, and a very clean pair of running shoes. Equipment also needed for curling is stones, brushes, and score sheets. There are two types of brushes. The “push broom” is the most common. The other type of broom is a corn/straw Canadian broom, which, with the long bristles it has, looks much like a regular broom. The stone in the game is very important. A curling rock is made of rare granite from Scotland’s Ailsa Craig. Each rock weighs exactly 44 pounds and is polished. Curling, often known as “The Roar-ing Game,” originated from the sound the granite stones made when it traveled across the ice.

In the game of curling there are the following 4 posi-tions: the lead, the second, the vice, and the skip. The lead goes

first in the throwing order. Next, he/she sweeps all the other team member’s shots. These are usually easier shots because there are few stones that are in play. The second then throws and sweeps all other team member’s shots. These shots get more difficult as there are more stones in play. The vice throws third and holds the brush, signifying the target for the skip. Then, the vice sweeps only the lead’s and second’s shots. Final-ly, the skip throws last, tell other players when to sweep, holds brush (target) for all other players, and watches the “curl” of the stone. The skip is the captain of all the members.

In the Sochi 2014 Olympics, Canada won the most medals in curling: 2 gold. Great Britain and Sweden tied for second, coming in with one silver and one bronze. Erika Brown, Jessica Schultz, Ann Swisshelm, and Allison Pottinger represented Team USA for women’s curling, while John Shuster, Jeff Isaac-son, Jared Zezel, and John Land-steiner represented the U.S. men’s curling team. Sadly, this year U.S. didn’t win any medals for curling.

Figure Skating

By Irene Quan

Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, duos, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was first contested in the Olympic Games at the 1908 Summer Olympics. There are 6 events: men’s singles, men’s special figures, ladies’ singles, pairs, ice dancing, and mixed team. At the present time, only 5 sets of medals are competed for in the Olympic figure skating pro-gram.

Figure skating competitors are given two scores: a technical score and a program component score. They are added together to get the segment score, which, if added up, is the competition score. Five people make up the technical panel: the technical specialist, the assistant technical specialist, the technical con-troller, the data operator, and the video replay operator. The judging panel is composed of nine judges and one referee. The referee judges the competition and runs the event. The judges score the quality of the elements. They also score five program components. The judges give points on a scale from 0 to 10 for program components. The five components are skating skills, transitions, per-formance, choreography, and interpretation.

In the 2014 Winter Olympics, the Russian Federation boasts the most medals in figure skating: 5. The United States follows with 2 medals (1 gold and 1 bronze), Japan comes close with 1 gold medal, Canada has the pride of 4th place with 3 silver medals, and Korea is 5th with 1 silver medal. Team USA has 15 athletes, out of which Meryl Davis and Charlie White were the only ones with gold medals. Jeremy Abbott, Jason Brown, Ashley Wagner, Marissa Castelli, Gracie Gold, and Simon Shnapir won bronze medals for Team USA.

Skeleton By Aditya Chakrabarti

Skeleton is a sport in which a person steers a fast-sliding sled down a frozen track using only torque provided by body weight to turn it. It was first invented in 1882 when sol-diers constructed a toboggan track between two Swiss towns. It became a permanent Olympic sport in 2002, after being played pre-viously in the 1928 and 1948 winter games. The head-first position was introduced by a Mr. Cornish, and is the traditional skeleton sled-riding position today.

At the recent Olympics in Sochi, Rus-sia came in first with one gold medal and one bronze, trumping Great Britain, who had only a gold. The U.S. came in third place with a silver (made by Noelle Pikus-Pace) and a bronze medal, just pushing Latvia into fourth, which had only a silver medal.



Luge

By: Grace Wang

Luge was a thrilling sport to watch at the Olympics this year, as its quick pace kept spectators seated at the edges of their chairs, waiting in anticipation for their teams to cross

the finish line. Today, luge is known as one of the most danger-ous and precisely timed sports in the world. The typical luge competition starts off when the rider(s), seated in their luge and clad in special suits, push off from their starting position and begin to ride face-up and feet-first. To steer the sled across the special, frozen ice track, riders move their centers of gravity. At the Olympics, there are three classes of racing: men’s singles, women’s singles, and doubles. The individual competitions are held over a period of two days with two runs per day. The fast-est total time determines the winner. The doubles competition features two runs in one day and the fastest combined time de-termines the champion. This year, Sochi added a new category for the first time: a relay competition. Each team featured a woman (singles luge,) a man (singles luge,) and a doubles-pair. The members all race on the same track, but the womens’ por-tion of the race is shorter than the mens’. At the end of each race, the athlete must tap a special touch-pad, which allows the next team member to begin the race. The total time from the start of the first member’s race to the end of the last member’s

race determines the team’s rank for the event. The US roster featured 10 young, aspiring ath-letes with seven men and three women. The male singles- racers included Aidan Kelly (19 year old who debuted at the Olympics this year,) Chris Mazder (2-time Olympian,) and Tucker West (18 year old-youngest male to represent the US in luge.) Their female counterparts were Summer Britcher (19 year old who debuted at Sochi,) Erin Hamlin, (3-time Olympian,) and Kate Hansen (who debuted at the Olympics this year.) The two dou-bles teams included Preston Griffall and Matt Mortensen along with Christian Niccum and Jayson Terdiman. Finally, on the relay team were lugers Erin Hamlin, Chris Mazder, and Preston Griffall and Matt Mortensen. In men’s singles, the US earned 13th place and in women’s singles, the US earned a historic 3rd place medal from Erin Hamlin’s performance. Hamlin became the first female American luger to medal at any Winter Olym-pics, as well as the first American of either gender to medal in a singles competition. Finally, in doubles, the US came in 11th place while in the team relay, the US came in 6th. Overall, Ger-many dominated luge by taking all gold medals in all four events and ending with five total medals. In second place was Russia, which had two silver medals. In third place was Austria, which had one silver medal. The US tied with Italy in fifth place of thirteen teams that competed at Sochi’s entertaining luge event.

Snowboarding By: Irene Quan

We all witnessed the awe of the Winter Olympics that took place in Sochi, Russia this past February of 2014. One of its most exciting sports is snowboarding. Snowboarding became a sport in the 1998 Winter Olympics, which took place at Naga-no, Japan. It’s still a work-in-progress as events are changed and added.

There are 10 events: men’s parallel giant slalom, wom-en’s parallel giant slalom, men’s half-pipe, women’s half-pipe, men’s snowboard cross, women’s snowboard cross, men’s snowboard slope style, women’s snowboard slope style, men’s parallel slalom, and women’s parallel slalom. The half-pipe is an event that takes place on a half-pipe, or a semi-circular ditch or purpose built ramp, where snowboarders perform tricks while going from side to side. The snowboard cross is where a group of snowboarders (typically four or six) start simultaneously atop a winding, inclined course and race to reach the finish line first. Slope style is a new Olympic event where the goal is to perform the most difficult tricks while getting the highest altitude off jumps, with an emphasis on performing different types of tricks instead of doing one great trick repeatedly. Slalom is an alpine snowboarding discipline involving snowboarding between poles spaced much closer together than in giant slalom.

So how is this scored? Each run is scored on a scale of 0.1-10.0 by a panel of five judges. One judge scores the stand-ardized moves, another scores the amplitude (the height of ma-neuvers), one scores the quality of rotations, and two score the overall impression. In order to get a full score, you have to have a stable body, smooth landing, no body contacts with the snow, no falls, and no stops. Falls and other mistakes lead to deduc-tions. Depending on the event, the formats for point deductions differ.

The snowboarding team of USA consists of 23 athletes, the most outstanding of 2014 including Sage Kotsenburg, Kait-lyn Farrington, and Jamie Anderson. Kelly Clark and Alex Deibold were rewarded for their hard work with bronze medals. Although they were the only ones who took home medals, Team USA gave its best effort!

Because of their hard work, the United States of Amer-ica won the most medals for snowboarding of all of the coun-tries, 5! The next time you watch the Winter Olympics (2018) may seem like a long way off, but who knows, maybe you’ll be the next Olympics snowboarding champion!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luge


REVIEWS

Book Review

By Alison Park

The Giver

By: Lois Lowry

In a time period where peace and organization trumps all, Jonas must endure a variety of feelings. Same-ness: this is what the ‘Community’ tries to accomplish to avoid war, fear, and pain. However, with this process comes the extinction of love and any real emotions. When Jonas asks his parents if they love him, they avoid directly answering the question and ask for something less “broad”.

In the community, each person is assigned a job, spouse, and children. A person’s roles are selected by the Council of Elders and are evaluated throughout one’s life to match up with one’s career. You are presented your “ideal” job during the Ceremony of 12. Jonas, who has been watched carefully, has been chosen to be the new Receiver. This was a difficult and important choice, espe-cially after an unsuccessful time before. The Receiver's job is to take in and keep all the memories, good and bad, be-fore sameness was put into action. In a place where feel-ings do not exist, Jonas must deal with all the painful memories of fighting, starvation, sickness, and even little things like sunburn. Rosemary, the previous chosen Re-ceiver could not deal with the pain and asked for herself to

be released. With her death, all her stored memories were given out, and the people were able to remember every-thing that she had received from the Giver. Letting out fear and horror into the Community was the Council of Elders’ worst nightmare.

This time, the rules are changed. Jonas is not al-lowed to be given a release and has no choice but to do as the Council of Elders say. He must receive all the memo-ries, even if they weigh down on him like a thousand bricks for the rest of his life.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, expresses how the truth hurts and provides different views on individuality. In the book, the “Community,” is very robotic. Things continue to work as long as every part of the machinery continues to function the way it was made to. Only Jonas and the Giver are able to go beyond the boundaries of Sameness. Yet with their uniqueness comes suffering, but also freedom. They have more knowledge than others, which helps them direct others to make the right decision. Is it worth it? If it isn’t, what can Jo-nas even do?

Book Review

By Noor Amanullah

The Fault in Our Stars

By: John Green Shopping, hanging out with friends, and watching episode after episode of the best TV shows. Sounds like your average American teen, right? However, Hazel Grace Lancaster is no normal teenager. She has thyroid cancer and spends her days hooked up to an oxygen tank. How-ever, when her mother forces her to join a support group, she unexpectedly meets some new friends. She bonds with them through making late night calls, playing video games in each other’s basements, and having picnics at the park. She finally gets to be a normal kid. Soon after, Hazel re-ceives a call from fate, and her boyfriend Augustus Waters,

who suffers from Osteosarcoma, a bone tumor, is sudden-ly sick in bed. She quickly learns that all good things must come to an end. The Fault In Our Stars is John Green’s fourth novel and TIME magazine’s #1 fiction book of 2012. In June 2014, it is set to become a Major Motion Picture.


REVIEWS

Movie Review By Shruti Sinha

“Catching Fire”

Rating: PG-13

Recently I watched the second movie of the Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire” and I have to say, it was EPIC. It starts off with pro-tagonist and heroine, Katniss Everdeen in her new house in “Victor’s Village” where the victors of the games reside after win-ning. Katniss suffers as nightmares of her past games continue to haunt her in her everyday life. Things start to get… compli-cated with her best friend Gale Hawthorne (Hint, hint: love triangle). She also grows increasingly distant to Peeta Mellark, her supposed lover and fellow tribute. Thanks to a visit from President Snow, who threat-ens to kill everyone she loves, she now realizes that she will have to convince the

nation of Panem that her and Peeta’s near suicide was not an act of rebellion but ra-ther an act of love. Unfortunately, tension arises and uprisings and riots are discussed among the districts. With the threat still hanging over them, Katniss and Peeta con-tinue to use the ”Star-Crossed Lovers” act.

As it being the 75th year of the Hunger Games, there is a “Quarter Quell” which basically means the Hunger Games with a twist. The twist? Tributes will be “reaped” (chosen) from their existing pool of victors. That is to say, whoever has al-ready won the games is going back again. Katniss, being the only female tribute to have ever won in district 12, knows that her return to the arena is guaranteed.

Now, she is determined to let Peeta live and her die while Peeta is vice versa. Who will succeed and who will be a victor? All I can say is this year’s arena is no place for a girl on fire. With an unex-pected ending, the movie gives fans much to look forward to in Mockingjay: Part One, which is to be released on Nov. 21, 2014.

The acting was beyond impres-sive. The emotion of the characters is clearly portrayed, as the concept of the series gets even more complex. Catching Fire starred Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mel-lark, and Liam Hemsworth as Gale Haw-thorne. I’d personally say that they were casted very well.

On the visual effects, they defi-nitely did the book justice. Good effects were a must for this movie and certainly lived up to expectations. The new arena was described with detail in the book and definitely was just like the book described. The movie was spot on with the book. Not a single detail was missed, and in fact a couple were added which also helped. All in all, I give this movie a 5 out of 5. I have no complaints and have to admit that di-rector Francis Lawrence has done a be-yond spectacular job with making a movie so in sync with the book. With that I can assure fans that Catching Fire is not a movie to disappoint.

Movie Review By Shruti Sinha

“Divergent”

Rating: PG-13

I just recently saw the movie ad-aptation of the worldwide bestseller, DI-VERGENT. I have to say, I am in awe. The movie is about a dystopian Chicago. Except now, everything around it is totally destroyed. The remaining population is divided in to 5 sections, in the movie re-ferred to as “factions”. These factions di-vide people based on a key personality trait which are as follows: Dauntless(brave) Abnegation(selfless) Erudite(intelligence) Amity(kindness) and Candor(honesty). These separate factions each have their individualized role in society based of of their factions values (ex. eru-dite=smart=teachers, etc). The story fol-lows Beatrice Prior, an abnegation-born who does not believe herself selfless enough to belong with her family and fac-tion. At the age of 16, they have a kind of

“test” to determine which faction they should choose although they have the right to pick any faction at the “choosing cere-mony” the next day despite their test re-sults. When it’s her turn, she finds out something she never thought possible: her result was inconclusive; she is divergent. She does not belong to a faction and it is now up to her to make sure no one finds out and pick the faction where she thinks she belongs most.

She makes the bold decision to leave her family and join the most danger-ous faction: Dauntless. She renames herself Tris, and you follow her though her trials and tribulations as an initiate, a new person trying to become a member in a competi-tive competition disguised as an initiation. Everything is life or death before she is even an official member. As she struggles to fit in with the rest of her new faction, she starts developing a romance with her trainer, Four. She finds out erudite plans on a war. Unsure of what to do, or what her title “divergent” even means, she real-izes that not everything is what it seems.

The movie is played by Shailene Woodely (Tris) and Theo James (Four).

Based on a book-to-movie comparison, they did not have quite the same look as described in the book, but they portrayed their characters well enough to make up for it. Fans rejoice because it was pretty spot on with the book with a few extra details to keep even the most hardcore fans on the edge of their seats. However, there were a few complaints. First, the movie was so over dramatic that it left movie-goers slightly confused especially if you didn’t read the book. Also, there is no dia-logue, just action or emotion. It is filled up with music that sometimes did not match the mood and gave the audience a slightly weird affect of tone not matching the mood. Other than that, the movie was fantastic. I would definitely watch it again and recom-mend it to people who are huge fans of the Hunger Games. All in all, I give this master-piece 4 stars.


REVIEWS

Song Reviews

By Nathaniel Mumau

“Happy”

By Pharrell Williams Lyrics: Even the most annoying songs can be a hit. Not to say that ‘Happy’ isn’t catchy, but Williams is really just singing the word “happy” over and over again in different sentences. However, there is a reason that DJs blare this song across radio stations 24/7; it’s HAPPY! We’ve all heard the same, “I just broke up with my girl-friend and I got messed up at a party and life just overall stinks”-theme in songs before. Instead, this song pre-sents to us the idea that we can be happy without living the high life, but simply living the life we have. The song’s revolutionary theme is the key to its popularity; this is quite sad, as people continually believe that only if they live a wealthier, wilder life than the one they have now, they will be happy.

Music Video: This video reinforces the message the song is preaching by simply showing a wide variety of people dancing and looking happy. What’s interesting is all of the different settings the people are dancing in: a bowling alley, a gas station, a school bus, a YMCA, and many more suburban areas that are familiar to all of us. Williams is trying to get the idea across that the average Joe can be happy and content, not just celebrities and super stars. While this is a pleasant concept, you witness Williams interacting with a hodgepodge of people, which makes the video seem boring and redundant at times. At nearly four and a half minutes long, you start to lose interest. What may catch you by surprise, though, is an oversized Minion dancing here and there.

“On Top of the World”

By Imagine Dragons Lyrics: This is another “happy” song. Who doesn’t like to be “on top of the world”? What’s intriguing about this song is that the group is singing about the struggles they had to face before they could reach this point of ultimate achievement. They also talk about how you may feel like quitting, but you should get up and forge on! Many previous songs have covered this similar basis before, but this song conveys it in a more positive manor. Positive in the way that they’re actually joyful they’ve reached this point, and not still wallowing in past-life events. Music Video: After my first viewing, I didn’t totally understand this music video. It seemed like a semi-random group of scenes about a moon-landing and some hippies. After doing some research, though, I found out that the reason the video seemed so odd was because there are over 20 references to the Beatles, The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Stanley Kubrick hidden in it. This makes up a fun search-and-find while you watch, so the video definitely needs to be viewed more than once. All in all, it’s very clever since much attention is allotted to minor details in this video.

Movie Review By Akhil Dwasari

“Mr. Peabody and Sherman”

Rating: PG

“Mr. Peabody and Sherman” has been released in thea-ters. This movie is based on a dog named Mr. Peabody and his adopted son Sherman. Everything goes well with his life includ-ing his greatest invention, a time machine called ‘WayBack’. Mr. Peabody takes Sherman to the past in the time machine every day of the summer. When Sherman went to school on his first day, there came a conflict along the way. A girl named Penny Patterson was taunting Sherman and called him a ‘dog’. In re-sponse, Sherman bit her hand, which caused Mr. Peabody to be charged with a house inspection by a lady named Mrs. Grunion,

who would inspect how he was treating Sherman. Mr. Peabody tries to clear everything up with the Patterson family and invites Penny and her parents. Sherman is supposed to be the host for Penny, while Mr. Peabody hosts for her parents, but Sherman tries to impress Penny about why he knows everything about the past since she calls him a ‘nerd’. Here’s where the problem comes in. Sherman was ordered by Mr. Peabody to not tell Pen-ny about the ‘WayBack’. Well, Sherman goes and shows the ‘WayBack’ to Penny who uses Sherman to get in, and then goes to the time of King Tut in Ancient Egypt. Will Mr. Peabody and Sherman be able to save Penny in time before her parents realize she is gone or is she stranded in Ancient Egypt forever? Find out in the movie “Mr. Peabody and Sherman.”


The Joke Page

By The Newspaper Club

12 Laugh Out Loud Jokes

1. Why do people wear shamrocks on St. Patrick’s

Day?

2. When do monkeys fall from the sky?

3. Can February March?

4. Why is the letter A like a flower?

5. What happened to the Easter Bunny when he misbehaved at school?

6. Why did the Easter egg hide?

7. How do you make an eggroll?

8. What do you call a cow that works for a gardener?

9. Why did the teacher send the mummy home from

school?

10. When is a door not a door?

11. What did Delaware?

12. Why are cooks mean?

Answers

1. Because real rocks are too

heavy!

2. During Ape-ril showers!

3. No, but April May!

4. A bee (B) comes after it!

5. He was egg-spelled!

6. He was a little chicken!

7. You push it!

8. A lawn mooer.

9. He was coffin too much.

10. When it’s ajar.

11. She wore her New Jersey.

12. Because they beat the eggs

and whip the cream.

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