Jacket buzzSTARKVILLE HIGH SCHOOL

By Ty RingoContributing Writer

Dealing with students is one thing. But customers? That’s something Dr. Craig Piper knows all too well.

Piper teaches U.S. Gov-ernment and Economics at Starkville High School, and has been a teacher there for three years.

Piper recently acquired a second job at Kroger as a produce stocker.

“I needed to make extra money to pay off debts,” Piper said. “I also want to start saving up for retire-ment.”

Piper has a doctorate de-gree in history from Mis-sissippi State University. Few teachers with doctor-ate degrees ever have to deal with cranky customers after leaving college, but Piper does anyway.

“They can be difficult at times, but you have to be patient and realize it’s your job and you just have to deal with it,” Piper said.

Piper has been an em-ployee at Kroger for six months and works approx-imately 16 hours per week.

Being a teacher, it can be hard to balance out a schedule.

The administration at SHS has been very sup-portive and, according to assistant principal Sean McDonnell, Piper’s doing really well.

“I think he’s doing an excellent job,” McDonnell said. “He does his work here well, and has a second job too. So I think that’s re-ally good.”

Piper is currently the only faculty member working at Kroger, but several SHS students have part-time jobs there, including Brad-ley Calhoun, a senior who works as a bagger and also took Piper’s economics class during the fall.

“It’s a little bit weird working with a teacher,” Calhoun said. “There is that question of ‘Can he still tell me what to do?’ It can be kind of awkward.”

Piper, on the other hand, doesn’t feel any awkward-ness towards the students he works with.

“It’s not bad because they don’t work in my depart-ment,” Piper said. “I’m not their boss there, but at school I am. It may be weird for them, but I don’t boss them around or any-thing.”

Putting out produce may sound boring, but accord-ing to Piper, it’s actually not that bad.

“The people are nice and it doesn’t require too much thinking,” Piper said. “It’s also a getaway from school.”

Piper hasn’t heard any negative comments from teachers about working at Kroger.

Other teachers even have second jobs themselves.

McDonnell runs several community pools, journal-ism sponsor R.J. Morgan works as a sports reporter on the weekends, and Ja-son Young, a social studies teacher, works part-time as a manager at Old Navy, just to name a few.

“The extra income helps out a lot,” Morgan said. “It basically allows me to have a savings account and pay off my student loans without having to eat Spam

seven nights a week.” Working at Kroger, Piper

has had many interesting experiences, most of them positive.

Even though Piper enjoys his job being a teacher at SHS, he plans to continue working at Kroger for a long time.

“I plan to work at Kroger until I retire from work-ing period,” Piper said. “I might even keep it after I retire. I think over a ten year period, I may make $50,000. So it’s worth it.”

Hollow

wins at

regionals,

state

EconomicsteacherCraigPiperworkspart‐timeatKroger.

Piper tackles produce

By Ruth Brown

Staff Writer

The cast and crew of Sleepy Hollow have finally wrapped up their produc-tion after months of hard work and many awards.

At regional festival, Sleepy Hollow won Best Technical Team and one of five “Dis-tinguished Play” awards, which earned the play a spot at the state festival in Nat-chez. Abbie Cathcart and George Bennett both won All-Star honors.

At state festival, Sleepy Hollow won Best Costume, and Best Adaptation from an Original Source.

George Bennett was named to the All-Star Cast and received the Most Promising Young Artist award.

Maureen Hughes and Kienan Grice won Best Ac-tress and Actor in a Drama for the 10-minute Play Fes-tival.

Maureen Hughes was of-fered a $500 scholarship, as was Cooper Kennard.

Mandy Kinney was very satisfied with the results.

“The students went be-yond my expectations,” Kinney said. “I don’t see how we can move on to something much bigger or better than this.”

SHS Jacket BuzzNews

By Heather Stevens and

Lammi Micha

Assistant Editor and Staff

Writer

If people followed through with half the things ad-vertised on the bathroom walls, Starkville High School would have been blown up, burned down, and overrun by gangs long ago.

The walls of many of the bathrooms at SHS have re-cently become covered with all types of writings. The bathrooms on the main hall upstairs have been particu-larly obscene.

“We normally don’t allow it to hang around,” princi-pal Kathi Wilson said. “It sends a message completely contrary to the message we want to send.”

On Wednesday, January 21, the bathrooms on the main hall upstairs were repainted

to remove all the graffiti. By midday Thursday, gang signs and obscenities had already been rewritten.

“The restrooms upstairs on the main hall were paint-ed over last year, and once again this year,” janitor Robert Glen said. “It usu-ally takes three to four hours of hard work to clean and paint.”

For decency’s sake, the vast majority of graffiti cannot be printed.

In the girls’ restrooms, the walls are covered with per-sonal attacks, often directed at other girls.

Insults range from criticiz-ing someone’s physical ap-pearance or sexual orienta-tion to personal threats or vulgar solicitations.

The viciousness displayed in the female bathrooms is on a person-to-person level, but graffiti in the boys’ re-

stroom is more violent and intolerant of certain groups, like minorities, homosexu-als, immigrants, or members of rival gangs.

Because SHS students see these threats every day, most learn to ignore them and walk right past.

If they actually stopped and contemplated the intol-erance, hate, and violence displayed in such a public setting, perhaps they would be a bit shocked.

“It definitely takes a nega-tive tone,” senior Kelly Tru-ax said. “You just go home and you’ve still got all these potentially hurtful things on your brain, so you end up thinking about it for hours.”

Junior Meekayll Boyd says most of the writings aren’t serious.

“People just think the things they write on those walls, but don’t take any ac-

tion on their feelings,” Boyd said. “People claim to be in gangs, but I doubt as many are in gangs as who say there are. They just need to feel like part of a group.”

Even though this might just seem like harmless jest-ing, outsiders might not see it the same way.

Student intern Andrew Chastain wasn’t shocked by what he read, but more by the amount of graffiti.

Chastain also noticed that, just like in the bathroom, insults are hurled elsewhere around the school.

“I have noticed that nor-mal interaction between students, especially those on friendly terms, involves a good deal of put-downs and insults,” Chastain said.

Truax agrees.“‘Hoe’ and ‘skank’ are just

ways to say hello to each other,” she said.

According to assistant principal Sean McDonnall, the bathrooms have been had to be repaired “too many times.”

“It’s not only the defacing, but the vandalizing that gets expensive, like tearing up stalls and toilets and urinals and windows,” McDonnall said.

It isn’t clear just why so many people are compelled to be hateful and destruc-tive, but the administration sees no end in sight for this sort of behavior.

“If students don’t take pride in this school, then this kind of problem will just continue,” McDonnall said. “Students have to be proud of their school before they will want to take care of it.”

So until the student body truly believes that it’s a great day to be a Yellow Jacket, the graffiti will likely persist.

SHS deals with graffiti epidemic

TheStarkvilleHighcustodialstaffisconstantlyfightinggraffiti,bothpositiveandnegativeinnature,onthewallsofbathroomsschoolwide.

SHS Jacket Buzz News

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Happy Valentine’s Day, Caitlin! :)

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Just wishing you a happy Valenitne’s Day. Hope this makes you smile. I love you!!

To: Cora OwenFrom: Johnny Depp

You are too young. It will never work out.

To: Ruth BrownFrom: Not Telling

You rock!

To: Ms. Kinney, Ms. Dauzat, Ms. TaylorFrom: Ms. Cappleman

I love you girls. Let’s stay tight like spandex.

Valentine’s Day Shout Outs!

To: LaTonya LarkFrom: “Big Brother”

You’re too freaking fickle. You should just love me.

Happy Valenine’s Day!

To: Jimmy SherrodFrom: Secret Admirer

I hope you’re reading this. I see you around school all the time and notice how good you look everyday.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

To: Ms. WilsonFrom: Ben Watson

To my FAVORITE adminstrator: I’d just

like to say, I would go to your office any

day.

By Whitney Peterson Staff Writer

Since freshman year, I have wondered why under-classmen aren’t granted ex-emption from final exams.

I have seen countless numbers of sophomores and juniors tote unseemly amount of books to class-es each day, while many seniors stroll through the halls practically empty-handed.

Studious underclassmen steadily burn the midnight oil each night to crank out an “A,” while seniors can skim by with a 91.

I can’t help but think: what’s up with that?

The policy, as with all others, was approved by the school board and states that the only students ex-empt from final exams are seniors who have at least a “91 average in regular class-

es in regular classes and an 87 average in advanced placement courses.”

But why is the privilege only granted to seniors?

I discussed the puzzling issue with several faculty members and administra-tive officers.

Their responses fell along the same line: it’s a senior perk, as with senior privi-lege.

“They’ve paid their dues,” guidance counselor Jenni-fer Kilpatrick said.

Along with most every underclassman, there are even some seniors who deem this class conscious-ness unnecessary.

“Anybody ought to be exempt as long as their grades are good to be ex-empt,” Sam Jordan said.

I searched further for a legitimate reason why the exemption policy’s roots have not been discovered,

or why it hasn’t been chal-lenged until now.

I finally found my an-swer.

.“If [one is] exempt for four years, [they have] no knowledge on how to take exams,” Susan Keith, an SHS counselor of eight years, said. “In college, you can’t get exempt.”

In other words, exemp-tion is merely an incentive for those who have plowed through thirteen excruciat-ing years of learning and are worthy of commence-ment for their efforts.

This makes much more sense than the time-hon-ored thought of “Why not me?”

SHS Jacket BuzzOpinion

The Jacket Buzz

This newspaper is produced by the

Journalism Department at Starkville High School.

Zach Mitchell, Editor-in-ChiefHeather Stevens, Assistant Editor

Volume 16, Issue 2

R.J. Morgan, Advisor

Please email any comments, questions,

or concerns to rjmorgan@starkville.k12.ms.us

Staff Writers Lammi Micha, Ruth Brown, Kienan Grice,

Whitney Peterson

Contributing Writers Ty Ringo, Sarah Morse

Exemptions: Why just seniors? Political Cartoon

By Sarah Morse

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By Heather Stevens

Asst. Editor

The Adventures of Huckle-

berry Finn, Little Red Riding

Hood, and Tarzan. Great stories that little children have always loved, right?

Wrong. These are just a few of

the well-loved and long-treasured novels that are currently banned from mil-lions of libraries across the nation.

“There are no book titles that we specifically ban at Starkville High School,” li-brarian June Barnett said.

Although the library re-frains from purchasing works by risqué authors, it does not actively pro-hibit any books from being checked out or offered.

“Censorship is something we just stay away from be-cause it starts to interfere with constitutional rights, like free speech and free press,” Barnett said.

Some high schools are not as lucky or “free” as SHS.

Books like Brave New

World, The

Giver, and Native Son

are some of 2008’s most popu-larly-banned books that can be found in the SHS library.

T h i s school has a great track record for supporting s t u d e n t s ’ rights as far as read-ing material, and shows the same support in regard to things written by the stu-dents themselves.

Principal Kathi Wilson trusts the Jacket Buzz staff and believes that the staff is responsible and dependable when it comes to publish-ing potentially controversial material.

“Responsible people act

responsibly,” said Wilson. “So far, our newspaper staff has yet to be anything but responsible.”

Wilson also believes that as long as the staff abstains from hate speech and re-frains from any “inflamma-tory” messages, then our constitutional freedoms are safe from violation.

While doing research for this article, I was forced to

ask myself if I really thought any kind of cen-sorship is right.

In my opinion, any sort of cen-sorship in a public arena (with the e xc e p t i o n of “Fire!” in a movie theater) vio-lates writ-ers’ and art-ists’ rights e x p l i c i t l y given by the

United States constitution. Although people should

be allowed to say largely whatever they please, one person’s rights end where another’s begin to be vio-lated.

Say what you want, as long as it doesn’t seriously endan-ger someone else. In most instances, this situation is not the case, but Americans’

rights don’t provide for the violation of everyone else’s.

My view is that people should be able to generally do and say and write what they please (providing that it does not inhibit some-one’s right to do the same), and if you don’t like what they have to say, then don’t listen.

Although I might not agree or condone lyrics that contain the command “beat that [girl] with a bat,” I will not deny Missy Elliot her right to rap them.

It is the idea of tolerance and personal choice, as well as the protection of the in-dividual voice that allows people to voice their opin-ions without fear of nega-tive repercussions in soci-ety.

It is important that we car-ry on this trend of speaking our minds and simultane-ously respecting the speech of other minds in order to maintain the strong statutes of personal freedoms to which we are accustomed.

SHS Jacket Buzz Opinion

SHS insures constitutional rights

By Lammi Micha

Staff Writer

The first few weeks with a presi-dent who isn’t a nimrod have been great. By using his own intellect and determination, the current president achieved his position instead of re-lying on political debts and favors to get him into the oval office.

President Barack Obama has ac-complished many things up un-til his presidency. He took part in many bills concerning healthcare, gun control laws, civil rights, and many more of which many have

also passed. He even had the larg-est number of people come to his inauguration to show support since President Linden B. Johnson. Put-ting Obama in the office of Presi-dent is definitely what this country needs at this point in time.

He is extremely hard working. For example, about a week after being elected president, Obama wrote a whole new stimulus package which includes $800,000,000 to help this country get back on the economic track out of debt and into prosper-ity.

President Obama also designed a

healthcare plan that is affordable, accessible to all Americans, and builds on the current healthcare sys-tem so that it’s not so complicated to implement. I think that this will make life easier for every family.

He has also demonstrated a con-cern for the correctional system in the United States. President Obama ordered the Guantanamo Bay pris-on to be shut down and all prisoners moved to maximum security prisons on his very first day in office.

Obama is even putting in the long, stressful hours to blur party lines between Democrats and Re-

publicans, a separation I person-ally think should have never been there in the first place. I understand that he needs Republican support to pass the major stimulus package that he has been working on, but it would be better if Republicans and Democrats just came together as Americans to make things better as a whole.

Overall, I think the first few weeks of the Obama Administration have been extremely effective in a posi-tive way. We’ll seem if this trend continues, or if the long hours he is putting in go to waste.

Obama’s first weeks in office are successful

SHS Jacket BuzzSports

Season starts for baseball JacketsBy Ruth Brown

Staff Writer

Spring is in the air and the Starkville High School baseball team is extremely excited for a new season.

The baseball team fin-ished 12-19 last season.

They lost in the first round of the state playoffs to Olive Branch.

The Yellow Jackets will complete pre-season play this weekend with games at home in the SHS Classic and at Quitman.

SHS’s first game will be on February 17 at Acker-man, with a home opener scheduled on February 20 against West Point.

With six returning play-

ers, the coaches are hope-ful that this season will go extremely well.

In summer league play, this year’s returning players finished 17-3.

“We always hope we’ll win the state championship, of course,” said Coach Car-lisle. “It just depends on how it goes.”

Returning this season on offense are R.J. Johnson and Daniel Forde, who combined for 45 runs bat-ted in during summer ball.

“I believe we have a good chance of making it to the playoffs and then to state,” outfielder Chuck Tillery said.

Tillery posted a .464 av-erage in 11 games last sum-

mer and finished with nine RBI.

“He’s a complete player,” Carlisle said. “We expect big things from him.”

Pitchers Zach Schurch and Colin Olsen, along with Forde, combined to go 12-1 over the summer and will anchor the Yellow-jacket pitching staff.

“The experience they gained last year should make them more effective this year,” pitching coach David Lane said.

Key matchups include all division games, and match-ups with Columbus on March 10 and 13, Tupelo on March 24 and 27, and South Panola on March 31 and April 3.

DateFebruary 13February 14February 17February 20February 21February 28February 28March 7March 10March 13March 14-18March 21March 24March 27March 28March 28March 31April 3April 4April 7April 9April 10April 10April 13April 14April 17

OpponentSHS ClassicSHS Classic@ AckermanWest PointLouisvilleWest Lowndes@ New Hope@ West PointColumbus@ Columbus@ Pensacola, FLNeshoba CentralTupelo@TupeloMeridian@ New Hope@ South PanolaSouth PanolaMeridian/ West PointColumbusTupelo@ Neshoba Central@ LousivilleWest Lowndes@ South Panola@ Northwest Rankin

The SHS baseball team has practiced hard all week for this weekend’s SHS Classic.

2009 Yellow Jacket Varsity Baseball Schedule

JoinToday!

SeeCoachAlbrittonorMrs.Tilleryformoreinformation!

SHS Jacket Buzz Sports

Jackets hunt Tigers to extinction

By Ty Ringo

Contributing Writer

The Noxubee Tigers would be the last opponent the Jackets would face at home this season.

As the game progressed, the Jackets showed off for all to see.

Edward Townsel scored 23 points to lead the Jackets to an 80-59 victory against the Noxubee Tigers at the Beehive Tuesday night.

The Jackets, who went to 21-3 with the victory, burst out of the gates with an 8-0 run in the first two and a half minutes of the first quarter.

The Tigers generated very little offense in the first 10 minutes of the first half, but their shots began to fall as the first half neared its end.

The win gave the Jackets a season sweep over Noxu-bee County this season.

The comfortable win Tuesday night was very im-pressive considering that starting forward and lead-ing scorer Rashad Perkins

did not play due to disci-plinary suspension.

The Tigers (10-10) were a little short-handed, as well, as starter Vincent Sanders didn’t play because of a foot injury.

The Tigers had no an-swer for Townsel, who re-peatedly got to the basket with ease..

“I don’t know how I got to the basket so well,” Townsel said. “It was just easy for me, I guess.”

Tuesday night was Senior Night at the Beehive and the seniors did well.

Eduardo Fumo scored 18 points, Bryce Brown scored 17 points, and Jef-frey Jarnagin had 11 points and 10 rebounds.

Even though there were rough edges around the Jackets’ game, Coach Greg Carter thought his team did much better this time around.

“I thought we guarded Smith a lot better,” Carter said. “In the first game we let him get free looks, and they depend heavily on his offense. Other guys don’t

do well unless he has a good game.”

Shaunessy Smith led the Tigers with 29 points, but didn’t help his team’s out-come.

“My shots weren’t enough tonight,” Smith said. “I think I played harder at home than I did here.”

The good feelings from the Noxubee County win faded fast as the Jackets traveled to South Panola last Friday night to face an-other set of Tigers.

This time, however, the outcome did not tilt in Starkville’s favor and the Jackets fell 45-40. Jernag-in led Starkville with 16 points. Perkins added 8 points.

Tuesday night, the Jackets went to Columbus and left with a 60-57 victory over the Falcons.

Jernagin led the Jackets with 19 points and Eduar-do Fumo scored 11 points.

The Jackets’ next game will be Friday night against South Panola in Batesville for the district champion-ship.

Arrows slaughter Jackets 0-7 in first round of playoffs By Lammi Micha

Staff Writer

Six wins, seven losses, two ties, and senior Dylan Voges-Thwing sidelined by a torn ACL.

That is how the Starkville High School boy’s soccer team ended their season.

The Yellow Jackets lost to Clinton High School 0-7 in the first round of the play-offs.

Leading scorer Eduardo

Fumo scored twelve goals in seven games, and missed several other games because he also plays basketball.

“Clinton was really good,” Fumo said. “If we had more experience and bigger guys, we might not have won, but at least put up a battle. I just wish I could have been at the oth-er games so I could have helped the team out.”

Fumo is graduating this year and has options to go

to East Mississippi Commu-nity College for soccer or basketball, Itawamba Com-munity College for soccer, or Mississippi State.

Voges-Thwing tore his ACL while playing in the second game of the tour-nament on December 6th, 2008.

He attempted to get back into the game later on, but got hurt again and had to be pulled out.

An attempt was made

again for him to play later in the season, but, after re-alizing it hurt too much, he was benched for the rest of the season.

“If we had all of our players the whole season, we would have been a lot better off,” Voges-Thwing said. “If we all practiced together, we would have been a better team, and we could have finished the sea-son a little bit better.”

SHS had several key vic-

tories during the regular season, including a 6-4 win against Columbus and a 6-2 win over New Hope.

The Jackets didn’t fare as well against rival Tupelo, though, losing to the Gold-en Wave twice, once 4-1 and the second time 3-0.

Voges-Thwing says that even with a lot of open po-sitions available next year, there are enough good play-ers coming back to keep the program successful.

SHSseniorEduardoFumogoesupforalayupatarecent

YellowJackethomegame.