By Gina O’Neill and Kate SchroederCopy Editor and Editor-in-Chief

Sophomore Jack Gavin was at vol-leyball practice last year, “screwing around” with his friends, when he hit freshman and JV coach Dan Puglisi purposely in the head with a volleyball.

According to Gavin’s friend, sopho-more and teammate Adrian Wojtowicz, Puglisi then made Gavin run about 30 laps around the gym. Later, when Gavin hit him once again, on accident this time, he didn’t even wait for Pug-lisi to punish him.

“He just got up and started run-

ning,” Wojtowicz said. “We were all laughing.”

“He definitely was the comedian of the team,” Puglisi said. “Our team photo was supposed to be serious faces, and he was the one kid smiling. Dur-ing practices, he would be the kid that would run to the ball cart and knock all the balls down. [He would] just create laughs.”

Over spring break, on Thursday, March 24, Gavin didn’t show up to morning volleyball practice. Accord-ing to assistant varsity boys’ volleyball coach Daria Schaffeld, a couple of his friends and teammates tried calling him, figuring he had just overslept.

But 30 minutes into practice, Assis-tant Principal Greg Minter came into the gym to give the coaches a message, with varsity coach Mike Riedy as the first recipient. Schaffeld saw Riedy crouch down and put his head in his hands.

At that point, the team was informed there had been a serious, life-threaten-ing car accident involving Gavin early that morning, around 12:40 a.m. Thirty minutes after the first message, Minter and Assistant Principal for Student Services Lee Stanley returned, relay-ing the tragic news that Gavin had died.

“First was ... shock,” Puglisi said. “Riedy told me, and he was already choking up, [but] as I first heard the name come across, it didn’t really reg-ister. After 30 seconds or a minute, then that’s when my eyes started welling up, just thinking, ‘Jack’s not here.’

“It was a lot of tears from the coach-es. ... When we told the team all to-gether, a few of them started crying at that point; a couple of them got up and started walking away crying.”

After Gavin’s death, the student

By Sharon Lee and Maddie ConwayAssociate Editor-in-Chief and Executive News Editor

Fifth-year senior Kevin Neubauer came to Prospect last year out of his element: new to the environment — and the inevitable idea he would not graduate with his class.

Neubauer, then a senior who had already gone to two other high schools, had previously failed a couple classes and couldn’t start at Prospect first semester because he had moved to the district too late. Because of that late start into his year at Prospect, he wasn’t able to graduate with the senior class last year.

But instead of dropping out of Prospect when he failed to get his diploma, Neubauer stayed in school, and in May, he’ll finally get it — because, he said, of the support he’s re-ceived from Prospect.

More than at his past schools, Neubauer said students and staff at Prospect encouraged him to finish high school because they really do want to help him graduate.

To help students like Neubauer walk across the stage on graduation day, the school goes to great lengths to keep students in school, con-tributing to Prospect’s high graduation rate — 98 percent for the class of 2010.

With 21 credits combined in certain subject areas needed to earn a diploma, graduating, according to Dean Dr. Patricia Tedaldi-Monti, isn’t as easy as one might expect. If students don’t keep track of their credits, it’s easy to fall short of that “magic number” of 21.

Even so, students running into issues with graduating is an “infrequently occurring phe-nomenon,” she said.

Prospect’s approach to helping students graduate on time begins from the day they start high school — not when they fall behind in their classes as upperclassmen, according

Photo by Ian Magnuson

Most teenagers are familiar with pop artists like Ke$ha or Lady Gaga, but some indie artists like Regina Spektor are a highlight of the music scene, too. For a take on lesser-known artists, see...

Entertainment, page 12

School copes with sudden tragedy, sophomore’s death

Prospect goes extra mile to keep students in school

TheVoice of Prospect

since 1960

801 West Kensington Road, Mount Prospect, Illinois 60056

Volume 50, Issue 8 Friday, April 8, 2011

Going green

for Gavin

!e long road to graduation day

With a tsunami in Japan in March, the world has felt the impact of natural disaster this past month — and so has Prospect. An earthquake hit former English teacher Tom Brennan’s hometown in Christland, New Zealand (above), on Feb. 22.

For the full story, see Features, page 11

The struggle to lose weight

In a society that emphasizes physical beauty, some go to extreme lengths in an attempt to lose weight, even when it may not necessarily be healthy. For a look at weight and the healthy ways to lose it, see... 

In­Depth, pages 8­9

See DIPLOMA, page 2

See GREEN, page 3

Looking to the bright side

It’s often easier to look at the glass half empty rather than half full. But being positive can be more helpful than one might expect. For an opinion on !"#$%#&#'(!)$*+$optimism, turn to...

Opinion, page 6

ROSPECTOR

Photo courtesy of Tom Brennan

Adventures in rap music

A lot of teenagers like rap music with artists like Eminem and Jay­Z topping the charts, but senior Zac O’Hara doesn’t just listen to rap — he writes it. For more on O’Hara and his experience recording rap music, check out...

 Features, page 7

By Andrew RevordNews Editor

No, St. Baldrick isn’t a real saint, but Prospect still celebrated his day. Held on St. Patrick’s Day, St. Baldrick’s Day is a chance for volunteers to shave their heads while benefiting kids with can-cer.

With the event now held at Prospect by service club coordinator David Ja-cobson, it wasn’t just the boys’ track and field team who shaved their heads this year. An additional 23 students and 17 teachers participated.

For $10, students got a St. Baldrick’s T-shirt and a parent permission form to shave their heads during lunch hours on Friday, March 17.

As part of the event, seventh-hour classes collected money for the St. Bal-drick’s Foundation. The six classes that

raised the most money each chose from a list of 20 male teachers to have his head shaved during the March 31 as-sembly.

According to Jacobson, Prospect raised just over $2,500.

He said it was Spanish teacher Mike Aldworth who “put the bug” in his ear about the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

“Without him, I don’t know if we would have actually done [St. Baldrick’s events at Prospect],” Jacobson said. “He was pretty much the inspiration.”

Aldworth was involved with the foundation at Naperville North High School, where he previously taught. While there, he learned the police liai-son’s son had recovered from cancer, and a few teachers participated in the event out of solidarity. At first, only a couple staff members participated, but the numbers grew every year. By Aldworth’s third year of participating

in the event at Naperville North, 38 students and 16 teachers shaved their heads, and they raised $35,000.

Senior Pat Moran learned about the St. Baldrick’s Foundation from his dad, who in turn discovered it through his work.

“Everyone should be aware of this,” Moran said. “All the donations are nec-essary because [cancer] could be cur-able with enough money.”

Moran and his family now donate to the foundation, which, according to St. Baldrick’s representative Diana Cortez, receives many donations from schools, particularly in the Chicagoland area.

Previously, Prospect donated to Pen-nies for Patients, which supported the Leukemia Society. Jacobson said fund-raising for Pennies for Patients was get-ting “a bit stale,” so they wanted to try something new.

Jacobson said interest has been slow

to catch on for St. Baldrick’s. He blames limited incentive for students to partici-pate.

Next year, he plans on getting the word out earlier and coming up with an additional reward for the highest-rais-ing class, such as a pizza party.

Moran thinks having the students shave their heads in a more public place would also help raise awareness and participation. He also thinks there should be alternative ways to partici-pate. Some of his friends were willing to donate to the foundation but not shave their heads.

Aldworth is excited about the in-creased attention St. Baldrick’s has re-ceived this year but hopes students will play a bigger role in the event instead of teachers.

“I think with a little more of a push, we can do more than [what we’ve been doing],” Aldworth said.

to Principal Kurt Laakso, and programs to support students are set in place to help them succeed.

According to counselor Colleen Car-roll, with the 21-credit goal in mind, counselors keep an eye on students’ pro-gression throughout their four years. Ideally, freshmen should have a total of five credits, sophomores 10 and so on, and when there’s an inconsistency, counselors address the problem then.

Response to Intervention (RTI) Co-ordinator Dan Puglisi, who helps orga-nize the school’s approach to students’ struggles, emphasized that the school doesn’t wait to intervene when students have problems in their classes, instead taking action as early as the first quar-ter of freshman year.

“We [try to] respond to [any prob-lems] a little quicker,” Puglisi said. “[We don’t say], ‘Hey, this kid failed freshman year. Now we have to try to do some-thing sophomore year.’ It’s more proac-tive versus [a] wait-and-fail model.”

There are several options for helping those students. Counselors may suggest the student drop an elective for a study hall, and after that, there are more structured programs to intervene (see

A helping hand).The school takes extra care to make

students feel comfortable at Prospect in other ways as well. Tedaldi-Monti said they go out of their way to get reluctant students to come to class — even, in some cases, by making a home visit if inconsistent attendance persists.

“We’ll say, ‘Please,’ almost begging, saying, ‘Please, come to school,’” Tedal-di-Monti said. “We can’t help you if you’re not here.

“But it’s easy to [stay home] — and everything is an excuse. [Students who don’t want to go to school] are not going to come on Friday because it’s a short day; they’re not going to come Thurs-day because it’s late arrival. Every day could be a reason, [but] you have to come to school.”

For some students, though, the tradi-tional classroom environment may not be ideal. For students who have trouble reaching their full potential at Pros-pect, there are other options, including the alternative school Vanguard and night classes at Rolling Meadows High School, which are offered by the dis-trict.

Another option for students is the Graduate Equivalency Degree (GED), which is a five-section test that takes

the place of a high school diploma. According to Carroll, very few Pros-

pect students take the GED in place of graduating. But some do, including former student Lexi Conklin, who with-drew from school in the fall for medi-cal reasons. She is planning to take the GED test in May and go on to Harper College to take nursing classes.

Conklin said the biggest difference between high school classes and the GED is how independent her studying has to be.

“I have to force myself [to study],” Conklin said. “You have to take more responsibility for yourself than if you were taking classes for school.”

She said the process of getting her GED is just as difficult as taking high school classes, just in a less traditional format.

“A lot of people have a [misconcep-tion] that if you don’t go the traditional route, like finishing high school, then life’s over,” Conklin said. “You can still go out and have the career aspirations that you want to.”

But even with options like the GED, most students find success at Prospect, which Laakso said is partly a result of the school’s high-achieving culture. Carroll said the support for education in the community is key to the school’s success.

“It’s normal here to want to do well,”

Carroll said. “We don’t have to convince kids that high school’s important. They already believe it.”

At conferences with other schools, Puglisi noticed the difference between some other schools and Prospect with all the resources Prospect has to sup-port students. He has even received comments from other educators like, “Wow, I wish I was at your school.”

“Every teacher [at Prospect] I’ve ever come in contact with [has] always been supportive — always said they can do whatever they can to help [students] out,” Puglisi said. “I’ve never had a teacher say, ‘I have to leave at 2:50 [p.m.] because that’s when the day is over.’ Every teacher is willing to stay after, willing to give extra help during lunch hours, before or after school.

“I think we’re at the top of our game — kind of a leader — in terms of all the different programs that we offer and all the support that’s there.”

Neubauer said the support he’s re-ceived from the staff has made a huge difference, especially from his coun-selor, Dustin Seemann, who helped him enroll at Harper. Without all that sup-port, Neubauer said he may not have made it to graduation.

“I’ve never had people really care for me like this,” Neubauer said. “They ac-tually want me to graduate. They don’t want to shove me out of school.”

!A LITTLE OFF THE TOP: Seventeen teachers got their heads shaved for cancer research on March 31, including Daniel Kim (left) and Paul Schoenbeck (right). (Photos by Ian Magnuson)

Prospect offers several programs to help students keep up with their academics, including guided study for freshmen and sophomores. Response to Intervention (RTI) Coordinator Dan Puglisi said guided study is a more intense, teacher-led study hall that addresses habits of work that students may be lacking, including organizational skills and study habits. There are also programs to recover from past failures and make up lost credit. Other than summer school, the after-school program Credit Recovery helps !"#$%&#'(#)"'(*"#+,-()!-#"(!),.,'/(&)-%(0"(1'/.,$%(2"$-($#&#$-#"3(1'/.,$%(-#)*%#"(Nicole Warren said it helps students learn the basic skills they missed. For schoolwork, Student Services offers Saturday Academy. Students can go into school on some Saturday mornings to work with teachers for extra help. Junior Maddy Mazanek, who has gone in for math, said getting one-on-one )--#'-,0'(!"0&()(-#)*%#"(,$()(4#'#2-(0!(-%#(5"0/")&3(6-7$(/"#)-(-0($##8($%#($),+8(that faculty are willing to spend their weekends helping students.

A HELPING HAND

DIPLOMA: More students graduate with school’s help

!STUDY BUDDY: Students get help at Saturday Academy on April 2. Saturday Academy is one of several programs offered to keep students on track academically. (Photo by Ian Magnuson)

CONTINUED from front page

Prospect goes bald for cancer

2 NEWSFriday, April 8, 2011

body came together to remember him, creating support groups like “Green for Gavin” and black T-shirts — made by the boys’ volleyball team — with his number, seven, on the back. Instead of the administration spearheading these programs, students are taking the lead not only to help each other cope but also to pay tribute to his memory.

After Gavin’s friends had talked about his favorite color green, sopho-more Christine Hood’s first idea was to make “Green for Gavin” T-shirts and send out a message to Jack’s Memorial — a group on Facebook — and the fac-ulty to wear green on Monday, March 28. Hood also organized a picture with Principal Kurt Laakso for all who wore green that day after school in the field house.

“On Monday, I can’t remember not seeing someone wearing green,” said

sophomore Ali Pre-issing, who was friends with Gavin. “Everyone wore it in support — even if they didn’t know him.”

Sophomore Mag-gie Devereux sold green wristbands for $3 that say, “Al-ways in our hearts”

and “3.24.2011.” All the profits from the bands go to the Jack Gavin Memorial Fund. All the money going to the fund — set up by friends of the family — is

to help the Gavins pay for funeral costs.“It was important to do something

as a group together to show Jack how much we all cared and to show each other how much we cared,” Hood said.

“[The team] banded together,” said World History teacher Dave Schnell, who had Gavin in class. “They’re rely-ing on each other pretty well. They’re being remarkable.”

“I have been so impressed with our community, students, staff and parents in their display of support in their soli-darity,” Laakso said. “It is amazing to see so many people pulling together, doing the right thing and grieving in a

way that is genuine and sincere. I see them grieving together to help each oth-er make sense of [the tragedy] as much as possible, and I see them being avail-able for those most in need.”

The volleyball team also wanted to actively remember Gavin. Senior and varsity volleyball captain Dan Hoffman was particularly shaken up after hear-ing the news of Gavin’s death. Hoffman had seen the accident when coming home the night before but did not know who was involved in it.

One teammate who was close to Gavin asked Hoffman if the team could make T-shirts in remembrance of Gavin, and Hoffman or-ganized ordering the T-shirts with Schaffeld. Along with the T-shirts, Hoffman brought in markers to an optional practice on Friday for all of the program to write “Remem-ber” on their left shoe and “Jack No. 7” on their right. They also wrapped tape around their fin-gers with Gavin’s number on it.

“The boys in-spired all those things,” Schaffeld said. “The boys really came together. That’s really how they felt: like they needed to mourn together and to be there for each other. It was interesting to watch as the coaches kind of stood back and let them do their thing. We were passive partici-pants in it — we didn’t run it.”

The varsity team also decided to participate in the Buffalo Grove tour-nament on Saturday, March 26, even though they were still mourning Gavin’s death. According to the team, Gavin would have wanted them to play.

“Every time I went back to serve, I thought of him because we had his name on our fingers,” Hoffman said. “It made me play a lot harder. Even though we didn’t do good, we were definitely fighting for him.”

The volleyball team decided to go to Gavin’s wake together. The team signed several volleyballs that laid on the cas-ket at the funeral home for the family, and Schaffeld rented vans to drive the freshman, JV and varsity teams to the funeral home together as a program. One of Gavin’s relatives came up to

Hoffman and asked him if they could dedicate this volleyball season to Gavin, and Hoffman told him they would.

Laakso also attended the wake, spoke with the Gavin family and witnessed the support the family was receiving.

“I couldn’t believe how thoughtful and courageous they were so soon af-ter the tragedy,” Laakso said. “It was a tremendous of display family unity and support from friends and community. It was inspiring despite the fact that the display was occurring in the context of a devastating tragedy.”

The initial reaction of the whole school was shock, especially due to the

recent death of sophomore Ste-ven Taylor. Wojto-wicz pinned it as “surreal.” Hood said she didn’t believe it was real either, but when she finally believed it true, it was “emotional, sad, draining and not fair.”

“ G o i n g through two deaths in the same class in less than three months is really difficult because

everyone is saying [that] no one should be going through a loss [like this] at our age,” Preissing said.

Hood feels the tragedy called for stu-dents to be strong and take an active role in remembering Gavin.

“We all had to grow up really fast,” Hood said. “It’s really scary because some people haven’t been through these situations in their lives.”

“Even if you weren’t close to the per-son, you still experience it,” Preissing said. “It still affects you. It changes you — I guess for the better — because you realize that life is short.”

Hood agreed, adding that people made amends with others they had not talked to in awhile.

“It hits close to home ... [it] helped us come closer,” Hood said, “But we also realized that our friends could be gone the next day.”

“At the beginning, it seems like it’s always going to be negative,” Preissing said. “In the long run, you gain some-thing out of it: knowledge [and] life les-sons — not to be cautious with life but to appreciate life more.”

! DEEP­ROOTED GRIEF: Friends and family decorated a memorial for sophomore Jack Gavin, who died in a car accident early morning on Thursday, March 24 due to bad weather conditions. The car slid on black ice into this tree. Gavin’s classmates wore green T­shirts in honor of Gavin’s memory on Monday, March 28. (Photo by Ian Magnuson)

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GREEN: Friends, family show support after tragedy

3 NEWSFriday, April 8, 2011

CONTINUED from front page

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME

According to freshman and JV volleyball coach Dan Puglisi, sophomore Jack Gavin worked hard and played club in the offseason to make this year’s JV team. Gavin died on Thursday, March 24 in a car accident. As a member of the volleyball program, Gavin was known as a funny, outgoing teammate and for his love for volleyball. “[He was] a kid who just loves to be around volleyball,” Puglisi said. “He lived and breathed volleyball.”

BOYS DO CRY When assistant varsity boys’ volleyball coach Daria Schaffeld heard at morning volleyball practice that sophomore Jack Gavin had died on Thursday, March 24, she knew she would not be coaching the boys on serves, hits and bumps. “We talked to the boys about the importance of mourning to whatever extent they needed — whether they knew him or not,” Schaffeld said. “You need to cry, and it’s OK to cry, especially with guys.” Schaffeld knows that it is atypical to see adolescent boys who are able to open themselves up when they are emotional. “[You need to] allow yourself to feel whatever emotions you are [feeling],” Schaffeld said. “Whether it’s anger,* whether it’s sadness [or] whether it’s fear, there is no wrong emotion.”

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The common man’s opin-ion of politicians often in-cludes cynicism, skepticism and pessimism. One reason for all of our “isms” is many politicians’ pursuit of their own self-interest, coinciding directly with their inherent desire to get re-elected, and ultimately steering their pol-icies in whatever direction the popular wind is blowing.

The current situation in Libya is the most recent ex-ample of a politician win-ning an election based on one principal but executing another.

President Obama ran a campaign highlighted by an-ti-Bush policies and helped by the economic collapse tak-ing place in the midst of the campaign.

A main winning point for the Democrats were the blun-ders that were the Iraq war, Afghanistan war and the en-tire “blood for oil” concept

many believed had plagued us for eight years.

On Feb. 15, protests against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled Libya for 41 years, began peacefully and followed the success of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.

By Feb. 17, the protests turned to vio-lence all across the country and began calling for Gaddafi’s resignation and the re-estab-lishment of the old constitution which preceded Gaddafi.

After over a month of un-rest between Gaddafi’s forces and the rebels, and in effort to create a democracy in Lib-ya, Operation Odyssey Dawn began. Odyssey Dawn was an American-created military plan to protect civilians and

establish a ceasefire and a no-fly zone.

But in the process of mili-tary action, President Obama has abstained from his most basic campaign promise: to use diplomacy and not the military in order to create peace in the world. It is our responsibility as high school

students, and the future vot-ers of America, not to allow this to continue.

We, The Prospector, be-lieve that poli-ticians should stick to their major cam-

paign promises and not what will get them re-elected. It is our job to also hold the elect-ed officials to this standard.

After all, if Obama serves two terms, by the time he is out of office, most of us will be out of college and starting

careers, where topics such as the energy crisis, the debt, tax rates, offshoring and oil will become relevant to us and will continue to be used as political footballs.

In addition to only being tossed around, these issues are still not solved and seem to be saved for the future gen-erations to solve. The Social Security bubble, for example, which is so frequently dis-cussed during election sea-son, continues to grow.

When we are the main tax-payers of America in 10 years and the baby boomers are in the middle of retirement, we will feel the crunch, but it will be too late. All will go to waste if we do not force the politicians to actually act on the ideas they present to us.

And two Presidents into the 21st century, it seems blood may still be thick-er than water, but it sure doesn’t beat oil.

The StaffEDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Kate SchroederNeel Thakkar

MANAGING EDITORDeanna Shilkus

COPY EDITORGina O’Neill

ASSOCIATE EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Sharon LeeRiley Simpson

NEWS EDITORSMaddie Conway

Jane BerryAndrew Revord

OPINION EDITORSWhitney Kiepura

Katie BestNikki Gallup

FEATURES EDITORSMegan Maughan

Carly EvansAllie Fleming

IN-DEPTH EDITORSEmmy LindforsJenny Johnson

ENTERTAINMENT EDITORS

Kevin MallinTallyn Owens

SPORTS EDITORSMaggie DevereuxNick Stanojevic

Miranda Holloway

PHOTO EDITORSIan MagnusonWalker BrewerAli Preissing

CARTOONISTSQuinn Blackshere

Katie Maigler

ADVISERJason Block

Published by students in Journalistic Writing courses, the Prospector has won, most notably, the 2004-05 and 2006-07 National Scholastic Press Association Pacemaker and the Gold Crown from Columbia Scholastic Press Association in 2006.

Mission StatementThe primary purpose of the Prospect High School Prospec-tor is to report news as well as explain its meaning and sig-!"#$%!$&'()')*+'+&%,&+-'%!,'(.&'community. We, the Prospector, hope to inform, entertain and provide a school forum for the unrestricted exchange of ideas and opinions. AdvertisingFor ad rates, call (847) 718-5376 (ask for Deanna Shilkus), fax (847) 718-5306 e-mail or write the Prospector, 801 West Kensington Rd., Mount Prospect, IL 60056, prospec-tornow@gmail.com.

Letters to the EditorDrop off letters to the Prospec-tor in the box in the library, in Rm. 216 or email letters to prospectornow@gmail.com. All letters must be signed. Please limit letters to 400 words. The Prospector reserves the rights to edit letters for style and length.

5OPINIONFriday, April 8, 2011

Staff E

dit

oria

l

Forgetting their promises

Voting results of The Prospector staff regarding this editorial

AgainstFor

431

Disaster drills

Whitney KiepuraExecutive Opinion Editor

Japan tragedy should change school ‘sdisaster responses

Living in the Midwest, it’s hard to imag-ine the magnitude of the earthquake and resulting tsunami that rocked Japan on March 11. But what we lack in earthquake drills, we make up for with fire drills, tor-nado drills, blackouts, and lockdowns.

The hardest part of practicing for vari-ous types of natural disasters is trying to keep it realistic.

Junior Ken Nakani-shi-Stanis experienced such a disaster when he went to Japan to vis-it relatives a few years back. Nakanishi-Stanis was sitting in a res-taurant when a small earthquake rumbled through the town.

“Everyone became very quiet,” Nakanishi-Stanis said. “They all just waited to see what would happen.”

Due to the many earthquake drills the Japanese practice, they were able to keep calm. However, Nakanishi-Stanis, unac-customed to earthquakes, became much more unnerved.

He said how amazed he was that a whole nation could handle a disaster so success-fully. Regarding both the recent tsunami and the tremor that Nakanishi-Stanis ex-perienced, the ability to remain calm is a

life skill that should be taught in schools. Due to the fact that the general population of Japan was able to remain calm, a larger number of deaths were avoided (see Play-ground escape).

If Prospect was faced with a similar di-saster, the drills students practice through-out the year would not prepare them well enough to escape catastrophe. The light-hearted, apathetic attitude students have toward the drills ruins the reality a true crisis can bring.

The drills come on a frequent-enough basis that everyone knows to duck into a dark corner if a mysterious person enters the building. If the field house catches on fire, we know how to walk out of the build-ing in a calm and orderly fashion.

But at the same time, during these drills, there seems to be an air of disbelief that anything tragic could actually hap-pen.

The drills we follow are set up by a cri-sis team. Dean Dr. Patricia Tedaldi-Monti explained that the district comes up with emergency plans based on the layout of each building, and then they try and plan

for any disaster or dilemma that might oc-cur during the drill.

Every time they run a drill, the police and fire department are on site to observe and “to see any glitches in the system,” Tedaldi-Monti said. “As light and jovial as the drills might be, they depend on adults who know what to do.”

The quickest way to dissipate that air of youthful invincibility would be to enter some controlled danger into these drills. For example, the administration could in-troduce an “X factor.” This factor would be five to 10 students strategically placed throughout the school who would purpose-ly panic.

They could cause any type of mayhem from running for exits to screaming. Their goal would be simply to see if their actions could effect the whole group. In a disaster, people are more likely to think of their own survival before the group’s safety. So by having students obviously focusing on themselves, it will be a test for the student body to resist the natural urge to escape.

These students would act as sparks to disorder and might throw off the calm at-mosphere, just like a real disaster would. By adding potential chaos, the practice drills would be more realistic compared to when a real disaster does occur.

Although it’s impossible to experience an earthquake and a tsunami this deep into the continent, by channeling a bit of the Joker’s chaos, Prospect could be able to handle one more twist 2012 might throw.

To read about the advantages of procrastination see “Destination Procrastination” And to hear about what it’s really like to be vegetarian

see “Vegetarianism” by going to prospectornow.com.

Graphic by Ian Magnuson

PLAYGROUND ESCAPE Due to its place at the edge of two tectonic plates, Japan endures about 20 percent of the world’s strong earthquakes. Because of this, the nation annually practices disaster drills like the ones every student experiences at Prospect. Now that some of the chaos has settled down regarding the recent earthquake and tsunami, many tales of bravery are surfacing from the rubble. One story tells how 562 elementary and middle school students escaped together from their schools. The two schools congregated in their joined playground and then ran a kilometer

together

to higher ground. When they believed they were far enough away, they looked behind to see their schools engulfed by the waves. In their school, students are taught three things: 1. If the ground starts shaking, don’t go back to your house; run to high ground. 2. Don’t necessarily follow the hazard map; examine the current situation, consult with others and make the best

Information courtesy of Japan Subculture Research Center

The characters in Pooh Bear’s 100-acre woods each have talents all their own. Rabbit grows a garden, Pooh eats honey, Roo is curious and Owl is wise.

For me, the traits of Tigger and Eeyore have al-ways hit close to home. Tigger knows what he is good at — he even declares that “bouncing is what Tiggers do best,” but as far as Eeyore is con-cerned, he is not good at anything, never has been and never will be. As a professor at

Carnegie Mellon University point-ed out, these two lovable childhood characters are models for two types of personalities (see An inspira-tion).

In essence, there are two kinds of people. One is some-one who is upbeat and energetic: a Tig-ger. The second is someone who walks around with a rain cloud over his or her head: an Eeyore.

For years, the rain cloud over my head was more like a thunderstorm. I was a bit of a “Debbie Downer.” When we played softball in gym, all I could think was that I would get hit in the face and break my nose. If my family went out for dinner at a new restaurant, I predicted that we would all return with food poisoning.

Looking back, I know why I was such an Eeyore. I was afraid that I would be hurt when life didn’t go my way, and I was certain not to be dis-appointed if I already expected an unhappy ending to every story.

My attitude got so gloomy that it was beginning to annoy people; they would roll their eyes when I talked about the test I was “definitely going to fail” or shake their heads when I doubted that a situation would work

out for the best.

M y perpetual Eeyore attitude was affect-ing my friendships, so I began to contemplate a Tigger transforma-tion.

By New Year’s, it was time for a change. My r e s o l u t i o n : become more positive. Like most people, I rarely follow through on my New Year’s resolutions. This res-olution, however, was destined for greatness.

This transformation was hard but not impossible. Eeyore was part of my attitude, and chang-ing that attitude does not come eas-ily.

“I do believe that people have an innate attitude. But that doesn’t mean that it is determined and that you can’t change it or do anything about it, “ school psychologist Dr. Jay Kyp-Johnson said. “It takes

some focus and takes some time and concentration on yourself ... but I think that people can change pretty dramat-

ically when they want to.”I had to ease into my reform. At

first, I would try to catch myself ev-ery time I thought about being out-wardly cynical. The fewer negative comments I made, the less pessimis-tic I began to really feel. I would try to think positively about the tests that had previously stressed me out. Before I knew it, Tigger had taken over.

It has been about four months since my attitude adjustment, and I’ll be frank: being positive is fun.

The fact that I’m easily amused might have helped, but I find see-ing the positive points of a situa-tion make the little joys in life more enjoyable. I used to hate it when my sister would wake me up early dur-ing spring break, but this year, I got to make my family French toast.

On top of all of this, as strange as it may sound, I feel physically better. In previ-

ous years, I had missed a good chunk of school in the winter be-cause I was always getting sick. So far, I have only missed one day.

As it turns out, this is not too crazy. According to the Mayo Clinic, researchers have found that people who are more optimistic have a low-er risk of death from cardiovascular disease, a greater resistance to the common cold and even a longer life span.

Physical health and a better immune system are not the only benefits of having a good attitude. Emotionally, positive people tend to flourish more than negative ones.

“Everyone is going to have in-sults or difficult times in their life, and people with a positive attitude tend to bounce back quicker,” Kyp-Johnson said.

But when optimism gets in the way of reality, the approach can be-come unrealistic. There is a time and a place for an upbeat attitude. Those times do not include: the moment that someone is failing a class the week before finals, the time when someone is still at home the minute before the bell rings or when some-one is still doing homework at 4 a.m.

I am, by no means, happy all the time. I would not advise speaking to me before 6:30 a.m., and making me skip lunch is not something I would recommend. Being positive all the time would make me more obnox-ious than when I was an Eeyore.

I won’t go as far as saying that be-ing positive makes life easier; it just makes it more fun. What I’m trying to say can be said best by Tigger himself:

“The wonderful thing about Tiggers is Tiggers are wonderful things!/ Their tops are made out of rubber/ Their bottoms are made out of springs!/ They’re bouncy, troun-cy, flouncy, pouncy/

Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!/ But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is/ I’m the only one”

But, I’m not the only one, so to all the Tiggers out there: keep on bouncing.

Optimistic viewimproves life

“Someone needs to arrest him and forcibly put him in the psych ward. He’s a threat to America.”

“I think that he has blown a great opportunity because he is obviously a very talented guy, but he has wasted a lot of his talent.

“He’s stupid. He has no respect for women, himself or his children.”

- sophomore

Carolyn Fujara

- English teacher

Erik Hammerstrom

- junior

Mary Sullivan- senior

Brendan Moriarty

OPINIONFriday, April 8, 2011

6

*Name has been changed for confidentiality

Every year after spring break, a certain kind of apathy sets in for all high school students: spring break slump.

Students stop doing all of their homework, studying for tests and reading their books for English.

And when they do decide that homework is worthy of their time, it happens to be one pe-riod before it’s due. Even with the excuse of senioritis, slacking off at the end of the year doesn’t help anyone.

Like everyone else, I fall victim to this slump. Trigo-nometry homework, Shake-speare, case studies — it’s not that I don’t have time to do them. I just choose not to.

My senioritis takes over, and before I know it, I’m watching “NCIS” and “The Tyra Banks Show” reruns for hours. While these shows do distract me for a while from the stress of how much homework I have, I eventu-

ally have to come back to the reality of massive amounts of work and not so massive amounts of time to get it done. And ending the year with a lackluster transcript is the last thing colleges want to see.

Patty West*, a senior, has experienced simi-lar situations.

In her last semester Advanced Composi-tion class, she put off doing her homework for weeks. Admittedly, we’ve all been guilty of the same deed. But, then the progress report was mailed home: F.

West wanted to raise her grade, but she put off doing her essay for two weeks when ‘‘plans came up that were more important.’’

West decided to have her friend write her paper for her. Obviously, any senior is aware of the plagiarism policy and wouldn’t risk getting caught, even in an ‘emergency situation’ like this. This attitude of apathy toward schoolwork, especially with seniors, is a recipe for disaster. This time of the year, seniors are only focused on summer and hanging out with friends.

Like West, most seniors put forth that effort on making plans with friends. I understand the attraction to sitting around and gossiping is much more interesting than reading about Heathcliff and Catherine’s love, but this is not going to help our literature grades.

Rushing through homework is not the best idea for most of us, especially when teachers know how to spot a paper that was done the night before. Teens need about nine hours of sleep each night, according to sleepfoundation.com, but rarely get it.

Because of poor planning skills, students end up doing our their homework when they should be sleeping, which is what I had to do over break.

A smart idea would have been to do home-work before break, but I chose to play Pokemon Emerald with a friend instead. And my grades have suf-fered the side effects.

Spring break slump: 4. Me: 0. Spring break slump wins again.

Surviving spring break slump

Nikki GallupOpinion Editor

Miranda HollowaySports Editor

There are two kinds of people: the upbeat Tigger

and the cloudy Eeyore.

Transformation to Tigger

In 2007, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Dr. Randy Pausch, a father of three, was dying from pancreatic cancer when he gave a speech and wrote the book The Last Lecture about the importance of having fun and following childhood dreams. Here he made the comparison between Eeyore and Tigger and encouraged others to live life as a Tigger. In his book he claims that being a Tigger will offer a fuller, more enjoyable life. Unfortunately, Pausch died a year later, but his book spent more than 85 weeks on the New York Times Best-seller list.

To see the Youtube video of Pausch’s speech, 

check out Prospectornow.com. 

AN INSPIRATION

Cartoons by Nikki Gallup

“He embodies the American spirit because he does what he wants. People may disagree with him, but he doesn’t let other people’s opinions ,';<#'*#(=%)-(%#(does. He’s the man.”

What’s your opinion of Charlie Sheen?

By Megan MaughanExecutive Features Editor

When ‘10 Prospect graduate Katie Fisher was randomly assigned to her roommate at Illinois State University, she wasn’t concerned. She began talk-ing to her roommate on Facebook be-fore the school year started, and she warned Fisher she was a homebody and didn’t have a lot of friends.

The only in-formation Fish-er found strange was her room-mate said most of her friends were her old teachers from high school. However, she brushed it off and thought her roommate would “turn out to be a really cool person.”

For the first month, everything seemed fine; they would hang out to-gether, and nothing was going wrong. After about a month, however, the situ-ation took a turn for the worse.

“She stopped showering for week-long periods of time, and sometimes it would go longer,” Fisher said. “And

I’ve only seen her brush her teeth three times since we’ve been living here.”

Her roommate then began to save food from the dining hall, storing it un-der her bed and in her closet. She never leaves the room and always lays in bed, taking three naps a day.

“She killed her fish,” Fisher said. “She poked him to death with a straw.”

Horror stories such as Fisher’s are what com-pels students to turn to Facebook or other room-mate search sites so that they can avoid the mys-tery of a random roommate.

Senior Brie Kelly found her future roommate, Mor-gan, on Facebook. After searching on the University of Kansas Class of 2015 page on Facebook, she friend requested a girl who had posted that she was look-ing for a roommate.

After that, Kelly and Morgan began talking on Facebook, discussing what their hobbies were, how clean or messy they were, what they liked to do, when they hung out with their friends and

what they were looking for in a room-mate. The girls then exchanged phone numbers and started texting each other instead of talking just on Facebook.

About a week after exchanging num-bers, Brie went to go visit the Universi-ty of Kansas, and since Morgan’s home in Iowa was on the way to the school, Kelly decided to visit her. After that, they decided that if Kelly was sure that she wanted to go to Kansas, then they would room together.

“It’s almost pathetic how much we talk. We Facebook message every day; we write on each other’s walls, [and] she’ll text me every day,” Kelly said. “She was in Cancun and just brought me back a shirt and mailed it to me, and we send letters. It’s pretty cool.”

Because of the good experience Kel-ly had with finding a roommate, she always advises other seniors to look for

one online as opposed to going com-pletely random.

“I think that choosing random is scary because once you get that room-mate, you’re kind of stuck — even if she’s really rude or steals your stuff,” Kelly said. “I like how I’m able to know Morgan and got to basically choose someone who I knew that I’d get along with really well.”

Fisher agrees that finding a room-mate online beforehand might have helped her in getting a roommate who she would have gotten along with better, but she doesn’t think that’s a guarantee.

“If you meet someone on Facebook, you can kind of get a feel of what they’re like, but you can’t know every-one,” Fisher said. “It’s completely dif-ferent once you’re actually living with someone.”

By Allie FlemingFeatures Editor

When senior Luke Bergman heard that his friend, senior Zac O’Hara, started to pursue a love for rapping, Bergman said he wanted a rap dedicated to him. An hour later, Bergman re-ceived a multimedia text message. He clicked play, and for the first time — but definitely not the last — he heard “Luke Burgy-man”: O’Hara’s first origi-nal rap about a friend.

O’Hara’s rapping ca-reer started a few months ago while listening to the hip-hop group, A Tribe Called Quest. Listen-ing to their music made him question if he could rap too.

His mom, Julie O’Hara, said he has always been musically creative. In the past, O’Hara only played around with the music and beat aspect; however, now he is adding lyrics to his beats.

Julie showed her support by pur-chasing Reason music software, a vir-tual studio with tools that allow ideas to become music. She also gives him quiet time in the basement in order to record his raps. Yet, his mom wants him to keep the raps clean so that she can send them to his grandparents.

When O’Hara decided to start rap-ping, he used his iPhone to send out his original songs to his friends. He soon realized that the quality he had

on his iPhone was not the same quality his friends were receiv-ing.

“The quality on my phone is terrible, so before the website started, I always listened off my boy Kevin Miller’s phone,” Bergman said.

O’Hara now uses the inter-net to broadcast his songs. He uses the website soundcloud.com — designed for people to

upload their music and sounds for others to hear — and has his own per-sonal page.

Bergman further explained that the website is great because everyone can hear O’Hara’s raps now, and the qual-ity is better than his cell phone. He also likes the website because the rap “Luke Burgyman” has the most views.

“I think he is just scratching the surface right now,” Julie said. “He loves music but has no formal train-ing.”

She further explained that she hopes he goes to school to study music and get the formal education he has yet to receive.

“I’m not planning on being a rap-per, but if it happens, it happens,” O’Hara said.

Cartoon by Quinn Blackshere

Senior Zac O’Hara

7FEATURESFriday, April 8, 2010

Student shares rapping hobby

College roommate: best friend or worst nightmare?

ROOMSURF One alternative to searching on colleges’ Facebook admissions pages is roomsurf.com, an online college roommate search engine connected through Facebook. Students can browse for other incoming freshmen going to their $*%00.()'+($#)"*%(-%#,"(5"02.#$(-0(2'+(someone with similar interests. Then, they can message each other to begin talking and decide to room together.

Writing rhymes

To listen to Zac’s raps and read about two Prospect students’ experiences with their own YouTube channels,

go to prospectornow.com.

TOP WEBSITES TO BROADCAST MUSIC

54321

Info courtesy of articlesbase.com

Tyler Ward is a full-time music producer based out of Denver, Colo. He also publishes his own music via Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reverbnation, and Myspace, not unlike many teenagers who are aspiring musicians like senior Zac O’Hara. This Q&A interview was conducted via e-mail with the Prospector.

62 percent of students are not comfortable with their body

61 percent of students say they practice healthy eating habits

61 percent of stu dents makes an effort to work out outside of gym

Based on a Prospector survey of 231 students

By Sharon LeeAssociate Editor-in-Chief

All senior Kelsey Ledger wanted was to “look good” in a bikini for the summer. However, with only three months left till summer break, she decided to turn to a quicker alternative for losing weight.

Ledger had looked into diet pills last year, but because she was not dedicated enough to taking them, they didn’t work for her. But this year, Ledger decided to fully commit herself to taking the pills every day because she believes that los-ing weight will bring her closer to achiev-ing the “ideal body shape” and make her more confident in herself.

Similar to Ledger, many girls do not have confi-dence in their body image. According to healthyplace.com, 75 percent of “nor-mal” weight women think they are overweight, and 90 percent of women over-estimate their body size. PE teacher Brent Pearlman said this is mostly a result of society.

“There are mirrors everywhere,” Pearlman said. “You constantly see your-self. You have a lot of feedback on how you look. I think that’s probably creating even more self-consciousness and more motivation to achieve the ‘optimal look.’”

Because of this, Pearlman has encoun-tered many students who have asked for advice on how to lose weight, most of

them looking for a quick fix. Pearlman said he always gives them the same an-swer: losing weight is a long-term change.

“The process of losing weight is re-ally a lifestyle change,” Pearlman said. “[Diet supplements] directly contradict that mentality. They make it seem like losing weight is an easy fix, and it’s not. You have to change your entire lifestyle to effectively lose weight.”

Ledger has, in a way, changed her life-style. She bought a pill called Hydroxy-cut from Walgreens, which recommends taking six pills a day. Ledger takes two pills 30 minutes before each meal. She also works out at least three times a week while taking the pills in order to lose weight faster because the pills speed up her metabolism, allowing her to burn calories faster.

Ledger said it is a pain to have to re-member to take the pills every day, but she never misses her intake.

According to Pearlman, diet pills and other supplements may be effective in

losing the weight, but the chances of main-taining that weight loss is very low. Ad-ditionally, the risks that come with these supplements are sev-eral — from physical to psychological (see Diet pill risks).

“Any time you’re altering the way your body works, there are

thousands of dangers,” Pearlman said.Ledger said she has extensively re-

searched the risks of Hydroxycut — even learning of the death of a 19-year-old boy who had taken Hydroxycut — but she is willing to take those risks.

“I’m a little more overweight than most people, so because of that, I will do what it takes to be fitter,” Ledger said.

“Whatever it takes, I’ll do, just so I’ll fit in and be happy with myself. I’m not confi-dent right now.”

Senior Tracy Vadakumchery also works out in order to get more fit and “tone up” because she wants to be able to fit into the clothing that she sees “skinny models” wearing through online clothing websites like Forever 21.

“I think, unfortunately, there’s a spe-cific body image that has become the standard for what [people] should look like,” Pearlman said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily achievable for all people ... [but that’s] what we see most often.

“A lot of what we see has been touched up. There’s things they can do techno-

logically to make people look a lot better than they do look.”

Vadakumchery understand this, and although she said she “has been affected by society,” she is working to achieve the body type that she is comfortable with.

“I definitely don’t have the perfect body,” Vadakumchery said. “People say I’m skinny, but when I look in the mir-ror, I see a lot of other imperfections that other people don’t see, but that’s how ev-eryone is. When they look at themselves in the mirror, they see stuff that other people won’t take a magnifying glass and look at.”

In order to achieve the body she wants, Vadakumchery works out consistently,

Junior Jon Cura and sophomore Molly Driscoll are

part of the 31 percent of students who regularly

use Prospect’s Fitness Center. However, Driscoll

and Cura have created their own workouts.

Prospect’s fitness

perception

8 IN-DEPTHFriday, April 8, 2011

Besides working out in her self-defense class, junior Urszula Tyl enjoys using “The Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels’ workout videos.” “The workouts were pretty intense,” Tyl said. “They made you actually feel the burn in the legs, arms and abs.” Tyl found the workout to be “helpful,” but she also discovered they are only effective if “you stick to them” and are really focused on strengthening your arms, abs and legs: the main targets of the videos. Due to the lack of adequate physical activity during the day — about 29 percent of the United States population are lacking according to the Centers for Disease Control — people around the country are keen on keeping thin and active. Celebrities are one of the main groups of people who are following suit. Celebrities like Heidi Klum have created exercise videos, written books on exercising and eating healthy and have used their name on labels for weight-loss and/or exercise products. Michaels is one of many celebrities that has her own workout videos and

programs. Even though Michaels has an advantage when it comes to knowing what techniques work effectively– since her claim to fame is a celebrity trainer – Michaels still uses her ')&#(-0(,'*"#)$#(5"02-$(0'(-%#(>,+#0$3(Viewers have seen her work on “The Biggest Loser” and have a hope that it will help them, too. In PE classes at Prospect, like Martial Arts, workout videos are a main 5)"-(0!(2-'#$$(+)?$3(@)"0'(A)"'$-#,'(teaches Martial Arts, and he doesn’t use videos that feature celebrities. When deciding what videos to use, Marnstein will work out to it on his own. He chooses videos that he feels his $-<+#'-$(=,..(4#'#2-('0(&)--#"(=%0(,$(in them. “I ask myself, ‘Is this a good workout, or is someone trying to just make money off of it?’” Marnstein said. “It doesn’t really depend on who’s doing the work out ... it matters how good [of a workout out] it is.”

–Emmy Lindfors

CELEBRITIES’ WAYS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT

1) Driscoll starts

out her workout with

a one‐mile run on the

treadmill.

2) Next Driscoll

loosens up by stretch‐

ing.

3) Driscoll then

strengthens her

core by doing

crunches on

the medi‐

cine ball.

4) Finally

!"#$%&''()*#$+,$(her workout by

lifting weights.

-Anxiety or nervousness-Insomnia and a feeling of restlessness or -Hyperactivity-High blood pressure-Tightness in the chest-Heart attack

DIET PILL RISKS

Students use go to great lengths for ‘perfect body ‘

Lofty perception of perfection

Workout Regulars

To read more about Driscoll, Cura and other stu‐

dents who regularly use Prospect’s Fitness Center, go to

Prospectornow.com.

1) Cura gets

ready to work out

by stretching out

his muscles.

2) Then he

heads over to the

weight machines to

strengthen his up‐

per body.

3) After that,

Cura heads over to

the free weights

to further enhance

his upper body

strength.

4) Cura ends

his workout by

stretching out his

muscles. Photos by Ian Magnuson

Weight loss woes!e Prospector takes a look at the pitfalls and successes of teenage weight loss

Information courtesy of teenvogue.com

- Have a balance between exercise and eating healthy foods.

-Cardiovascular activities (i.e. elliptical and biking).-Watch how the food is prepared. -Replace sodas and juices with water.-Walk more than 30 minutes throughout each day.-Take less food than you think you need. You can always go back for seconds, but you’re likely to eat everything that is in front of you — even if you aren’t hungry.-Eat 90 percent of your meals at home.-Eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juiceBC$#($5,*?(;)>0",'/$3((D0<"(40+?(

Athletes mold bodies to meet sports’ demands

-Eat “empty calories,” found in food that lacks

nutritional value.-Consume grease, sugars and precooked meals, like TV dinners.-Resort to a crash diet (anything less than 1,500 calories a day).-Keep clothes that are too big. Staying a smaller size so you don’t have to buy new clothes is a big incentive.-Buy coffee from store chains. Make your own coffee.-Drink whole milk. Instead, drink two percent or low fat milk.-Eat with a large group.-Cut carbs and eat tons of meat.-Drink lots of caffeine.

DO’S AND DONT’S FOR LOSING WEIGHT HEALTHILY

Information courtesy of health teacher Cristen Sprenger

DO: DON’T:

12 percent of students believe they are overweight

67 percent of students read nutrition labels

By Jenny

JohnsonIn-Depth Editor

When senior Joe Randazzo was in mid-dle school, he and his fellow football players, seniors Anthony Bab-icz, Steve Dazzo, Grant

DePalma, Zach Lewis and Beau Zanca watched many Prospect football games

together. The six of them set a goal that when they were in high school and on the team, they would win a state

championship.In order to achieve this goal,

Randazzo had to pack on weight over the spring and summer. He ended up going from 150 to 170 pounds at the beginning of this football season. Unfortunately, the playoff game against Lake Zurich ended that dream as the players walked off the field for the last time.

However, Randazzo had a new goal he needed to focus on: lose about 20 pounds in 12 days to get ready for the wrestling season. The pressure to lose weight in such high amounts is likely the greatest in wrestling, but most athletes face it in some form.

Wrestling demanded a lot of Randazzo, making him lose much more than the recom-mended two to three pounds per week, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, Randazzo has lost weight rapidly before for wrestling since he has been involved in the sport since freshman year.

“During foot-ball season, I eat everything,” Randazzo said. “When it comes to wrestling, I have to eat re-ally healthy and in small por-tions. It’s a huge change.”

While preparing for the hy-dration test — the pre-season weigh-in for wrestlers — Ran-dazzo would only eat once or never during the day and wouldn’t even touch food on any weigh-in day during the season.

Randazzo succeeded in his goal and morphed into the sport’s compact, muscular body type. Despite the sacrifice, Ran-dazzo plans to continue wres-tling at Indiana University next year.

“I never had any doubt in my

mind about quitting wrestling,” Randazzo said. “I can’t imagine not wrestling these next four years at college.”

Similarly, freshman Gianna Scala has been in gymnastics since she was in first grade and started competing in fourth grade.

“When I started competing is when I realized I wouldn’t give up the sport for anything,” Scala said.

By the time Scala got into high school, she was competing in four events: bars, floor, vault and beam. In regionals, she got first in bars and floor and sec-ond for vault and all-around gymnasts.

Gymnastics head coach Ran-dy Smith describes gymnasts as “lean, short and probably the strongest athletes out there.”

Scala fits the gymnastics ste-reotype perfectly. She maintains her skinny, yet healthy, body at

the weight of 110 pounds while hav-ing strong muscles to help her in events that she competes in. Still, mul-tiple body types can succeed in the sport.

“ F o r shorter and more mus-cular girls, it is easier

for power [when competing on floor while] taller girls are more graceful,” said Scala, who fits the first category.

When preparing for a meet, Scala makes sure she takes in a lot of carbs. She also makes sure she “eats a big breakfast and a sandwich before the meet but not too much food that would get me sick.”

Endurance also plays a sig-nificant role in competition. According to Smith, endurance is built up throughout the sea-

“During football season I eat everything. When it comes to wrestling, I have to eat really !"#$%!&'(((')%*+'#'!,-"'

change.”-senior Joe Randazzo

9IN-DEPTHFriday, April 8, 2011

Graphic by Emmy Lindfors

Weight loss woes

FEATURESFriday, April 8, 2011

10

By Deanna ShilkusManaging Editor

Tom Manetti took over as President of the Me-tropolis Ballroom in 2006 and soon after got an idea. Downtown Arlington Heights had been re-developed and revitalized, and he felt it was time for a change in the entertainment area.

He started a program for youth, eventually transforming into a new division for “On stage at the Metropolis Ballroom,” a series of planned, live entertainment events that are scheduled through the spring and summer.

The new outreach program for young musi-cians will be a part of “On stage at the Metropolis Ballroom” in that young students from around the area will be the opening acts for professional performers who are scheduled to play at the ball-room.

The program has just started, and all students interested in joining must be in either junior high or high school. These local area students will use their talents in either playing in a band, singing or playing their instruments; they could even do comedy.

According to Manetti, there are already seven to eight shows booked with students to perform the opening acts. They currently have about one show per month.

Jessie Bolash, who graduated from Prospect in December, will be performing at the ballroom on May 21.

She is looking forward to her performance because she is hoping this experience will jump-start a career in musical arts for her someday.

“Being a classical voice major, I sing nonstop,” Bolash said.

In order for the students to be able to perform, Manetti or his talent manager holds auditions. They will cast the deciding vote on who will per-form in the program.

Manetti is making sure to invite the press and talent agents to the shows as well.

As far as his goals for the program, Manetti hopes to give students a chance to interact with professional musicians and allow them to learn more about pursuing a career in music.

“Any experience in front of paying customers is a good experience for students who want to get into the performing arts,” Manetti said.

Metropolis supports youngperformers

By Carly EvansFeatures Editor

In a small, dark comedy club, a voice streamed across the crowd introducing a new, young come-dian. Guided study instructor Nate Weatherup was waiting anxiously: He walked toward the stage and then held the microphone. The first joke — no one laughed. Second joke — silence.

“But then, [after] the next joke, the whole room laughed, and I knew I was stuck [doing comedy],” Weath-erup said.

Ever since that night, Weatherup has been performing as often as pos-sible. Most of his performances are at one of the three locations of Za-nie’s, a popular comedy club in Ver-non Hills, Chicago and St. Charles.

Other than being a comedian, Weatherup is a Guided study in-structor and runs the Literacy Center after school. Occasionally, Weatherup will substitute for a teacher in need.

Weatherup’s current experience at Prospect is different than when he was in high school. Weatherup wasn’t the “class clown” everyone assumes he was. He was actually ex-tremely quiet and shy.

“I never wanted to say something I thought was hilarious and then [have] everybody shun me,” Weath-erup said.

Rather than risking the potential embarrassment, Weatherup would resort to telling his jokes to his friends after class. Now, Weatherup

is quite the opposite.“[In high school], I never want-

ed attention, but now I crave it,” Weatherup said. “I finally started to realize: If everybody doesn’t love me, I don’t care.”

One aspect of comedy Weatherup wasn’t expecting was the way the Zanie’s manager lectured him and his fellow come-dians. One day the owner sat down all of the new performers and told them not to expect people to just offer them tele-vision appear-ances or roles.

Despite what the owner had said, within the next week, Weatherup re-ceived an unex-pected call. The call was from a casting director who had seen Weatherup per-form. She was interested in hav-ing him audition for Fox’s “Rais-ing Hope.” Of course, Weatherup jumped at the chance for a headlin-ing role on a new sitcom.

“Clearly the audition went too well because I’m not on it now,” Weatherup joked.

Even as a child, Weatherup was interested in comedy. Weatherup would listen to tapes and watch stand up with his dad. The most common comedians he would watch were Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld and Dana Carvey.

Weatherup explains they all had different types of comedy but were all equally humorous. Cosby was more into telling stories from his

life that were funny, Seinfeld would “notice things that were just askew” and Carvey was “that crazy guy.”

Weatherup wanted to combine the three stars’ humor into an intel-ligent and edgy comedian.

“I always wanted to be that crazy guy on stage,” Weatherup said. “But I’m not — don’t worry.”

Instead, Weatherup focuses on more ordinary topics. Weatherup’s material mainly consists of school experiences and sometimes even jokes about Prospect. The jokes about Prospect are light-hearted and occasionally are about some of his experiences substitute teaching.

But, more often than not, his material is about his experiences in school versus how school is now. Other material includes his stories of family. Weatherup grew up in De-troit, but his parents are from Ala-bama.

“I said ‘y’all’ all the time,” Weath-erup said. “Until I realized I was in

Detroit.” Despite more

than half of his jokes being about his family, Weath-erup still has a strong relation-ship with his par-ents.

After a per-formance one night, Weatherup found out there had been a critic in the crowd. He went online and saw a review writ-ten about him. The review praised Weatherup as the highlight of the night. For Weath-

erup, it was “the nicest thing any-one has ever said.” Immediately after, Weatherup called his mother.

“I was like ‘Mom! Someone wrote an awesome review about me,’” and she said, ‘Oh, well you still owe me money for college,’” Weatherup said.

Juggling two jobs isn’t easy, but Weatherup says he’s doing what he loves. The combination of jobs can’t last forever; Weatherup will eventu-ally have to choose between his two loves — stand up and teaching.

“Teaching is a blast,” Weatherup said, “but comedy is a dream. It’s like someone asking you, ‘Would you rather do a job you love or be a millionaire?’”

!

This issue, the Prospector interviews senior Brittany Wils’ boyfriend, senior Zach Lewis, and best friend, senior Lisa Benway, to see who knows Brittany better.

The Best Friend

What is Brittany’s sister’s middle name? Senior Lisa Benway

Taylor Swift

W

I

N

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R

Who Knows You Better?

The Subject The BoyfriendWhat is Brittany’s favorite restaurant?

What is Brittany’s English class this semester?

If Brittany could see one performer, who would it be?

What color was Brittany’s prom dress last year?

Senior Brittany Wils Senior Zach Lewis

Olive GardenOlive Garden

Advanced

Comp

Elizabeth

Black and white

Taylor Swift

Advanced

Comp

Elizabeth

Taylor Swift

Advanced

Comp

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!

!

!

!

W

I

N

N

E

R

Olive Garden !

Elizabeth

Black and white Black and purple

! !

n line to headline

Step one: Be universal. Have all different types of jokes and material in order to appeal to a wider demographic. Step two: Don’t tell your life story. The audience isn’t there to learn; they are there to laugh.

Step three: Make what is funny to you funny to the audience. Bring them into your life, but don’t cross the line.

HOW TO GET AN AUDIENCE TO

LAUGH

     FUNNY LIKE A CLOWN: Guided study instructor, Nate Weatherup, performs stand up at Zanie’s, a popular comedy club. Weatherup performs regularly at all of the Zanie’s locations. (Photo courtesy of Nate Weatherup)

!

Teacher pursues dream career in stand-up comedy

Photo courtesy of Metropolis Ballroom

By Jane BerryNews Editor

Substitute teacher and former Eng-lish teacher Tom Brennan experienced the definition of a disaster. In his home-town of Christchurch, New Zealand, where he spends his winters, an 18-sec-ond earthquake struck without warn-ing on Tuesday, Feb. 22.

Brennan and his wife were out of town during the earthquake but re-turned to find a stream of vehicles es-caping the city. According to Brennan, all the gas stations were out of gas with-in a two-hour radius.

They returned home to no toilets, no tap water, no electricity, no traffic lights, no shops, no phones and no cell phones once they ran out of battery.

“Everything was turned upside down,” Brennan said.

In an e-mail interview with The Pros-pector — the disaster made it difficult to communicate via telephone — Bren-nan said because Christchurch and the surrounding areas were out of power, his friends in Chicago knew much more about the disaster than anyone in New Zealand.

Rebecca Hagberg-Cohen, English teacher and friend of Brennan, said she heard about the earthquake in Christ-church on the radio while she was driv-ing home. She e-mailed Brennan as quickly as possible.

“When I started to see the pictures on the news, I got really worried, so I e-mailed [Brennan] again,” Hagberg-

Cohen said. “The photos were devastat-ing.”

By Wednesday night, Hagberg-Co-hen received a forwarded e-mail from the Brennans. All of their friends in the states have been passing on as much in-formation as possible.

The 6.3 magnitude earthquake was very close to the earth’s surface, which caused a lot of damage for Christ-church.

“It is impossible to really [prepare for] a situation when all of the things we take for granted (water, sewage, elec-tricity) are gone in an instant,” Bren-nan said.

A cordon, a circle of guards, was placed around the Central Business District (CBD) immediately, and people were evacuated while Urban Search and Rescue went to work to search for sur-vivors. Many people have come to help Christchurch. Urban Search and Res-cue has come from all over the world, including Australia, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and the United States.

Nearly 300 police officers have come from Australia to help, and people have been sending food and wishes of en-couragement. The cordon is still in ef-fect today, but now buildings are being torn down.

“It has been [an] amazing process to see the city cope with a disaster of this kind,” Brennan said, “It’s one of those things one must live through to under-stand.”

According to Brennan, there was a woman within his town who was very upset with the damage done to her house by the Sept. 4 earthquake. Af-ter the recent earthquake, she lost her house and her office building, but she is just happy to be alive.

“I have been reminded of the brevity

and uncertainty of life,” Brennan said.Although the rebuilding will begin

in six months and take close to 10 years to complete, the most pressing issue for the town of Christchurch is how to re-store the heritage buildings for which the city was known. Brennan said the biggest challenge will be patience.

Nearly a third of their central busi-ness district is gone, 10,000 homes have or will be demolished and 100,000 more need serious work. There are entire suburbs that will need to be relocated because the ground they are on is no longer stable.

Brennan said the locals have been “stoic and determined.” As the Univer-sity of Canterbury was closed, thou-sands of students took to the streets to help remove the estimated 300,000 tons of liquefaction (silt). Farmers also came in with machinery to help clear the streets.

The disaster has really brought the town together. Brennan e-mailed a group of about nine people to meet at a restaurant. Neighbors passed the news on and over 30 people ended up coming for dinner.

“The mayor, Bob Parker, has been in-spirational [throughout the disaster],” Brennan said.

In the future, the earthquake proof-ing building code will be even more rigorous. The schools will continue to practice earthquake drills. But most importantly, the town will be “kia kaha”— a native New Zealand saying that means “forever strong.”

“It’s a cliché, but the people around us are more important than the build-ings and cars around us,” Brennan said. “[It] seems to me we remember that at Thanksgiving ... and after a disaster.”

Prospect substitute lives through New Zealand earthquake

call 847-255-2526

421 W. Prospect Ave. Mt. Prospect, IL

FEATURES 11

BREAKING THROUGH

Aya Andejeski woke up on March 11 to her father telling her to come look at the TV.(((((E6(2/<"#+(,-(=0<.+(4#($0&#-%,'/(not that important,” Andejeski said, “but what I saw was devastating.” Andejeski saw the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, where she was born and where her mother’s family still lives. The Andejeskis were very worried when they could not get ahold of Andejeski’s grandmother. “I cried all day,” Andejeski said, “I just didn’t know what else to do.” Andejeski’s mother called to try and comfort her, but, according to her, “you could hear the fear in her voice.”(((((@-(FGHI(53&3(-%#(!)&,.?(2')..?(%#)"+((thorugh their cousin’s facebook that she was safe.

For an opinion on Japan’s disaster drills, turn to page 5...

Friday, April 8, 2011

!AFTER SHOCK: Students at the University of Canterbury shovel silt knocked loose by the earthquake. The recent New Zealand earthquake has devastated the town of Christchurch. (Photo courtesy of Tom Brennan)

SINKING SEDANS

Substitute and former English teacher Tom Brennan returned to his home in J%",$-*%<"*%8(K#=(L#).)'+8()!-#"(-%#(:#43(MM(#)"-%N<)O#(-0(2'+(#P-#'$,>#(+)&)/#(and the city in chaos. “The city streets were severely damaged,” Brennan said, “covered in liquefaction and mounds of soil and silt and dotted with sinkholes and craters ... many with cars half submerged.” According to brighthub.com, sinkholes form naturally due to the erosion of 4#+"0*O(*)<$#+(4?(-%#(;0=,'/(0"(&0>,'/(=)-#"(4#'#)-%(-%#(/"0<'+7$($<"!)*#3 In New Zealand, the salt water created salt bed caverns naturally under the ground. When the shaking from the earthquake loosened it, the ground collapsed.

Kia Kaha: Forever Strong

Photo courtesy of Tom Brennan

12 ENTERTAINMENTFriday, April 8, 2011

Hidden gems

500 West Central Road

Suite 103

Mount Prospect, IL. 60056

CONTACT US

847­259­6605 by phone

online at midwestchirocare.com

FREE EXAM AND X-RAY TO ALL PROSPECT STUDENTS

Specializing in pinched nerves, sports injuries, and nutritional counseling

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3)*-4%$15*6($%71-.899*1(-:;186-.;''1-)"#*-0816$#*%*0-"-(%*"1;%*-(%$#*-$'-;/8<;*-8/08*-"%(81(1=->?$/9-+8()-$#*%#8*+1-$'-()*8%-'"#$%8(*-."/02-()*-6$?;:/81(1-)"#*-8/6?;0*0-()*8%-'"#$%8(*-(%"6,1

Chicago­bred punk band Rise Against recently released their sixth album, “Endgame.” Go to Prospectornow.com for a review of the group’s latest effort.

Beginning with her 2003 debut album, “Ev-erybody Loves You,” the indie music community lauded Kaki King for her complex finger-picking styles and guitar-induced rhythm. Since then, she has expanded and changed her style tremen-dously, going from the percussive sound of “Ritual Dance” from the movie “August Rush,” to the entirely instrumental “Kewpie Station” and the vocal-intensive “Jessica.” Though not yet well

known, King’s spot on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “New Guitar Gods” suggests she is making her way into the world of master players.

-Zak Buczinsky

Recommended tracks: “Bari improv” and

“night after sidewalk”

KAKI KING

Spektor, a bubbly, curly-haired Russian-American, began to study piano at age eight, taking such a liking to it that she insisted on taking it when her family fled Moscow for New York in 1989. Her heritage and passion was on display in her 2004 label debut, “Soviet Kitsch.” Spektor’s sound is best described as

a melodic, powerful collection of piano rock with the pipes of a Broad-way diva. Her poetic lyrics make you smile but still make you think. One such track, “Laughing With,” speaks hauntingly of the ambiguity of God: “But God could be funny at a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke.”

Spektor’s music is personal, even slightly narcissistic because you’re left alone with just the instruments and her voice. “Somedays,”

an emotional ballad from “Soviet Kitsch,” sings: “[Somedays] so much stronger than the friends you try to keep/ By your side” but also includes a characteristic tempo change to the lighthearted. She creates music that is crisp and intimate in a sea of generic, shrill female vocalists and allows any willing music lover to embark on an introspective, effortless pleasure cruise.

-Tallyn Owens

REGINA SPEKTOR

Recommended Tracks: “Dance Anthem of the 80s” and “The Ghost

Considering the popularity of terrible, auto-tuned hip hop, the choice of a rapper as one of the best underground musicians might be surprising. However, the tracks “Fett’s Vette” and “Hipster Hunter” will void all preconceptions of mc chris (lowercase, no dots) as the run-of-the-mill rapper. Born in Liber-tyville, Christopher Ward had no place to write rhymes about financial hardship and growing up on the mean streets. So, instead of faking it like Drake (“Nothing was done” for you? You were on “Degrassi.”

C’mon), mc chris makes his songs playful, talking about anything from working a part-time job in high school to candy and the bounty hunters from “Star Wars.” Ward’s other hallmark is his high voice — something that even he pokes fun at in his song “10 Year Old.” Now, with his jocular style and background as an improv comic, it would be easy to call him a gimmick. That

couldn’t be further from the truth. Mc chris has released six full albums with a seventh coming out this summer and has more technical rapping skill than most “legitimate” artists. Writing rhymes about money and women is easy; incorporating Boba Fett’s history into a rap while maintaining a quick flow is genius.

mc chris

Recommended tracks: “006,” “oldercrowd” and “Hijack”

-Kevin Mallin

Kaki King photo courtesy of Elizabeth Padawer

Finding a good, unique rock band is a rare experience these days, but The Mars Volta is just that. The band’s sound comes from three precursor bands, all from different genres: At the Drive-In (classical), De Facto (dub/

reggae) and The Omar Rodriguez Lopez Group (techno). The Mars Volta’s lead singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and guitarist,

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, led all three, and, as a result, the band’s sound is a creative, instrumental fusion of

all three. Bixler-Zavala has a passive sound that can, in a second, ignite his lyrics with a fiery passion, much like Rush’s great Geddy Lee. Meanwhile, the drum and bass keeps the tempo and creates an energy high. Currently working on their sixth album, the

band was recognized as the best progressive rock band of the year by Rolling Stone Magazine in 2008 — and they’ve restored my faith in rock.

-Jordan Fletcher

THE MARS VOLTA

Recommended Tracks: “Eriatarka,” “Iner-tiatic Esp” and “The

Widow”

Headline photo courtesy of KUOI Radio

Though their Spanish name translates to “The Peasants,” Los Campesinos! (LC!) don’t sing in Spanish or live in fields but are rather a group of soccer-crazed British hipsters. Lead singer and lyricist Gareth is so fond of the sport that in one track titled, “We’ve Got Your Back,” he confess-es: “Every girl I ever kissed — I was thinking of a pro footballer.” The eight-piece indie pop outfit released their first single, “We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives” in 2006.

LC! has managed to create variety and en-ergy for itself in a subgenre filled with intro-spective, somewhat poetic rock bands (Death Cab for Cutie, I’m looking at you). Packed with snarky lyrics, obscure instruments — like the glockenspiel — and an infectious stage presence I saw live last April, LC! has a way of channeling teen angst without sounding whiny.

-Tallyn Owens

LOS CAMPESINOS!

Recommended Tracks:“This is a Flag.

There is No Wind.” & “Broken Heartbeats

sound like Breakbeats”

By Riley SimpsonAssociate Editor-in-Chief

On the first day of rehearsal for Prospect’s spring musical “Into the Woods,” director Jeremy Morton had his actors do a writing assignment. On sheets of paper, they had to ex-plain why their respective characters go into the woods, as the play’s title suggests. “Any kind of character develop-ment is essential to any show,” Mor-ton said. “If a performer can identify with the motivation of a character, it’s a good start. “All good performers do their home-work.” And by homework, Morton means good preparation for a role. Usually, musicals are mostly about the music and dancing. In Morton’s eyes, his actors should know more than their lines and dances. “Characters are real people,” he said. “[The musical] can’t just be song and then dance. There has to be inspi-ration.” Morton found that the best way to encourage the importance of motiva-tion is to continually question his ac-

tors about their characters. According to junior Connor Fitzger-ald, any warm-up the actors do in re-hearsal is centered around building their characters. For example, they play theater games to explore how their characters walk. “[We figure out] what we want [with our character] and how it compares to our own lives,” Fitzgerald said. “We’re looking more for meaning and purpose in our characters.” “Woods,” which will celebrate its 25th birthday this December, follows well-known fairy tale characters like Jack, his Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel as their stories become in-tertwined in the forest. For Fitzger-ald, who plays Cinderella’s Prince, “Woods” strikes similar notes as “Wicked” and “Shrek,” with its frac-tured fairy-tale format. The play pre-miers on Wednesday, April 27 at 7 p.m. “Woods” has proven difficult in ways besides character development. The music itself is “a lot more intri-cate and a lot more sophisticated” than in previous shows, according to Fitzgerald. Senior Breanna Lucas, who plays the narrator in “Woods,” said that the songs are “all over the place.” The mu-sic often switches keys, which can be difficult for the soloist. “A lot of the time when we’re sing-ing, it’s almost frustrating with the orchestra because sometimes they’re playing stuff, and I think, ‘That doesn’t sound right. That sounds wrong,’” Fitzgerald said. “You just

have to trust it and keep singing the music. [At least] from an audience point of view, it sounds really cool.” Fitzgerald sings duets in the songs “Agony” and “Agony Reprise” with senior Pat Moran, Rapunzel’s Prince. Stephen Sondheim, the composer for the 1986 premier of “Woods,” was known for clashing notes and sounds in his musicals. “That’s what tricks us [singers] be-cause it’s hard to sing,” Fitzgerald said. “[Sound-clashing] sounds awful, but you just have to trust it.” Morton said that “Woods” is a com-bination of both music and dialogue. With good character development and motivation added in, this show is shaping up to be quite difficult. “I feel like every year could be right for it, but we felt like this year was the year to challenge ourselves,” Morton said. The past two years saw two very dif-ferent musicals: the heavily-musical “Smokey Joe’s Café” in 2009 and “Cur-tains!”, which was more of a book musical last year. Morton felt that neither year was right for this tricky production. However, when Morton saw the talent in his cast this year, he took “Woods” off the holding shelf it’s been resting on for years. “I think that Prospect High School is very lucky,” Morton said. “We have incredible musicians. We’ve got great teachers and private tutors and in-structors. We’ve got very talented per-formers overall.”

‘Into’ challenging territory

!KNOCK ON ‘WOODS’: Senior Pat Moran and junior Connor Fitzgerald sing their duet “Agony” with the orchestra for Prospect’s spring musical “Into the Woods” (Left). Junior Riley Mangan, freshman Jenny Ruda and senior Laura Matthews read from their scripts (Right). “Into the Woods” will hit the Prospect stage Wednesday, April 27 at 7 p.m. (All photos by Ian Magnuson)

TECH CREW POPS

Cast, crew take on tough musical ‘Woods’

As a child, my definition of late-night talk shows was the hour mommy and daddy watch TV before they “go to bed.”

In reality, late-night TV is really based around celebrity advertisements. It’s called plugging: a movie star like Owen Wilson will present clips of his new movie while the host interviews Wilson about the film (Wait, Wilson is still a movie star?).

However, at 11:37 p.m. on weeknights on CBS, celebrities don’t always remember to plug their shows. They forget because they’re having too much fun.

Craig Ferguson, the Scottish host of “The Late Late Show,” makes a point of ripping up his inter-view questions before his guest sits down.

He asks about his guest’s life with genuine in-terest, which is lacking in other late-night hosts like David Letterman, who treats his show like a chore.

On one “Late Late Show,” comedian Denis Leary talked with Ferguson about dirty Christ-mas cards, masturbation and Irish families before hurriedly plugging his Comedy Central special, “Douchebags and Donuts” in the last minutes. They even planned Leary’s next visit: Both he and Ferguson will be dressed in drag for the whole in-terview.

Granted, Leary is an old drinking buddy of Ferguson (one that he doesn’t remember drink-ing with), but this is the same deal five nights a week. Ferguson’s ludicrous speed energy lasts for 62 straight minutes, while Letterman can’t utter a joke without five or six “ums.”

Oh, and while I’m talking about Ferguson and alcohol, the guy is a recovering alcoholic, yet he makes fun of his drunken past nightly. If that’s not respectable, then Leslie Nielsen isn’t a great American legend.

Also, the interviews aren’t even the best part of Ferguson’s show. His monologues kill me ev-ery night. Although they’re mostly scripted, Fer-guson’s improv sets his comedy apart from the likes of Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon (George Lopez does NOT count as a late-night host).

However, Ferguson surprised me in his Feb. 28 show. The first sequence was a comparison of the the media’s lampooning of the Charlie Sheen scandal — see page 6 for Prospect’s view of the actor — to the mental hospitals in London in the 1600s, where people would pay pennies to laugh at the mentally ill through peepholes.

Ferguson declared that he wouldn’t be crack-ing any jokes about Sheen or his recent heroic exploits. I never thought I’d see such respect and compassion from a late-night host, let alone the usually crass Ferguson.

The studio of “The Late Late Show” is bar-ren, save for a desk, some chairs and a robot side-kick, Geofferry Peterson (fun fact for the Science Olympiad/AP Science kids: His robot was built by “Mythbusters” co-host Grant Imahara).

Ferguson doesn’t have the glamour or the spectacle of other late-night talk shows. I mean, at least the other shows provide their hosts with human sidekicks — except for David Letterman’s right-hand man, Paul Schaffer. He’s Canadian.

His energy, hilarity and humility make up for his show’s average appearance and budget. Fergu-son may just join the ranks of Nielsen as a great American legend someday.

Er, I mean a great Scottish legend.

A great American legend in training

RRated

for Riley

Tech manager Matt Erbach has done Prospect’s spring musical “Into the Woods,” in which fairy-tale characters meet up in the woods, before at Rolling Meadows High School. Fifteen years ago, Erbach was on the tech crew for “Woods.” That experience and this year’s Theatre Fest at the University of Illinois — where “Woods” was the all-state performance — ,';<#'*#+(1"4)*%7$(,+#)(!0"(Prospect’s show. “We’re trying to theme the entire set on a pop-up book,” Erbach said, “so they’d be two-dimensional elements that fold out. For example, the trees that make up the woods will be made out of two-dimensional wood planks that slot into each other as opposed to three-dimensional fake trees. “We’re trying to keep it simple along those lines. Of course, cutting them out and painting them is a lot of work, but we’re trying to keep the style very simplistic.”

Erbach and his crew have also made literal books (see picture) to represent the three main storylines: “The Baker and his Wife,” “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Cinderella.” Instead of having a set for those scenes, the books will serve as backdrops. “We just wanted to add some pop-up elements to make it a little more 3-D and make it a little more real.”

13 ENTERTAINMENTFriday, April 8, 2011

!COACHING THE COACH:  Former varsity baseball coach Larry Pohlman coaches then senior Mike Quade, the new Chicago Cubs manager, in 1975. Prospect will rename its field to “Larry Pohlman Field” on April 21, 2011 in honor of Pohlman’s 29­year coaching career at Prospect.  (Photo courtesy of Crest)

14 SPORTSFriday, April 8, 2011

Larry Pohlman

Pulling for Pohlman

By Nick StanojevicExecutive Sports Editor

After 29 seasons coaching Prospect

baseball, former head coach Larry Pohlman finally got the call that was years in the making. Principal Kurt Laakso was on the other line inform-ing him that Prospect’s varsity baseball field will be named after him.

“I was excited and a little numb [af-ter hearing the news],” Pohlman said. “It’s been a long time in coming I guess; I have not coached there since ‘96. Hap-py pretty much sums it up.”

From 1967 until 1996, Pohlman was the head varsity baseball coach, win-

ning 435 games and posting a .587 win-ning percentage. During his time, he coached a number of players who went on to greater baseball success, including current Cubs man-ager Mike Quade.

A committee con-sisting of Boys’ Ath-

letic Director Tom Martindale, Associ-ate Principal Greg Minter, former Daily Herald sports columnist Bob Frisk and senior Matt Molini advanced the pro-posal through the Board of Education,

which approved the renaming of the field to “Larry Pohlman Field.”

The committee, needing a current player of the sport, selected Molini to help for a student perspective in the proposal.

“Naming the baseball field is a big deal,” Molini said, “and [considering] a person like Pohlman and what he has done for the community and Prospect, I felt honored to be part of the process.”

Current head baseball coach Ross Giusti was a former player for Pohl-man and served as an assistant coach to Pohlman for his final two years.

“I think it’s great what we’re do-ing for Larry,” Giusti said. “He’s well-deserving. He put in so much time and hard work into this program over the years, and it’s a great tribute to him.”

Besides work ethic, Giusti also re-members Pohlman as having a terrific mind for baseball.

“He had such a calming personality that he always put you in a situation that you were going to succeed [in],” Giusti said. “I observed that trait with him as a player and a coach that he was able to get his point across in many dif-

ferent ways, whether moving you in a lineup or putting his players in situa-tions they were going to succeed in.”

On April 21, a ceremony open to the public will be held honoring Pohlman before Prospect’s game against Hersey.

For Pohlman, however, this is a fa-miliar process.

“I’ve gone through this before be-cause my father was my high school coach, and the field in my hometown is named after him,” Pohlman said. “I went through that in the 80s, so I’m just following along in his footsteps.”

Baseball field named in former coach’s honor

A VETERAN’S PERSPECTIVE

During Larry Pohlman’s time as head coach of the Prospect baseball team, high school sports teams were not allowed to travel outside of their state to compete. While the baseball team was allowed to take a spring trip, they could only compete in inner-squad games. Spending most of the winter in Florida, however, Pohlman had the opportunity to watch the current boys’ baseball team on their spring trip, where they won both of their games, 10-2 and 5-2. “They looked good; they did very =#..(!0"('0-(%)>,'/(4##'(0'()(2#.+(,'(a game situation ... they should have a nice season,” Pohlman said. “It was fun to see them play and to see them compete. ... [The opponents] had probably 15 games played already when Prospect came down, so they certainly had the advantage. Prospect went right after both of them, scored early and took command.”

By Jack MathewsSta" Writer

Before this year, the last time freshman Amanda Ehlert played soccer was fifth grade, so when she found out she made the sophomore team this year, she was excited just to have made a team at all.

In previous years, this would have been a big accomplishment for any freshman, but this year, some reorganization has mitigated the ac-complishment.

In order to try and increase the level of play of the incoming fresh-man teams this season, the MSL has decided to attempt to make the fresh-man girls’ soccer team the third most competitive level in the girls’ soccer program, putting it ahead of the sophomore team and below junior varsity and varsity.

In the past, the most talented freshmen in every class would be moved up to the sophomore team. This year, however, those girls will

stay on the freshman squad. Accordingly, girls that the coach-

es think would benefit more from being on the sophomore team were moved there.

In the long run, varsity head coach Tom Froats thinks this deci-sion will help in the development of more players.

“It’s about getting the girls who deserve to play a chance to play,” Froats said.

One of the problems this move helps to solve is the issue of bumping freshman up to the sophomore team and seeing limited playing time.

The change hopes to get the most talented players the most playing time.

Although this change could po-tentially be detrimental to the talent of sophomore coach Jason Cohen’s team, he is mostly indifferent about the new rule.

His main focus is still on devel-oping the skills of the players on his team and to help prepare them for varsity and junior varsity in years to come.

“[Cohen] tells us we are a devel-opmental team, but we should still work hard so that we can make the program better in the future,” sopho-more player Maria Dellanina said.

Fittingly, the motto for the Pros-pect girls soccer program this year is “One team — one goal.”

“The girls are going to learn the

same skills they would learn in any other program, so it doesn’t really hurt us,” Cohen said. “It is just rear-ranging the traditional way.”

Traditional or not, both Ehlert and freshman Hannah Tittle are hap-py enough on the sophomore team.

“The coaching is really good, and they do a good job of training you so that you can make JV or varsity in the future,” Tittle said.

Ehlert also likes the coaching and likes that she feels there is less pressure on the sophomore team as opposed to the freshman team. Ac-cording to Ehlert, the girls also goof off more, and the atmosphere is less competitive.

Although at first Dellanina was upset at the change of order because she thought it would hurt her team, she now agrees with it for the reason that it will benefit the program over-all.

“It might be worse for the sopho-more team, but I think it’s better for the program,” Dellanina said.

On the other side, Freshman Kim Welk, who made the freshman team, is also happy with the way things worked out because she likes the style of coaching.

No matter what team it is, they are all trying to work toward a com-mon goal.

“The goal of everything we do is to make the soccer program as successful as possible,” Froats said, “and we feel this move is a step in that direction.”

For a recap of the girls’ soccer game against Rolling Meadows from April 6, see Prospectornow.com.

The baseball team went up against Glenbard East High School on April 6. For coverage of the game visit Prospectornow.com.

15SPORTSFriday, April 8, 2011

MSL chooses to switch around girls soccer levels, unify program

Kicking it up a notch

   Knight@

When Michael Jordan destroyed Craig Eh-lo’s career, when he fought through the flu in game five of the 1997 NBA Finals and when he pushed off of Karl Malone to hit the champi-onship-sealing jumper in 1998, he created the everlasting images of 90s basketball.

They also symbolize both the greatest player, and probably team, ever.

The greatness of the Chicago Bulls and their six championship teams from 1991-1998 is brought up often. Especially in Chicago. No matter what has happened in the near 15 years since Chicago’s sixth title, nobody has forgot-ten.

When people say, “Kobe will never be Jor-dan” and “no team will ever win 72 games again” these are frequent reminders for us.

But, with a young and talented core already competing for the first seed, the Bulls look like a team bound for great things. They are the only current Chicago team that can build an elite team for years.

After all, Michael Jordan said this present team is capable of winning six championships, which is the equivalent of Jessica Biel calling you attractive: it doesn’t get old, and it means something.

I decided to embark on a journey of figuring out what the Bulls of the 90s looked like to cur-rent teachers and coaches — who were, believe it or not, young at the time — and how this team compares to them.

Current Prospect head basketball coach Jon Camardella remembers the 90s Bulls vividly.

His fondest memory is asking his parents to stay up to watch the late-night games, includ-ing the 1991 NBA Finals against the Los Ange-les Lakers.

“Having to ask my parents to watch it, the answer wasn’t always yes,” Camardella said, “but I got to watch it when they finally beat [Los Angeles].”

Camardella also remembers people leaving during both junior and senior prom to watch the Bulls in the 1997 and 1998 NBA Finals in the hotel lobby.

Despite the current team’s success, Ca-mardella, still an avid Bulls fan, is hesitant to compare the two eras.

“Obviously Derrick Rose has people very ex-cited, and he can do things most point guards can’t do and [have never] done,” Camardella said.

“And the fact that forwards like Noah throw alley-oops to him is pretty silly. I don’t know if they are primed for a playoff run — that’s what I think anybody who watches basketball is in-terested to see.”

World history teacher Jon Kaminsky also re-members the 90s Bulls from his younger days. And their impact on him was lasting.

“[They are] the reason I could still watch the Bulls when they were winning 12 games a year,” Kaminsky said.

Naturally, however, Kaminsky is also skepti-cal for early comparisons.

“I think they are a good team; it’s kind of what the Bulls teams from years previously did when they lost to Detroit,” Kaminsky said.

“Who knows if they are going to meet their match and turn into a really strong team that never puts it all together. … The potential is there ... but they need to put it all together to be apt for comparison.”

Even though these teachers don’t want to jump the gun — and neither do I — I think we might have something special brewing. Of course injuries can still run a team into the ground, but we have to have some optimism.

Plus, I can’t wait to continue hearing Stacey King yell out, “Get up, or get out the way!”

Remembering the good ol’ days

!KICKING AND SCREAMING:  Freshman Alex Wilson (left) shields the ball from a defender during her game against Barrington, and sophomore Dana Kozinski (right) finds an open teammate for a pass. This year, the MSL elected to make the freshman level more competitive. (Photos by Ian Magnuson)

Need more Prospect sports?HOW THE SEASON

HAS FARED

VarsityRecord: 1-1

Scorers: Junior Jessica Petrovski (2), senior Agnes Stankiewicz, sophomore Adrian Falagario, sophomore Rachel Suarez.

The girls lost their season opener 1-0 to Barrington, but beat Wheeling 6-0 in their home opener on April 4.

Upcoming games - Vs. Schaumburg (4/11) - Vs. Palatine (4/13) - Prospect Invite (4/15-4/16) - @ Hoffman ( 4/18)

By Neel ThakkarEditor-in-Chief

*Names changed for confiden-tiality

The party had been going on for about an hour or two when things took a sudden turn for the worse. A latecomer arrived at what he thought was the right house and knocked, only to find unfamiliar faces look-ing back at him. He realized his mistake soon enough, but it was too late.

“The people who were [in the other house] got suspicious and contacted the police,” said senior Noah Sark*, an athlete who was at the party. “And then that’s when it happened.”

According to junior Glen Lumpkins*, the police sur-rounded the house, entering the house through the back door as the students at the party tried, unsuccessfully, to hide.

According to Sark, there were about twenty students — roughly half of whom are athletes — at the party, which took place in late February. Be-cause there was alcohol pres-ent, the police sat the students down, separated them into

groups of minors and adults, served them with court dates and sent them home — those under 18 with their parents. Sark is not particularly wor-ried about his court date, which is in May. He expects a fine or perhaps community service — “Nothing too, too serious,” he said.

For the a t h l e t e s , there was a bigger con-cern: their status on the team.

When they returned to school the next week, they met o n e - o n - o n e with Associ-ate Principal Greg Minter, who told the athletes that they had violated the District’s co-curricular code, or stan-dards of behavior expected for students involved in activities and sports (see Not just for ath-letes).

Minter said he has had to give out an unusually high number of codes this year —

about 30 to date — and that the vast majority have been given to athletes. Last year, he recalls giving out about 20.

As Lumpkins and Sark had not received codes before, they would have to sit out a fourth of their spring season. For base-ball players, this also meant

foregoing the team’s spring break trip to Florida.

For others who received their second codes, the punishments were more se-vere — either a half-season s u s p e n s i o n or suspension for a full cal-endar year, e f f e c t i v e l y ending their athletic ca-

reers (see Code levels). Over the next several days,

the athletes had to face their parents, coaches, teammates and classmates.

“[My parents] were the first people I told,” Sark said, describing their reaction as “more disappointed than mad.”

Senior Howard Herbert*, who was not at the party but re-ceived a code for drinking the summer before his sophomore year, had a similar response from his parents.

“I was grounded for quite a while,” Herbert said. “I had to do a lot of stuff with them. The trust factor — it’s been two years now, [and] they still think about that, I’m sure. If I’m go-ing out on a Friday night, it’s like, ‘What’s he doing?’”

Instead of getting mad, coaches also try to convey a sense of disappointment.

Baseball coach Ross Giusti, who had two players receive codes from the party, has indi-vidual discussions with coded players, emphasizing that “rep-

utation is everything.”“What type of reputation

do you want to be known for?” he asks them. “Do you want to be known for a person that is sound in academics and athlet-ics, or do you want to be a per-son that’s known to be out goof-ing around and being the class clown?”

“People gossip, ‘Hey, did you hear what happened to that guy’ and that type of thing,” boys’ Athletic Director Tom Martindale said. “And so [get-ting coded] is a negative, … but you’ll be judged on what you do after that. You really will.”

Coded players also come to realize how their absence hurts the team.

Although Giusti doesn’t make the point himself, he en-courages “peer discussions” among teammates. When a team has big goals, he said, it generally steps up to say “‘Hey, any foolish decision you make can have an effect on all of us.’”

Still, the criticism is gentle. “It’s kind of hard for kids to

get on other guys,” Sark said, “because everyone knows stuff like that is going on.”

Both Martindale and Giusti highlight the power of codes to change athletes’ behavior.

“Typically, I’ve seen kids turn it around,” Giusti said. “They just don’t want to be there again.”

Minter backs that up; after a first code, he does not often see a student get a second.

However, the athletes them-selves are a little more realis-tic.

“I will admit, I do [drink], but it’s a lot more careful now,” Herbert, a senior, said. “I’ve definitely toned it down.”

Juniors, who have another year of sports ahead of them, are not taking risks. Lumpkins and junior Mike Nell*, who was also at the party, said they had made major changes after getting their first, or, in Nell’s case, second codes.

Because Nell was not drink-ing at the party, he received a Level B code, missing half of his spring season but staying eligible for the fall. The dis-tinction was crucial for Nell, who hopes to play his sport in college.

Seeing how a situation might affect him is “easy to do when you’re at school, but it’s a lot harder to do when you’re out on a Friday or a Saturday night,” he said.

“I’m not going to [drink] for a long time,” Lumpkins said. “If I get caught again, I would lose a full year of sports. Sports are my biggest passion, and I don’t want to lose that be-cause of one choice I made of having fun.”

Graphic by Ian Magnuson

SPORTSFriday, April 8, 2011 On Prospectornow.com...

Look for a preview of the boys’ tennis team and their talented freshman *.)$$3((6'()++,-,0'8(?0<(*)'(2'+(continued coverage of all the spring sports throughout their seasons — all on Prospectornow.com.

“[Making the right deci-sions] is easy to do when &.,*/"'#%'+0!..$1'2,%'3%*+'a lot harder to do when &.,*/"'.,%'.4'#'5/36#&'

night or a Saturday night.”

-annonymous junior athlete

Game over Code violations keep athletes off the field — sometimes permanently

HOW CODES WORK

Under District 214’s co-curricular code, there are two different levels of code violations — Level A, for more serious violations, like the possession or use of alcohol or drugs, theft or possession of weapons, and Level B, for smaller offenses. Codes build up throughout a student’s high school career; there is no way to erase them. The school can charge students with code viola-tions through three differ-#'-(=)?$G(4?(-%#(>#",2*)-tion of a district employee, through the police or if the student admits guilt. According to Associate Principal Greg Minter, the school generally doesn’t investigate anonymous tips or secondhand re-ports. Though both levels re-ceive equal punishment on -%#(2"$-(0!!#'$#(Q()(.0$$(of a 25 percent of the sea-son — the consequences diverge from there, from another loss of 25 to 50 percent of the season to the loss of a full calendar year. For juniors or seniors, a second or third code is usually the end of their athletic careers. Still, the system provides for up to four codes. On the fourth, the student is suspended permanently.

When baseball coach Ross Giusti played baseball in at Prospect in the 1980s, the system of codes was “totally different.” “The times were different,” he said. Unlike today’s co-curricular code, which has *)"#!<..?(+#2'#+(*)-#/0",#$(and punishments, the code was vague back then. “There weren’t a lot of technical rules involving these things,” Giusti said. “It was more or less: If a coach got wind that you might be doing something to jeopardize the team, they would have a talk

with you and your parents.” Even 15 years ago, when Giusti took the head coaching job, there was more “gray area” in the code. Nowadays, in most cases, punishments are “cut and dry,” which he appreciates. “If [the coach] is put in the middle, some people will judge you that you didn’t give enough of a penalty. Or sometimes they might criticize you that you gave it too harsh,” Giusti said. “It can be judged all types of different ways, and I think people don’t like going there.”

BACK IN THE DAY

NOT JUST FOR ATHLETES

Although the code system is most familiar to athletes, it applies equally to mathletes, among oth-ers: - Marching band - Jazz band - Debate team - Speech team - Scholastic Bowl - Science Olympiad - All plays and musicals - Cheerleading - Poms - Orchesis - Chess team - Student Council - Class Board - Cricket - Robotics team - Show Choir